I picked two New Girl tomatoes today. I just made it under the wire as it was the last chance for me to pick a full-sized ripe tomato in the month of July. Its a very late year for tomatoes for me. My parents are having the same problem.

The newspaper reports that the mean Boston temperature has been 2 degrees below normal for the month of July. Also we’ve had 5.3 inches of rain compared with a normal of 3.0 inches for July. Eighteen of 31 days have had precipitation – almost 60%. It seems to me that there have been a lot cloudy days. Oh well. Good weather for beans and lettuce, but not tomatoes.

The New Girl is a new variety for me. I planted them next to some of my old faithful Early Girls. The New Girl is the winner for producing earlier this year. Not the best tasting tomato. I’m looking forward to a juicy Brandywine or Big Beef.

I dug up one of my garlic bulbs this afternoon. The lower leaves have turned brown and 4 or 5 upper ones are green. The bulb is still too small though. I’ll try again later to see if they are ready to harvest.

I sliced the small bulb and put it on my tomatoes. (I also added a big store bought tomato, avocado and some garden dill to make a nice topping for a bed of lettuce greens.) I did think that the garlic was excellent. A pungent fresh garlic flavor. Not sure how long I will actually wait to harvest more of these delicious bulbs. I’m glad I planted a lot!