Nice! I've been doing alot of tomato cooking and eating too, it was a heckuva year for them in my community garden where we grow as many plants as possible just so we can have a few. This year they were prolific and huge! My brandywines and cherokees average 1/2 to a full pound, some larger. Tomato soup, pasta with tomatoes, salsa, tomatoes in the freezer, heck I may dry some too.

Yes, today the whole fam picked some tomatoes for the sauce, and we used basil, herbs, and onion from the garden. DD chose and picked toms and helped chop on-yon. Yummy sauce.

BTW, dill near toms let go to flower seems to have kept the thrips at bay.

Dan

(Forgot to mention the bell peppers which, fortunately, are also available for the sauce and go hand-in-hand with the onions. New-to-me, Big Early bells had outstanding performance, considering. ;o)

Thrips?!! Those darn things a problem for tomatoes?

The flower bugs. . . I know that the tree fruit people have to be concerned about them some years because of blossom damage & lack of fruit set. My problem with thrips has always been in the cutting garden.

Dill would be easy except my volunteers always seem to follow the onions around. Could sow and, otherwise, the dill would be blooming very early.

Steve

Dill is a mixed blessing. There's a reason they call it "dill weed". Right now, mine is dropping seed. I go out with a gallon container and brush off seed for pickling, I can get a qt of seed in about 5 minutes. Not to mention that the ground is literally covered in seed.

Its kind of funny - every year, seeing the tiny young plants, I think - eh, let me leave these one or two here for pickling later in the year, do that in each row. And then in September, having to push dozens of the 4 foot high plants aside just to walk around.

Interesting. My dill never gets over 18" and most of the plants are about 15".

Dan