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 ight 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.

PAUL ROBESON (mom’s greenhouse)

Dark reddish-brown slicer with a slightly smoky flavor.

KELLOGG’S BREAKFAST (mom’s greenhouse)

Large sweet orange beefsteak that really are perfect for breakfast if you’d rather eat a tomato than have a glass of orange juice which I almost always would rather.

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.

CHADWICK CHERRY (mom’s greenhouse)

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

(maybe) SUN PEACH (but probably not???) (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.

Anyway, Sun Peach is a sweet pink cherry tomato that I hope I get to taste this year but only time will tell.

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.

THE COUNT

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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