Happy Monday everyone! Hope you had a great weekend! The weather here was hot and humid and we spent much of the time tending to the vegetable garden. I know I've had a lot of posts about the various gardens and plants in our yard lately, but I just can't seem to help myself. After all, when I started this blog almost a year ago, my goals were to focus on finding the joy and inspiration that each season of the year, as well as each season of life can bring. The summer weather and lush greenery are beckoning me outdoors, and I want to share the fun and pretty surprises that keep popping up all over our yard with you. I promise that I do have some craft and DIY posts coming up though. However, today I want to focus on a delicious topic...Jersey tomatoes.
Given its location, New Jersey is often thought of as a neighbor to New York City and all that Manhattan has to offer, but our fair state has a lot to be proud of in its own right. Of course, at this time of year, images of the Jersey shore are what come to mind for most people, and it is not uncommon to hear the songs of New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen or JonBon Jovi blaring from cars as everyone drives down the Parkway to a favorite shore town.
While it is true that our state has 130 miles of coastline spanning from Sandy Hook to Cape May, the nickname for New Jersey is "The Garden State". According to the official web site for the state of NJ, Abraham Browning of Camden is credited for giving the state the nickname when he spoke at the Philadelphia Centennial exhibition in 1876. He reportedly said that "Our Garden State is an immense barrel, filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, with Pennsylvania grabbing from one end and New Yorkers from the other." The name stuck ever since. While New Jersey ranks 5th in blueberry production and 3rd in cranberry production according to the state website, we are also well known for our fresh "Jersey tomatoes". Whether it is the climate in our area or the soil in our region, the conditions seem to be perfect for helping our backyard garden live up to the infamous nickname by producing a large amount of luscious summer Jersey tomatoes.
This year my husband planted 3 types of tomatoes from seed...4th of July, brandywine, and beefsteak. Like the name implies, the 4th of July plants produced the earliest tomatoes, and this year, it seems like the brandywine plants are producing the largest ones. We had more plants than we could fit in our backyard garden, and my husband just couldn't stand the thought of wasting any of them. So, in addition to what went in the garden, he filled every spare container and bucket he could find with the leftover seedlings and kept them on our deck.The plants didn't seem to mind the containers and they grew and grew and grew...
They are thriving, and this weekend we counted well over 30 tomatoes on 3 different plants!
When we ran out of containers to put the leftover seedlings in, Dave got really creative and decided to plant one in an old tree stump in another area of the yard...
That plant seems to like its unique location as well...
In addition to producing large sized tomatoes, the brandywine seedlings in the garden grew into some rather tall plants. My daughter Pam agreed to stand near some of them so you can get a perspective of just how tall they are. She is about 5'4", and you can clearly see just how far they tower above her...
Of course, the height of the plant means nothing if it doesn't produce, but these plants are producing. Some plants have MANY smaller size tomatoes...
While other plants have less volume but larger tomatoes. This is a photo of a tomato next to Pam's hand so you can get an idea of just how large it is growing...
However, tomatoes are not the only thing our garden is producing abundantly, but since this post is already quite long, we'll save that discussion and a fun recipe for later this week.
