World of Tomatoes

Like many scientist I tend to run my life like an experiment.  Last year, we decided to plant something like 36 different items in our garden just to see what would grow for us and what wouldn't.  But, this year, we honed in on the produce that was most successful and worked a more concentrated experiment.  What varieties of tomatoes would grow?  Which garden would be a better planting ground for them?

So far, we've learned some interesting things. 
1. Early Girl variety did not produce earlier than others.  In fact our first tomatoes came from Celebrity.
2. Celebrity really is a good variety for around here.  It produces alot and quickly.
3.  Don't plant too many cherry/grape/pears tomato varieties as they can overrun you (we 4 different plants for two people)
4. Our new garden has early blight but our established one doesn't really.  Plants are from the same nursery or seed company and were purchase at about the same time.  Haven't figure out an explanation for this yet.
5.  I don't have much luck with Heirloom varieties. To date we planted: Pineapple (no tomatoes), Black Krim (2 tomatoes), Cherokee Purple (1 Tomato), Old German (no tomatoes).  We even split them between pots and the garden as the mice had a field day last year with any heirlooms, but no real luck!
6. Tomatoes need more space than you think - I planted some of mine too close together.
7. Pull them when they are just starting to blush and let them turn red in the house.  I know people will argue about this with me, but if we don't we wouldn't get any tomatoes!  The mice are loving them and this is the only way for me to get any real production.  They're still better than what's int eh grocery store, so I'm willing to take the chance.

Here's an example of 3 days of production (with some eating involved):

 But, if I don't pull them quickly....

Of course, now the fun is I can't actually eat this many tomatoes in a given week, so we're finding fun ways to utilize them.  Look for some recipes soon.

Oh.  And the other tomatoes I'm growing are:
Celebrity
Early Girl
Jet Star
Yellow Pear
Sweet 100
Sweet Baby
Roma
Carnival
Rainbow Hybrid
Rutger's
Whopper