Green Zebra tomatoes

I felt like I should do a little update on these guys.  

This was the first one I found in my garden.  I get such a kick out of their coloration even when they are little.  I've never had them before but everything I've read about them has been very encouraging.  I had room for these or Mr Stripey and given what I've heard about Mr Stripey I'm glad I went with the Green Zebras.  I've never had a green tomato before so it wasn't much of a choice.

Here's the same tomato a few weeks later.

Here's an even better example of how they look.  

They have that mottling and unique color from itty bitty and they just keep getting bigger and bigger and more of them.  They have been quite prolific too.  Good balance between leaf growth and number of tomatoes.  They were the last ones to blossom when compared to my Early Girls, Romas, Better Boys, and Lemon Boys but they've more than made up for their slow start.  

I always go and check on these on my daily pumpkin watering trips to see how they are doing.  I'm dying to taste them, and I hope they taste as good as they look so I can justify planting them again next year.

Thought Id take the camera along to water and weed

And took these shots to share

First stop was to check on my yellow squash and there it is

and another one growing right along near it.  They are doing very well.  Half of this row is yellow squash the other half is zucchini.  The zucchini are trying to catch up.  They lost all their blossoms with the last thunderstorms we had come through so even though the plants themselves look good, no zucchini yet.

Saw my red skin potatoes were starting to bloom.

WATERMELON BLOSSOMS!!!!  These little buggers appear and disappear so fast I have a hard time remembering which plant flowered.  I'm really excited about getting watermelons.  I don't care for the watermelons you buy in the store, I think they lack flavor and sweetness.  To me its like biting into a damp sponge.  No thank you.  Maybe I'm a watermelon snob I don't know but I do know what I don't like.  My wife and daughter eat the store bought melon without complaint and think they taste fine but I just don't care for them.  So I'm hoping to get a few this year and show them what a REAL watermelon tastes like.

Oh Pickles!  Well maybe I should be more specific...they are picking cucumbers that are going to be made into pickles.  If half of the blossoms I have produce cucumbers, then I'm going to be in a pickle with what to do with all them.  They are really doing well for me.

Giant pumpkin picture.    

Its got 2 blooms on it and hopefully producing pumpkins anytime now  The growth on this thing is amazing.  I swear I could check on it after breakfast and by dinner time its grown that much more.  Its really impressive.

Sweet pepper.  Bunch of these are coming in, and more to follow. 

I put this picture up of my Green Zebra tomato plant.  I thought it was wild that you can already see the "zebra" pattern.  I've never had one but when I saw the flavor description as "zippy" I figured why not.  Plus the price was right.

And one of my day lilies.  

I thought this would be a good note to end on.  

They say the first step

is admitting you have a problem.  Well....I have a problem.  A tomato problem.  First it started with wanting romas in addition to the slicing tomatoes.  Then I found a few Lemon Boys that I found at a good price and had the room for (mentioned in an earlier post) and then it got even worse when I found 2 very well developed Green Zebra tomatoes for 25 cents a piece!  They were in 3" pots and I just couldn't say no.  Did I need them?  Absolutely not, but a deal like that?  How could I pass that up?!

I somehow managed to avoid the black tomato craziness, but I did look pretty hard at the Cherokee purples that I found next to them for the same price.  Given that they are prone to cracking, and the description of their flavor it didn't really appeal to me like the Green Zebras did.  So now I've got yellow beefsteaks, green zebras, and lots of slicing and roma tomatoes.  I needed another tomato plant like I needed a hole in the head, but whats done is done.