Three New Plants With Tomatoes; Harvested Sweet Olive

This blog post is late simply because there's too much happening...

The weather has been temperate lately. I've been taking advantage of the temperate weather to do chores all around the house, tomato related or otherwise.

I've been working on preparing a patio cover for painting. I finished puttying and patching a several days ago and on Thursday night I finished sanding. Tonight I started puttying and patching the crossbeams that will be attached later.

I watered the front yard (it took nearly two hours) today and did some ironing during the Lakers playoff game.

I've been running our shredder ragged over the past couple of days. I added paper mulch to about a dozen tomatoes yesterday and today.

As mentioned in the last blog post, I noticed a tomato on Oaxacan Jewel in the early afternoon. This morning I noticed the front yard Garden Peach had a tomato on it. And this evening, while training the back yard tomato plants, German Orange Strawberry had a tomato.

I harvested a Sweet Olive in the evening.

Oaxacan Jewel Has A Tomato!

I had to be home after lunch to let the cleaning people in to do their work. During that 10 minutes, I was able to “train” the front yard tomato plants.

While training, I noticed that Oaxacan Jewel had a tomato!

Added Paper Mulch To Four Tomato Plants

Not much to report today.

I took a quick look and there's nothing to harvest.

I was running late, so I did no training this morning. I made some paper mulch last night as was able to put it on four of the newer tomato plants in the “koi pond”.

Most of yesterday evening was spent sanding our soon to be patio cover. I completed the sanding that could be done with our new sander, sanding every available surface with a medium grade sandpaper. I had already gone over the puttied holes with a coarse sandpaper.

There's a couple of sections that can't be reached by the new sander. We have a mouse sander that possibly could reach the rest. If the mouse sander doesn't work, then the rest needs to be done by hand. Then on to priming. Then on to painting. Then do the same for the rest of the beams to be added to the frame. This will take a while...

Five Plants With New Tomatoes!

No new tomatoes to harvest, but five new plants have tomatoes! In the front yard, Mexico and BabyWine have tomatoes. In the back yard, Paul Robeson, Amazon Chocolate and Cuor De Bue have tomatoes.

The slightly cooler weather we've had lately (highs in the mid to lower 80's for the past couple of days and on into the end of the week, versus low to mid 90's for the week before) has helped two of the injured plants. Jaune Coeur de Pigeon and Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe both look better and are growing again. The trouble, though, is that these plants lost three to four weeks recovering and will probably never be the same. Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe doesn't show any damage, just lost time. The old growth on Jaune Coeur de Pigeon has leaf curl and is slightly gray, while the new growth has blooms and the color is green without the gray. There is another tomato on the plant.

The current weather patterns will be good for generating new tomato buds.

Red Currant continues to amaze with it's fast, bushy growth. I know there's tomatoes on the vines but you can't see it from outside the plant.

The Manchester Terrier knocked off the biggest tomato growing in the back yard, the one on Black From Tula. It was about 1.5 inches long. Argh!

My wife partially watered the back yard tomatoes and will finish it today.

First Harvest!

We had our first harvest!

On Saturday we picked our first harvested tomato, Sweet 100. My wife and I each ate a half of the tomato and we both enjoyed it. On Sunday we picked a Sweet Olive, which was eaten my our father in law. He liked it. Today, we picked two more Sweet 100s and another Sweet Olive.

And I've noticed four new tomatoes. On Friday night, I noticed Black Krim had it's first tomato. Saturday afternoon, Tiger Paw displayed a tomato. On Sunday, the mighty Jeff Davis tomato plant had a tomato. And today, I noticed tomatoes on Snow White.

I fertilized most of the front yard tomato plants while my wife watered them.

I tried some new gloves for manipulating the tomato branches. They didn't work in that regard – I broke a branch on the fourth tomato plant I manipulated. I took them off, but then broke off two more before I was done.

I don't want to break branches, obviously, and every year I say I won't do such a thing, and every year it happens. It's sort of hard to describe why, but I'll try – as time goes on the branches can become ever so slightly less flexible and the room inside the cages becomes more crowded, as well as there's more and more branches to manipulate. Eventually...snap!