The tomatoes are busy setting fruit in my Houston vegetable garden. This year I planted all the tomatoes together so I could do a good test on varieties of slicer tomatoes. Previously, I have followed the general recommendation of scattering them around the garden. While good for disease control it limits comparison because of the variability of sunlight and some differences in the soil. I planted Homestead, Merced, Floramerica and Celebrity as well as the cherry/plum tomato Sweet Chelsea (far left in the picture).
Sweet Chelsea is indeterminate to put it mildly and quickly takes over half the garden. The others are determinate, which I generally think are best for growing tomatoes in Houston. Homestead is a heirloom variety that we used to raise commercially when I was a kid growing up in Lavaca County. So far all are doing well, but I think Homestead is moving to the front in terms of production and Celebrity is lagging behind. Merced was the first to set fruit and has the largest tomatoes. I plant to measure production of each variety and do a taste test.
In the background you can see the corn I started indoors in now tasseling. On the left you can the parsley going to seed. I am letting practically everything (arugula, cilantro, bok choi, mustard and lettuce) go to seed. The flowers are good to have to attract beneficial insects and I plan to save the seeds. I planted a couple of the Osaka Purple Mustard seed and they seem to have come up true. Of course, hybrid seed will no come true and is hard to know what will and will not. The butterfly iris in the foreground has been beautiful this spring.