Friday, May 22, 2009

Two More Plants With Tomatoes!


Two more tomato plants have their first tomatoes on them. In the front yard, Mong has a tomato. In the back yard, Aunt Ruby's German Green has its first tomato.

Yesterday I made a list of tomato plants not to be fertilized. My wife watered the front yard tomatoes, but did not have time to fertilize. This morning I got up early, did the tomato branch training work on all the plants as well as fertilized and watered the back yard tomato plants.

A Sweet Olive will be picked either later today or tomorrow. It's ready.


Thursday, May 21, 2009

Speckled Roman Has a Tomato!


And now the Speckled Roman in the front yard has tomatoes! This is the first plant with tomatoes grown from my wife's seedlings this year. Sadly, I'm sure this would have happened sooner had not been for the vandalism that occurred.


Also, I had an error in the last blog post. Gardener's Delight does not have a tomato on it, it's Turkish Striped Monastery with the tomato.

Another Sweet 100 is maturing.


Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Gardener's Delight Has A Tomato!


Gardener's Delight has a new tomato on it!

Meanwhile, I'm starting to get “tomato fingers” from moving the tomato branches around. I'll need to start wearing gloves soon. I've been “training” the plants in the morning and at night and there's been a lot of “training” going on.

For those not in SoCal, the temperature in the west San Fernando Valley has been rising to the mid 90's. This has caused most of our tomatoes to grow like mad – each branch growing up to an inch or two a day. A lot of growth and a lot of maneuvering.

A tomato on both Sweet Olive and Sweet 100 continue to mature.


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Red Currant and White Currant Have Tomatoes!


Red Currant and White Currant have new tomatoes!

We're especially proud of Red Currant. When purchased, it was yellow, tall, and very root bound. We removed all the tomato buds and planted deeply. It didn't look good for quite some time but now it's a very dark green and growing like mad. The only problem is that it seems to be growing out rather than up, but we'll take that issue over where this plant started.

White Currant was planted in a strawberry pot lined with a trash bag. It was an experiment by my wife and it has worked spectacularly. The plant is very happy.

A Sweet Olive is definitely maturing as well as a Sweet 100. We may have the first harvest by the end of the week.


Monday, May 18, 2009

Five New Plants With Tomatoes; Four More Planted


Geez, another busy weekend.

My wife did water all the tomatoes on Friday. And in potentially good news, our vandalism problem may start to fade away with the auctioning and sale of a house across the street. And in bad news, we decided that three tomato plants in the "koi pond" had stopped growing and are turning gray. We believe these may have also been damaged when Green Zebra, Black Zebra and Japanese Black Trifele were damaged in the “corner office”. Since then these three (Green Grape, Gardener's Delight and Nyagous) have simply stopped growing.

On Saturday we bought four tomato plants, three to replace the bad ones in the “koi pond” and an additional one for a space that opened up in the back yard. Also, we began to build a wire fence around the “koi pond” using a fence my wife purchased years ago. We put it up but it did not quite make it around the “koi pond”, so we purchased some additional wire fencing. The fence is in place to keep the stray cat from using it as his personal litter box, but it also prevents the plants from being kicked by others.

New tomatoes were spotted on Red Grape, Plum Tigris, Speckled Roman (back yard), Garden Peach (back yard) and Japanese Black Trifele. All five new tomatoes are in the back yard.

On Sunday I planted Early Annie in the area where Evan's Italian Plum was planted last year. Green Grape replaced the damaged Green Grape, Black Zebra replaced Gardener's Delight and Super Snow White replaced Nyagous. We finished the fence around the “koi pond” but it got too hot to start on the fence around the “corner office”.

Our friends Liz and Ricardo came over to help work on the patio cover. We spent most of the afternoon on it. But during the afternoon, Jaune Coeur de Pigeon was drooping so badly I began to wonder if it will make it. My wife landscaped the area around the plant and we watered it. It looked slightly better in the late evening.

It appears that a Sweet Olive tomato may be ripening!

I watered all the tomato plants this morning. The back yard plants look wonderful. The front yard plants are struggling against all the vandalism and late starts. It's no surprise that the five new tomatoes have shown up on the back yard plants.