Back Yard Plants Looks Fabulous!

Today's harvest includes 11 Sweet Olive, 4 Red Grape, 3 Sweet 100, 3 Yellow Perfection (one picked by my wife yesterday but added to today's total), Red Currant, Patio and Beaverlodge Plum tomatoes.

Today was our highest harvest number so far, 24. That will be surpassed, trust me.

The front yard Paul Robeson plant has two tomatoes ripening. Cherokee Purple has another tomato ripening which when ripe, will force me to bring down our scale. This tomato looks to be in the 6 – 8 ounce range.

Last night I staked Black Cherry. This is another plant that has gone bananas. I also taped up a few more falling branches in the back yard.

But it was my wife doing most of the work yesterday. She watered the back yard tomato plants. Also, she redid a lot of the moats in the back yard, so much so that her elbows hurt last night and this morning. Also, she aerated the soil in most of the containers by turning the compacted dirt.

I know this will sound like a broken record...but the plants, especially the back yard plants look fabulous. Granted, size and thickness of the tomato plant isn't the payoff window. But a strong, thick tomato plant (if not fertilized with the wrong fertilizer) in SoCal can support lots and lots of growing tomatoes. That's what's occurring.

In checking the back yard tomato plants over the last couple years, the highest harvest number came last year with Salisaw Cafe at 315 tomatoes. I believe one of these back yard plants will obliterate that number.

My wife and I tried Italian Ice at dinner. Again, she liked it more than I did but I did like it.

As mentioned previously, I watered three plants in the back yard Monday night, one of them Jeff Davis. I noticed the water coming out of the moat. That was the inspiration for my wife to adjust most of the moats in the back yard. Both my wife and I agreed that Jeff Davis looked a bit better last night.

First we thought this plant was graying because it was getting too much water. So we cut back. Now we think that it perhaps wasn't getting enough water and we exacerbated the very problem we were trying to fix. With the “moat” fixed on this and other plants we hope this plant recovers and starts to grow again.