Harvested 2 Tomatoes; 4 More Plants With Tomatoes

I came home for lunch and after lunch, I checked out the tomato plants.

Jeff Davis isn't looking as it did last week. It's starting to turn grayish and some of the leaves are actually turning brown. We think that this plant is more sensitive to a lack of sun and also may be watered too much.

My wife picked 2 Sweet Olives. We also noted that some Patio and Beaverlodge Plum tomatoes are beginning to ripen.

Four plants have new tomatoes: White Zebra, the second Green Zebra, Big Yellow Zebra and Super Snow White all have tomatoes.

Watered Front Yard Tomatoes; Still Overcast

My wife watered the front yard tomato plants but otherwise it was a slow day, tomato wise.

Again, it was overcast for about 95% of the day. A little hazy morning sun and a little bit at sunset. That was it.

No tomatoes were harvested.

I adjusted the on line documents to reflect the new plant. Also, I always find little issues with the spreadsheet that need adjusting. I've spent hours taking care of this minor item and that minor item. Yesterday I added the row for the plant but then noticed 1) I can adjust the Days Planted calculation to be slightly more accurate 2) Got rid of the 31^st column calculations in the back yard tomato plant section for months with 30 days (I had fixed it for the front yard tomato plants) 3) The daily back yard total was off by one row and not counting any contributions by Early Annie, so cell by cell I changed the daily calculations from May – December 4) Changed the monthly tomato totals in the far right hand column to reflect 30 days instead of 31 for those 30 day months 5) Fixing random miscalculations.

The Green Grape planted last month is looking very good.

Planted Patio Princess

During the day my wife bought a pot and planted Patio Princess in the new pot. It was placed next to White Currant.

There was no harvest yesterday. When Sweet Olive goes from 0 to 2 to 10 to 16 to 0 tomatoes harvested, that's an indication the harvesting by my wife was done too aggressively. Then again, the Manchester Terrier didn't get any.

Yesterday was the second day of no sun all day.

When I looked at the back yard tomato plants in the evening, I thought some of them were turning a bit gray and getting a bit of a leaf curl. That was surprising to me, until I realized that the back yard tomatoes are more affected by the cloudy weather. Even on the partly sunny days, the sun has broken out in the afternoon. That still misses some of the back yard tomato plants.

This morning, the sun broke through a bit of the haze before clouding up again.

Tomato King!

I forgot to post this link by a reader in Texas. Enjoy!

June 5 Images

Image from the back yard, taken last Friday evening.

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Image from front yard “koi pond”, containing 14 tomato plants and a few eggplants.

20 Tomatoes Harvested; Three More Plants With Tomatoes

Yesterday evening my wife harvested 16 Sweet Olives, 3 Sweet 100 and a SunSugar tomato. The SunSugar tomato was promptly eaten (again).

In the morning I got up a bit early and did the three chores on three more back yard tomato plants. I'm running out of the tomato twine and I don't think I have enough.

Also, I did some tomato taping in the “koi pond”.

And three more tomato plants have tomatoes! In the front yard, Silvery Fir Tree and Black Zebra have growing tomatoes. In the back yard, Husky Cherry Red has at least two tomatoes growing on the vines.

We've had unusually mild weather in late May/early June. But yesterday was the first day in the west San Fernando Valley where the sun was behind thick clouds all day. Reminded me of early March weather. Not good for maturing tomato plants, but not that bad either, perhaps inert is the best word. Tomatoes need sun, just not too much sun.

Plants Without Growing Tomatoes

Here's the list of tomato plants without tomatoes on them, and the date they were planted.

Front Yard

Silvery Fir Tree – May 6, 2009

Green Grape – May 17, 2009

Black Zebra – May 17, 2009

Super Snow White – May 17, 2009

Back Yard

Early Annie – May 17, 2009

Husky Cherry Red – May 5, 2009

Green Zebra – May 5, 2009

White Zebra – May 5, 2009

Green Zebra – May 5, 2009

Big Yellow Zebra – May 3, 2009

The point here is that there are no “laggards” in the bunch. The remaining tomato plants were all planted in May, which is completely normal to lack growing tomatoes at such an early juncture.

This also means that we have 48 tomato plants with growing tomatoes on them. Wow!

12 Tomatoes Harvested; Backyard Mexico Has A Tomato

During lunch, my wife harvested 10 Sweet Olives, a Sweet 100 and a SunSugar tomato.

This morning and last evening, I continued the three chores on the back yard tomato plants. I got through about seven more. There's only a few left to do that have tomatoes on them, so hopefully we'll see less loss due to the Manchester Terrier. While I'm making progress, I'm nowhere near being done. I still have about eight to ten planted tomatoes, eight container plants and the whole front yard to address, though the container plants and the front yard tomatoes don't need the wire deterrent along the bottom of the cage.

The backyard Mexico tomato plant has a tomato on it!

Four More Tomatoes Harvested; Two Plants With New Tomatoes

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.