No tomatoes were harvested on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday we harvested 2 Sweet Olives, a Sweet 100 and a new tomato, SunSugar. My wife ate half of the tomato right off the vine and loved it; I liked it too.
On Saturday I began to do additional work on the tomatoes in between priming the crossbeams to our new patio cover. I went through about a dozen tomato plants in the back yard, doing three things: 1) Reestablish the “moat” around the plant to keep the water underneath the plant. 2) Trim any branches that were growing into the dirt and 3) Adding a thin wire around the bottom of the cages to dissuade the Manchester Terrier from poking in the plant. However, I started to have nerve issues running from my hip down to my foot (my wife says it's the sciatic nerve) and I had to stop. Fortunately by Sunday that problem went away.
On Friday, Yellow Perfection began to lean. In essence it became so top heavy, the weight of the branches out the top of the cage pulled the plant to the northeast. On Sunday I took two six foot stakes and hammered them in on opposite sides of the outside of the cages. Then I took tomato tape and began corralling the branches. Lastly, I tomato taped the two stakes together to provide additional support.
I continued with tomato taping other tomato plants. Taping the branches also means that training the plants will begin to fade away. In essence, I've run out of room to stuff branches inside the cage and/or they've grown out the top of the cage and these branches need corralling.
While taping, I noticed that in the back yard, Pierce's Pride has a tomato and in the front yard, Dr. Wyche's Yellow has a tomato.
My wife watered the back yard (including the tomato plants) on Sunday morning.
We visited our friends, Liz and Ricardo, and saw the seedlings that we planted a few weeks ago. They're doing great! They didn't use cages and now they have branch sprawl...but that's a good problem to have. It appears that every tomato plant they have in the ground has a tomato on it. Great job!
As a parting gift Liz gave us a Patio Princess tomato seedling. Another tomato plant to manage!
We were going to transplant Marz Round Green in to the front yard but my wife and I couldn't find the time.
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