Radishrain

So, today, I had some well-cooked beans (chili) that were quite firm. I prefer my beans super soft. So, I thought I'd do some research on how to make soft beans.

I found Bigfoot's comments on this article to be insightful (although in need of testing):
* https://cheftalk.com/threads/how-make-soft-beans.21484/#post-157070
* https://cheftalk.com/threads/how-make-soft-beans.21484/page-2#post-157716

So, yeah, ideas (not just Bigfoot's) include adding baking soda, don't cook them with tomatoes (add tomatoes after the beans are soft), pre-soaking overnight, and other stuff. They say older beans stay firmer longer.

cooking_

* Santo Domingo Winter (plenty)
* Santo Domingo Dark Green (multiple)
* Santo Domingo Brown Seeded (several)
* Large (in my garden) or other winter types: Corner Round/Long, Weeks NC Giant cross, unknown winter watermelon, Tom Watson cross, Winter Queen, Wintermelon, Navajo Winter, King Winter, Navajo Red, Carolina Cross

Maybe:
* Mayo

If I get seeds:
* Desert King
* Tohono O'odham

Good thing I harvested the ripe tomatoes earlier today, because it's raining, now! It often gets wet at the end of the season here. (It's supposed to freeze on Tuesday: read Wednesday morning.)

There's nothing quite like harvesting tomatoes in the cold and rain.

Here are some Sweet Orange Cherry tomatoes that I harvested, today. They're nice. It's an early, prolific, hardy variety with good taste. It's somewhat larger than my Galapagos Island. I had it in tough soil, this year, unamended, unfertilized. I also grew it in 2017, and 2016. I gave my plant to some people in 2018. Mine came from dianeseeds.com, as Orange Cherry.



Offsite articles:
• Tatiana's TOMATObase

Offsite forum search results:
• Google: Dave's Garden
• Google: Gardenweb
• Google: proboards.com
• Google: Tomatoville

heirloom_tomato

The Sausage tomato is a favorite of mine. It produces large paste tomatoes in abundance. Sausage seems to be able to handle heat and drought well.

Here's a picture that includes some of mine (they ripen red, but the picture makes them look pink). Some or all of these Sausage tomatoes might be a cross, as they're a little smaller than I'd expect.



heirloom_tomato

This thread is for the Napoli tomato. It's a red paste (the picture makes it look pink) with similarities in production and fruit size to the Romas we grew in 2014. Due to its production, I want to grow it again.



Offsite articles:
• Tatiana's TOMATObase

Vendors:
• Timeless-Tomatoes.com
• Victory Seeds

heirloom_tomato

This thread is for the Palestinian tomato. It's wispy, fairly large and apparently, a red oxheart. The picture makes it look pink, though. The bottom of the plant smelled super good, like awesome BBQ sauce.



heirloom_tomato

This thread is for the Gilbertie tomato.



heirloom_tomato

The HL volunteer in the picture (the orange tomato) is the tomato at hand here. I transplanted a Holyland tomato there in the spring, but it died. Another tomato sprouted, which I thought might be Holyland. I let it grow, and it produced this orange fruit, which I believe ripened a super long time ago. However, it's still just fine, and it's firm! The plant would perhaps have produced lots more fruit, but it was growning in between about eight plants, being shaded by them. It was doing quite well before the shade quite overtook it. It had a late start, even for a volunteer.

It's probably a volunteer from my garden last year. So, that means it's probably a cross with Orange Minsk, since I didn't grow a lot of orange tomatoes last year. I didn't save seeds from Orange Minsk; so, this is a fortuitous situation.

other_tomato