Bright Meadow Farms

 

These seed packets were waiting for me when we arrived home last night.  I recently read an article about Matina tomatoes.  I've been planting Bloody Butcher and Fourth of July and Independence Day salad tomatoes for the last 15 years.  They are all early, small tomatoes.  I rarely harvest any by the actual fourth of July, but usually have some by mid-July.  I suspected that they were all really the same variety, so I did a google search to look for comparisons.  Instead, I found this Matina variety that had rave reviews.  Since it is so late in the season, I was afraid I would not remember the name for next year, so I went ahead and ordered this year's seeds.  This is a new seed company for me.  Service was fantastic, I received the seeds two days after I ordered them.    

From their web site: 

"We don’t want to make crazy, bold proclamations after so short a time of getting to know a new variety (which, as you can tell from the intro, means we are going to anyway) but Matina might be our best all-around slicing tomato. It’s nice to be a small family company where we can write something like that and not break down into staff fistfights. It just checks all the boxes for us and exceptionally so: sets very early but with sustained harvests through fall, strong vigorous growth, beautifully organized and prolific trussing, perfect blemish-free and very uniform fruit, and a great flavor balance of sweet and acid. I reckon we harvested about 400+lbs of fruit from 30 field-grown plants in the summer of 2016! At 4-6 oz, the fruits are a little larger than Stupice,  slightly flattened, and just the flawless ideal of a tomato in appearance. One of Carolyn Male's “100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden” it hails from Germany, where our seed was originally sourced. This should be a nursery standard in the PNW.  (Crowned taste test winner at two Organic Seed Alliance trial events of early red slicers in 2017)

Indeterminate/Potato Leaf. 65-70 days. UO"

As far as the zuchini variety, it is also new to me. This year I planted Burpee's Best zuchini, Of the five hills I planted, two were excellent and healthy, the others did not do so well.  I picked about 20 zuchinis, then the plants just fizzled out, dried up and turned brown.   

This is the first year gardening in this garden, so I haven't added a lot of soil amendments yet.  I learned that the previous owner "salted" her asparagus patch to kill weeds, and I had planted the zuchini downhill from the asparagus, so perhaps that accounts for the poor performance.  From the seed company, Dark Star description: 

"(C. pepo) Market growers take note. Here is a zuke to rival all the corporate-owned hybrids currently hijacking the zucchini market. Bred by Bill Reynolds of Eel River Produce in Northern CA & John Navazio, Dark Star was selected in part for vigorous root growth to excel in dry farming conditions.  What struck us though is the quality of the fruit, by far the most refined OP zuke we’ve seen with very uniform long, dark green, angular fruit. While not as productive at its peak as some (though certainly no slouch), it sustained its productivity over a longer period than others we’ve grown. Open habit makes it easy to pick. Recommended for the home garden or by the acre. The best OP standard zuke on the market. (Update: during the freakish frosts in Baja in the winter of 2011 Dark Star was likely the only organic zucchini in grocery stores. Just a degree or two more cold hardiness kept it alive amidst a sea of frost killed neighboring fields)

50-55 days. SR"