As far as what variety are those pepper-shaped tomatoes? Wish I could say. Given to me by a neighbor, he’s been growing them for, perhaps, 40 years and got them from a farmers’ market or a neighbor. I saved a lot of seed this year and hope to offer trades or a give-away or some-such to distribute the variety to a wider area. I saw evidence of some cross-pollination with other varieties within the tomatoes I processed this year, but the pepper-shape and extreme meatiness expressed themselves in all the tomatoes.

Stay tuned, and I’ll post my scheme for sharing my unusual tomato seeds as soon as I figure out what the scheme will be.

Kerry: Thanks for sharing. At the very end of past seasons many years ago, I’d pick the green tomatoes and wrap them in newspapers. Some would ripen, some would rot… but I never liked the ripened ones. I came to believe that tomatoes maturing in very cool weather simply aren’t as good as hot weather tomatoes. When I learned the “pick-pink” approach, there was no mention of newspapers, and tomatoes heaped in big bowls have become the rule here.

I lose tomatoes two ways: 1. When I have more than I can keep up with, natural aging can take over and a tomato or two will melt down… which, of course, promotes other tomatoes in the bowl to melt down faster; I at least try to pick through the bowls every 2 or 3 days to remove the bad ones. 2. Late blight expresses itself on tomatoes I’ve harvested. Sometimes, part of the tomato is still usable when this happens, but especially with smaller tomatoes there’s no hope. In the past three weeks, I’ve thrown out a lot of tomatoes that expressed blight days after I picked them and put them in bowls to ripen. It sounds as though you’re having similar problems… so sorry; it has been a most frustrating year in the kitchen garden.

Kokkener: Thank you.

Meredith: Thanks for your comments. Yes, so many gardeners got smeared this year. It’s so sad, and so natural. I hope people stick with it anyway; this truly was an exceptionally bad year, and even a mildly good year in the garden can be exceptionally satisfying.

And yes, the best advice in all your article is what you said last: keep going. If we don’t keep trying — well, what else is there in life? Organic gardening had a steep learning curve for me. And we’ll always be learning in the garden

Enjoying your blog, as always!

I’ve also been experimenting with green tomatoes. We fried some for the first time last night. They were pretty good. Even my husband who is pretty much of a carnivore liked them.

I’ve found that the best way to ripen the green tomatoes is to wrap them in newspaper. A lot have rotted no matter what I do, but some have ripened and have been delicious.