Gardening
Tips for Selecting the Best Tomatoes for Your Garden
Lizzano is a semi-determinate tomato great for hanging baskets.
Photo courtesy of All-America Selections
Whether you enjoy tomatoes sliced, sauced, or cooked in your favorite recipe, they taste best when grown and harvested from your garden or container. With more than 10,000 varieties available it can be difficult to select the best ones to grow in your garden.
Start by looking for those varieties best suited to the intended use whether for slicing, cooking, preserving, or snacking. Most seed catalogs and websites as well as plant tags and garden centers provide recommendations.
Bite-sized tomatoes are great for salads, relish trays, and snacking. Trailing varieties like Lizzano, Tumbling Tom, Litt'l Bites Cherry, and Red Robin also grow well in hanging baskets and even window boxes.
Paste and sauce tomatoes have meatier fruit making them perfect for sauces, soups, and preserving. Roma is the traditional favorite with an egg-shaped fruit that has thick walls and few seeds. The All-America Selections Early Resilience Roma has excellent disease and blossom end rot resistance and does not require staking. Use paste tomatoes during the growing season for sauces, chop and add them to an omelet, can or freeze them for future use.
Grow a few slicing tomatoes to enjoy on sandwiches, grilled, or on their own. Beefsteak and Better Boy are longtime favorites while Iron Lady, Galahad, and the colorful Chef's Choice series are more recent additions to this category.
Perhaps you are looking for an heirloom tomato, one that has been grown for more than 50 years and maintained its original traits and popularity. Cherokee Purple's rich flavor constantly rates high in taste tests. Brandywine, Black Cherry, Chocolate Stripes, Amana Orange, and Black Krim are also gardener favorites.
Coax reluctant veggie eaters of all ages to give tomatoes a try with some of the sweeter varieties like Sunsugar often called the candy of the garden. Consider having a taste test after growing a variety of super sweet tomatoes like Sungold, Super Sweet 100, Suncherry, and Sunrise Bumble Bee.
Boost your success by selecting disease-resistant varieties and growing your tomatoes in full sun and moist well-drained soil. Plant tags, internet sources, and catalog descriptions usually highlight this and other helpful information.
Look for tomato varieties suited to your growing conditions. Check with your University Extension for a list of recommended varieties for your area. You will also find helpful information on the best time to start tomato seeds indoors and when to place transplants in the garden.
Start enjoying the harvest sooner with fast-maturing tomatoes. These are perfect if you have a short growing season or are just anxious for your first garden-fresh tomato. Early Girl is a longtime favorite, Bush Early Girl produces more fruit on a compact plant, and New Girl produces bigger fruit and has better disease resistance. Glacier, Alaska, and Juliet are a few of the many others to consider. Check the catalog description or plant tag for the number of days to harvest.
Select plants with the growth habit that best works with your garden space and gardening style. Determinate tomatoes are perfect for small space gardens and containers. They grow a certain height, stop growing, and produce their fruit over a relatively short time. Indeterminate tomatoes continue to grow throughout the season producing flowers and fruit until you prune out the tip or frost kills the plant. Stake or tower the plants to save space, reduce disease and insect problems, and make harvesting more convenient.
Gather your family and favorite recipes. Make a list of longtime favorites and new tomato varieties to include in this year's garden. Be sure to save some space as you are likely to find a few additional varieties you just can't resist planting this year.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including The Midwest Gardener's Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses "How to Grow Anything" DVD series and the nationally-syndicated Melinda's Garden Moment TV & radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine. Her web site is www.MelindaMyers.com.
Antiques
Cars and Other 2023 Auction Results
Photo courtesy of Wayne Tuiskula
This is the last in a series of articles discussing some of the bestselling items in our 2023 auctions. In previous columns I've discussed sports memorabilia, comic books, toys and collectibles, gold jewelry, sterling silverware, musical instruments, and Civil War memorabilia. We've also had success with a wide range of other items including coins and advertising signs. In today's column, I'll discuss an assortment of items that also sold well last year.
One of our top-selling items in 2023 was by a best-selling author. Kurt Vonnegut's most popular novel Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969. It was based on his experiences as a POW during World War II and the firebombing of Dresden, Germany. He is considered one of the best American writers of the second half of the 20th century. We sold a 1954 Kurt Vonnegut signed job application for a Time Magazine writing position for $1,180.
Folk art and paintings also brought strong prices. A sampler marked "Her Sampler 1736" with the alphabet and stitchwork featuring intricate designs sold for $960. William Stubbs was the son of a shipmaster and was born in Maine in 1842. It's believed that he was the master of his father's ship from 1868 to 1873. He moved to Boston and was listed as a marine painter in the Boston directory in 1876. Despite having a large tear in the canvas with a repair, we sold a William Stubbs signed oil on canvas painting of a Boston schooner for $2,655.
Switching from sea to land, Americans are said to have a love affair with cars. Sports cars and muscle cars are always popular with collectors. Merriam-Webster defines a sports car as "a low small usually 2-passenger automobile designed for quick response, easy maneuverability, and high-speed driving." Chevrolet Corvettes are one of the top-selling American sports cars. Some consider the 1975 Corvette style as less appealing than other designs from the era. Despite this, a 1975 Corvette Stingray brought $10,000 at one of our 2023 auctions. A muscle car is defined by Merriam-Webster as "any of a group of American-made 2-door sports coupes with powerful engines designed for high-performance driving." The 1970 Plymouth Satellite shared the same body style as the Plymouth Road Runner. Classic Industries reports that 41,484 1970 Plymouth Road Runners and 82,654 Plymouth Satellites were manufactured. We sold a 1970 Plymouth Satellite that had many parts missing and needed restoration. Even though it was a project car, the bidding took right off, and it finished at $12,980 when the checkered flag waved.
We have multiple auctions taking place this spring. We are accepting consignments of sports cards, non-sports cards, comic books, coins, and other memorabilia for a major collectibles auction. Later in the spring, we plan to run another auction with more art, jewelry, sterling silver, and other antiques and collectibles. I will also be teaching my night class at the Bay Path Evening School in Charlton on March 5th, and I'll be at the Learning in Retirement event in Danielson, Connecticut on March 6th. Please visit our website www.centralmassauctions.com for links to other upcoming events.
Contact us to consign items or for auction information at: Wayne Tuiskula Auctioneer/Appraiser Central Mass Auctions for Antique, Collectibles Auctions and Appraisal Services info@centralmassauctions.com or (508-612-6111).
Contact us at: Wayne Tuiskula Auctioneer/Appraiser Central Mass Auctions for Antique, Collectibles Auctions and Appraisal Services www.centralmassauctions.com (508-612- 6111).