New Tomato Planting

We've gone ahead and planted our first transplants into the garden for the new "dry" season. The weather here in American Samoa has been horrendous, as usual, but horrific for our garden. Our extended growing season is moderated by the fact that we will often go weeks with minimal sunlight and tons and tons of water.

This is very bad for garden vegetables which are accustomed to more moderate weather. Mildew is a big problem. Our lettuce seedlings were utterly and totally destroyed. Our squash plants couldn't take it anymore and gave up the ghost. We haven't had any success with squash and I'm tempted to try and create a special bed for them. Cucumber plants all died when the sun refused to shine for three weeks. The last of them barely managed to climb 3 feet before being flattened by a rain storm.

Our beans had a good run, right up to the point when the sun stopped shining for almost four weeks. A few of the vines are still around, but they're barely alive and I don't expect them to last much longer.

But this post is about the tomatoes that are in the ground now. We're hoping the cherry tomatoes we're putting are going to do well. I have 5 plants in the garden, three on containers, and I'm considering what additional seeds to plant. I'm leaning toward the Epoch variety again for the rest of the garden. They did very well last year and since we're entering our dry season, I figure a nice drought resistant variety will be a good safety just in case.