The 2026 Summer of 1000 Tomatoes

Somewhere around 2017, I started dreaming of someday harvesting 1000 tomatoes from my small urban container garden in a single season.
Since I started keeping track, my worst year was 4 tomatoes total from 10 plants, and my best prior to last year was 632.

Then came 2025, and while it was arguably a horrific year in many ways, it was The Summer of 1000 Tomatoes. 1061 before I stopped counting, to be precise. There were a few after that, mostly single cherry tomatoes that I just ate right from the plants while working in the yard.

So I don’t have a completely accurate count, but I did it. And I have high hopes for this year as well. As I type, in mid-May, 7 of the 19 varieties I’m growing this year already have fruit, and other things in the garden are happening as well.

Last year I didn’t harvest the first tomatoes until June 10. So anything could still happen at this point, but I choose to be hopeful that Summer 2026 will bring another 1000 tomatoes.

All of my plants were started from seed this year, either in my countertop hydroponic or my mom’s greenhouse. It’s the first year in my gardening life that I haven’t purchased any tomato plants, so that’s kind of exciting too.

In the area along the fence that I dubbed Tomato Row back when I thought it could hold all the tomato plants I would ever want to grow, we have

GREEN ZEBRA (my hydroponic)

A smallish slicer, green with yellow stripes when ripe, tastes like a tomato and a lime had a baby and is one of my favorite varieties.

PERON (mom’s greenhouse)

A sturdy thicker-skinned cooking & canning tomato.

WOOD’S FAMOUS BRIMMER (mom’s greenhouse)

An heirloom slicer that is rumored to make the world’s best BLTs. Already has fruit.

EMMY LOU (mom’s greenhouse)

A bright red, slightly firmer tomato that’s great for things like pico de gallo where you want nice firm chunks of tomato.

(maybe) SOLAR FLARE (???) (mom’s greenhouse)

There are two plants that, now that they have fruit, don’t seem to match what their tags say they are, and this is one of them. I think the two of them might have just gotten switched? So hopefully I still have one of each? Anyway, if I have a Solar Flare, it’s a very meaty & slightly sweet red slicer with yellow stripes. And whatever the plant is, it already has fruit.

UPDATE: This is a Solar Flare, the fruits are just very small which evidently can happen for a lot of reasons.

PAUL ROBESON (mom’s greenhouse)

Dark reddish-brown slicer with a slightly smoky flavor.

KELLOGG’S BREAKFAST (mom’s greenhouse)

This plant was pulled up when it got very tall and thin and reedy and showed absolutely no sign of producing anything.

MARMANGO (my hydroponic)

aka The Luxury Birthday Tomato. This is a new & exclusive variety from Johnny’s Seeds. It’s a large orange beefsteak tomato they claim has great flavor and improved shelf life. Because it’s brand new, the seeds are limited and kind of stupidly expensive, 15 seeds for $28. So that was my birthday present to myself.

In the section of the yard that until last year was home to the trash & recycle bins before I realized 1- I was wasting great sunlight and 2- even if I weren’t growing things, having trash in direct sunlight is not ideal, we have

LARGE BARRED BOAR (mom’s greenhouse)

A slightly flattened slicer, red-brown with green stripes, pretty reliable producer. Already has fruit.

BIG RAINBOW (mom’s greenhouse)

A huge sweet slicer with an orange & yellow exterior and mottled flesh, a suitable replacement for my all-time favorite Mr. Stripey that no one seems to have actual seeds for anymore. Bastards.

BRANDYWINE (mom’s greenhouse)

Literally the most popular heirloom vegetable on the planet. Not even just among heirloom tomatoes, ALL the vegetables. And I have yet to grow them. But here we are in 2026.

BLACK BRANDYWINE (mom’s greenhouse)

Large blackish-purple slicer with an earthy-sweet flavor. Another I’ve never grown before. I look forward to these.

And over on the other side of the yard, in the area I used to reserve for my cherry tomatoes but this year I have more room in because I’ve given up trying to grow squash because it hates me, we have

WOODSTOCK (my hydroponic)

This was a new variety from Johnny’s Seeds last year, and it is very close to edging out Mr. Stripey as my favorite variety. Large slicer with intense sweet-tart flavor, that when ripe is green with a slight pink tinge on the outside, with a psychedelic swirling green, pink, and yellow interior. These are as beautiful as they are delicious. I started two plants to make sure I get to eat plenty of them, and they already have fruit.

TASMANIAN CHOCOLATE (my hydroponic)

A smallish burgundy-brown slicer, sweeter flavor, particularly well-suited for container gardening. What you see here is a currently empty pot where these will live, they’re getting a slower start and still in the greenhouse, but we’re having a heatwave so they should be ready to plant in the next week or so.

TOMATILLOS (my hydroponic)

I know they’re technically not a tomato. But they look like tomatoes and they’re growing with the tomatoes and they’ll go in salsa with the tomatoes.

INDIGO KUMQUAT (my hydroponic)

Yellow-orange cherry tomatoes with purple tops, sweet-tart flavor, prolific producer. These already have a ton of fruit and will either be the first or second tomatoes I harvest this year.

SUN SUGAR (mom’s greenhouse)

These taste like a Rainier cherry and a tomato had a baby. I will never not love them. A lot of them never even make it into the house. I’m not even going to pretend to be a little bit sorry.

UPDATE: I have no idea what this plant is but it isn’t a Sun Sugar and that’s reeeally disappointing and there is a seed seller on Etsy who will be getting no future business from us because two of the seeds mom got from her are not the seeds advertised. So this may or may not be the year I don’t buy any tomato plants because if I can find an actual Sun Sugar plant this late in the season I will grab it.

CHADWICK CHERRY (mom’s greenhouse)

A bright red slightly larger cherry tomato, perfect for salads.

(not) SUN PEACH (but something sort of like it?) (mom’s greenhouse)

So this is the other mystery plant that, as soon as I saw fruits developing, I knew wasn’t what its tag said it was. So I suspect what happened is the tags for the Solar Flare and the Sun Peach got swapped. Because the “Solar Flare” has many small fruits forming on trusses, and this “Sun Peach” has individual fruits that are already about 2″ diameter and still green & growing.

UPDATE: So this is the other seed from that seller who is probably a perfectly nice person but should not be selling tomato seeds. This plant is producing fruits that are distinctly pink and slightly sweet, but are much larger than cherry tomatoes. They’re delicious but I genuinely have no idea what variety they are.

CHOCOLATE SPRINKLE (mom’s greenhouse)

Dark reddish-brown with subtle green stripes, as sweet as they are pretty. This was the last one I potted in 2025 because it needed more greenhouse time. It’s making up for that by being covered in rapidly ripening fruit and will probably be the first thing I harvest this year.

UPDATE JUNE 16: Something is eating many of my tomatoes juuust before they’re ready to pick and I’m a bit sad but also trying to be aware that I am but a part of this little ecosystem and clearly some creature is both hungry & thirsty so I will consider those tomatoes a gift to the greater good but also I’m totally including them in the count because I still grew them.

UPDATE: It’s birds. Birds are eating my tomatoes. I caught one in the act. Despite an entire wild blackberry bramble somehow growing in my front flower bed that I did not plant but am leaving for any wildlife that wants a snack, that’s apparently not good enough and they’re assaulting my tomatoes.

UPDATE JUNE 26: Mom found two packets of seeds and asked me to start them in the hydroponic since it was a bit late to start things in the greenhouse. So now I have 2 more varieties this year:

BREAD AND SALT

A Russian heirloom variety known for its large, meaty, oxheart-shaped fruits and rich, sweet flavor. The name originates from the traditional Slavic custom of offering bread and salt to treasured guests as a symbol of hospitality and fortune.

NORWOOD MEINERS

Named for the gardener & historian who first grew them when he thought he might be growing Beauty Kings which are very similar to Mr. Stripey, these are pretty much the cherry tomato version of Mr. Stripey, which makes me very happy because no one seems to have Mr. Stripey seeds anymore because, again, bastards.

THE COUNT

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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