Gardeners' Holidays 2026: Tomatofest

This has been a summer of extremes. So far, we've had two triple-digit heat waves, both followed by powerful storms and flooding, interspersed with a multi-day stretch of nose-stinging wildfire smoke. Right now the temperature isn't too bad (a mere 88 degrees Fahrenheit, according to our little weather station), but the humidity is at a wilting 55 percent. 

All this has been rather unpleasant for us, but it seems to suit our tomato plants just fine, because they've been producing like gangbusters. What you see here is just a small fraction of what we've picked in the past week or so. (The little round ones are our trusty Sun Golds, the larger round ones are Premios, and the knobbly yellow ones are a new variety we're trying called Goldie.) Not shown are all the cherry tomatoes sprinkled on salads and falafel wraps, the bigger ones served sliced on top of veggie burgers, and the couple of pounds of mixed Premio and San Marzano paste tomatoes that went into a batch of the Roasted Tomato Fettuccine from The Clueless Vegetarian. (Brian used only a half-pound of pasta for this, rather than the full pound the recipe calls for, making it extra tomatoey.) We're eating tomatoes at almost every meal, and we still can't keep up.

Fortunately, our other veggies are producing at a more measured rate. So far we've harvested just 14 cucumbers, evenly split between our Boston Pickling and South Wind varieties. A few of these got sliced up for salads and falafel, but most of them have been turned into pickles. Luckily, we were able to use home-grown dill for these as well, as not all of it has flowered yet. We've got one half-full quart jar in the fridge right now and one just-started one, which should be ready just in time for a visit from my pickle-loving sister and her family next week. Our pepper plants, likewise, have produced only two fruits so far. And our zucchini plants, which according to tradition ought to be burying us in produce right around now, have so far yielded only three modest-sized squash—though we're hoping that just means they got off to a slow start.

This certainly seems to be the case for our raspberry canes. Normally, they'd be all done with their first crop by now, and possibly even starting to gear up for the second. This year, it looks like the early crop is barely half over. The canes in the front half of the bed seem to be picked clean, but the ones in the back still have loads of berries on them that aren't even ripe yet. As a result, we were actually able to top this year's anniversary cake with fresh home-grown raspberries for the first time. If the delayed harvest continues, this first crop may last us throughout the month of August, and the second could conceivably keep going until the frost hits.

Alas, we can harbor no such hopes about our plum trees. After getting only a modest harvest from them last year, this year it looks like we'll get nothing at all. There's not a single fruit to be seen on the branches, and even the foliage is looking a bit feeble. I'm starting to fear that the black knot, which we've been fighting so diligently for three years with fungicide and heavy pruning, is taking over, and even if the trees survive, they'll no longer be fruit producers. I hate the idea of replacing these cherished trees after 13 years and starting all over, but the thought of having them just sitting sitting in our yard for decades looking gnarled and barren seems even worse.

In short, our garden is currently serving up a mixture of wins and losses, which I guess is pretty much par for the course. It can be frustrating at times, but at least it's never dull.