by Leslie Cox; Tuesday, September 29, 2014
Because I am curious by nature and because I genuinely wanted to see some concrete numbers, I kept a tally on some of the produce we grew in our garden this summer. Namely…tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squashes.
Just finished catching up on the data entry task after my latest tomato haul. To date…we have harvested 79 lb 7 oz (36.03 kg). And there are still more tomatoes to harvest yet.
What made the data entry job more of a chore was keeping all the different tomato varieties separate. Was curious to see which varieties produced the best, which ones were early, which ones were a later developing type…that kind of thing. And by noting how many plants of each variety were planted, I would have a fairly accurate handle on how much fruit was produced by each plant in each variety.
My main thrust for all of this extra work…including keeping the harvested tomato varieties separated for individual weighing…was for my school gardens. Knowing even just the harvestable dates and weight produced per plant per tomato variety is valuable data for planning for next season.
So…some of the results to date (as of Sept. 27th):
- Early Girl (6 plants) = 26 lb 2 oz (2.14 kg)
- Gardener’s Delight (7 plants) = 11 lb (4.99 kg)
- Harry’s Roma* (2 plants) = 9 lb 11 oz (9.77 kg)
- Sweet Million (3 plants) = 15 lb (6.8 kg)
*Note: We do not know the original name of Harry’s Roma, although we suspect it is ‘San Marzano’. The original seeds came from a man who gave some to his friend who loved to grow tomatoes. But he would never tell his friend the variety name. Sadly, the man has died and the name is lost with him. Seedlings found their way to my brother who passed a few plants on to us. We call the variety ‘Harry’s Roma’ in honour of the man who shared his seeds.
The earliest harvest was ‘Gardener’s Delight’ and ‘Sweet Million’ on Aug. 5th. The first pick of ‘Early Girl’ was on Aug. 12th and ‘Harry’s Roma’ ripened on Aug. 24th.
As you can tell from the number of plants of each variety against the weight produced thus far, ‘Sweet Million’ and ‘Harry’s Roma’ are producing 5 lb (2.3 kg) per plant. ‘Early Girl’ is just behind at about 4.5 lbs (0.4 kg) per plant.
Good data for future planning. Final notes on this summer’s experiment will include the watering and fertilizing schedule. Plus note the important factor…all of these tomatoes were grown in our greenhouse. A structure only one of the school gardens has.
