Beefsteak or Brandywine?

The first fully ripe beefsteak/brandywine has arrived from my planter box. I was so bummed that I only had 7 on the vine, and no new prospects on this plant. The dillema in variety is the fact that this was a volunteer that showed up in our carrot patch. It had to have arrived c/o the compost bin. To our surprise we found this little guy growing amogst our sweet carrots, and we noticed after a while he became stunted. What looked like an indeterminate vine began to stop growing and flowering. Before it did we had seven plump fruits starting their journey to ripeness. 

Not too long after my initial sadness over so little fruit I remembered I have a ba'jillion other tomatoes arriving soon of similar variety. A portion of my backyard looks like a tomato jungle. There are black krim climbing into the old german, and old german falling into the other beefsteak plants, and the beef steak is walled in by some volunteer tomatoes from last years compost that can either be chocolate cherry, or a tigerella or zebra tomato.  Also there in another portion of the garden we have Tommy Toe, Speckled Roman, and fir tree tomatoes. 

What an experience and great experiment this season has been so far. I have staked and staked until I just say you know what? Just let it happen!! As long as some semblance of weeding and slug control happens, I really have no strength for anything else.  I thank God for the watering just about every week so I don't have to be so weary from carrying the hose and buckets back and forth. Even with my meticulous planning I still ended up with a mish mosh pit of abundant plant life in the garden. Some of it became grasshopper and slug food, but that's just what happens during the garden journey. Next year I will be revamping the garden space itself by extending the borders, and building up the soil so that I don't have to bend so far for sowing, weeding, or harvesting. Already I am yearning for the day of the do over because the beginning is filled with so much wonder and excitement of what's to come. Before I get too far ahead of myself with plans for next year, I will finish this year out with my plans of preserving the rest of this years bounty. I will post a comment after we cut it to let you know exactly what we have here. I can tell you now it's going to be delicious.