The Garden Thread - July, 2025

I remember the name Dunstan from my fruit/nut orchard research.

History of the Dunstan chestnut and chestnuts in general.

https://chestnuthilltreefarm.com/learning-center/dunstan-chestnut-history-2/

Funny how a fungus from the Orient that destroyed the American chestnut now has us trying to grow our own chestnut market using hybrids of oriental chestnuts. Seems like most of our invasive species came from China.

The American chestnut used to get pretty big.

MO Center for Agroforestry has been working good marketable chestnuts for a while now so I'm leaning towards their varieties. PKQ is a fairly new one that looks very promising for nut production. Gideon, Qing and Mossbarger are some others.

Yeah, chestnuts are supposed to be eaten fairly fresh but can be refrigerated for a little while. Meanwhile all the stores have them sitting out at room temperature and who knows how old they are. Mostly a holiday season gimmick.

Hazelnuts are something else I've looked into. Rutger's has been working on improved varieties since the late 90s. Been looking into various fruit trees too but for some reason, don't have any notes on persimmons. I have the word persimmon in a note but nothing more. Guess I hadn't gotten around to it yet.

We have 3 chestnut trees on our place. The largest one died last year after 2 years of drought. The other 2 bloomed again a couple of weeks ago & we do get chestnuts, but the squirrels beat us to them. The blooms have a smell that I don’t particularly care for, but the trees are pretty with the blooms on them.

We also have hickory trees on one side of the property (mostly on the neighbor but branches are over our fence). We have 3 or 4 hickories on us at the back of the property. The hickory trees are loaded with nuts this year - the squirrels will be happy.

Pollard; I have not grown Rutgers, but I have seen pictures of them and glad you had a chance to try a ripe one!

I have tried San Marzano and 10 Fingers of Naples and Principe Borghese and there were lots of small tomatoes and problems with blossom end rot, at least in my garden.

Heirloom Amish paste from Seed Savers, indeterminate, produced large paste tomatoes which Mrs. Pete said were the best tasting in the garden that year. If I had a lot of room for indeterminate tomatoes they would be a good choice for canning and eating. They were not as productive as other paste varieties which you would expect with a Heirloom variety.

Good Determinate type Picus F1 (Hybrid Roma type paste, Stokes Seed) and Yaqui VFFNA Hybrid Tomato (Blocky large from Tomato Growers supply). Both grow to 36-48 inches and will need support because of the large number of fruit. I would rate the taste at perhaps 7 out of 10. (These are canning varieties) Amish paste would be 9 or 10. Both of these varieties handle heat well. (Note that Yaqui is large and blocky and it was difficult to push it whole into small lidded Ball jars.)

https://www.stokeseeds.com/ca/picus-vf-tswv-hybrid-plum-tomato-329d-group

https://tomatogrowers.com/products/yaqui-vffna-hybrid?_pos=1&_sid=20fa1bac5&_ss=r

Yes Maam! I pick at 20-30% color break. The rational for gardeners to pick early is to avoid insect and animal damage and perhaps something like sunscald. You balance that against some or possible loss of some sugar and flavor against harvesting undamaged fruit. (I think the loss is minimal.)

Sugar content and flavor.

A large amount of the sugar in a tomato is produced in the leaves and transported to the tomato. Some conversion of starch to sugar will occur after picking but picking early may reduce sugar content.

Flavor and color will continue to change after picking. Tomato growers pick when tomatoes are still green because of the handling and shipping characteristics. Less likely to be damaged when boxed and shipped. They then flood a storage area or shipping truck with ethylene to force artificial ripening so the tomatoes look ripe when displayed at the grocery store.

Gardeners have more control over when to pick. "Color Break" is the technical term for the development of skin coloring in a tomato. For gardeners a good rule is to pick only after you have 20 -30% of the tomato surface displaying color and allow the ripening to consider in a window or kitchen counter. The flavor will continue to develop. ****Note....Some varieties produce more sugar than others. (Yellow skinned tomatoes according to one source.) Annannas Noire (Black pineapple) is a very sweet variety that is not black but sort of green/red mottled color which is noticeably sweet, at least to me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tomato....Vegetable or Fruit? "In the everyday language of people, a tomato is a vegetable, while from the botanical point of view, it is a fruit. This topic was a question of debate during the 19th century at the Supreme Court in the USA, with the case of Nix vs. Hedden where the court judged the tomato as a vegetable due to the manner of its use [3]." It also discusses tomato coloration and sugar content and at least in their collection, it was yellow skinned varieties.

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