Replanted Marz Round Green!

We put Marz Round Green in the front yard yesterday evening. Apparently the plant immediately went into shock but after watering it was fine. I looked at it again this morning and all is well.

I'll be surprised if we see any tomatoes on this plant as it's so late in the season.

For those just joining in, Marz Round Green was planted in the back yard. It didn't grow. After a few weeks we replaced the plant with another and just for the heck of it we decided to put it in a pot as opposed to simply throwing it out. At that point I pretty much forgot about it.

Liz and Ricardo came over for the first of several visits to work on the patio frame. To make the frame, we had to move all the potted plants near the back of the house, including Marz Round Green. At that point this tomato plant was the same height as when it was originally planted in the ground. This pot was moved south and again forgotten...until one day, hey! Marz Round Green is growing! And it continued to grow.

It wouldn't surprise me for this plant to continue to grow and become full size but whether or not it produces tomatoes is another story. It'll probably be too hot for fruit to set on the branches. But we'll try!

Two years ago yesterday we harvested 52 tomatoes among seven plants. Coincidentally, last year we harvested 52 tomatoes among three plants (46 of them were tiny Red Currants). Yesterday we planted a tomato.

Speaking of tomatoes, Early Annie and the first Green Zebra have new tomatoes. We have only three plants missing tomatoes and one of them was planted yesterday. Things are looking good!

Yesterday our harvest consisted of 2 Sweet 100, 2 Yellow Perfection, Sweet Olive, Red Grape and SunSugar tomatoes, for a total of 7 tomatoes among 5 plants. That will give you an idea as to how far we lag behind the prior years and last year was a bad year.

We also picked about a four ounce Cherokee Purple but I think it wasn't quite ripe enough to be included in yesterday's totals. That tomato will be added to today's harvest.

It is my hope that we've traded June tomatoes for August tomatoes – but time will tell.

My wife finished watering the front yard.

I did more tomato taping in the “koi pond” this morning.

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.

Five More Tomatoes Harvested; Marz Round Green Is Growing Again!

Most of the weekend was dedicated to priming our patio cover frame.

I did finish paper mulching the front yard tomatoes on Saturday and I'm not too far away from completing the task in the back yard.

On Sunday my wife harvested three Sweet Olives and two Sweet 100s.

I added fertilizer to the back yard tomato container plants and later on my wife watered them.

Marz Round Green is growing again! In late April, we dug it up from the ground, moved it to a pot and essentially forgot about it. We dug it up because it simply wasn't growing in the ground where it was at.

When the patio frame was put up an couple weekends ago, all the pots were moved, including Marz Round Green. It was placed in an area that happened to have more sun and – surprise! – it has started to grow again! We'll have to search for a place to plant soon.

Los Angeles Times Tour; Four More Tomatoes Planted

Yesterday my wife, myself and my wife's cousin's daughter (? I'm bad at determining relationship chains) went on a tour of the Los Angeles Times.

The tour was donated as a silent auction item to the Larchmont Charter School last summer. My wife made the winning bid. We finally got around to making the visit.

On the way to the LA Times building we believe we saw Sandra Oh in a slightly dirty silver Prius on the 101 near Barham, heading south.

Our tour guide was a 14 year employee named Lisa Boone. She showed us around, but because of my near obsessive interest in newspapers what perhaps may have been a 20 minute tour extended to around the 90 minute range.

At one point in the tour there was the LA Times headline dealing with the Chatsworth Metrolink train accident last September. I had mentioned earlier that I was on the front page (“A1” in newspaperspeak) and that event had pushed the article back a couple of days.

Lisa: “What was it again?”

Me: “It was a tomato article.”

Lisa: (Light bulb goes on) “Oh, you're that crazy tomato guy!”

I'll never live it down.

Actually I had no problem at all with what she said, but it did give me something to needle her. Poor Lisa kept trying to climb out of her perceived faux-pas and I kept knocking her back. To my wife: “What was that first adjective she used when she realized it was me? Loopy?” Another time: “What adjective was it again? Goofy?” and so on. You get the algorithm. “... Googly-eyed?” “... Unstable?”

Actually what had happened is that Lisa had three ideas hit at once – first, that I was the guy in that article. The second needs further explanation. There was a story in the LA Times last year about making your own mulch (using hay, I believe). I kept the article for my wife and stated that we should try this during the winter. Winter came and went and we didn't try it, but we kept the article around somewhere. Apparently, the person who came up with the “make mulch on your driveway” wanted to get in touch with me and asking some people within the LA Times how to go about it (Clearly he doesn't know about this blog!). We said of course, no problem!

The third connection was that she had just tried the cracked-egg trick in a container. I interrupted her to say it's a whole egg, not cracked, and I don't do the egg trick in container plants (I'll repost this separately).

So all three ideas hit at once and to get to the other two I believed she simply said “crazy” as shorthand to get to the other two, more important ideas.

We were surprised by the test kitchen – a large kitchen area just like you would have at home, only larger – to test the recipes that go into the Food section of the paper. Also we were surprised by the executive floor – lights on, air conditioned...but no one there, no sign of life. Slightly spooky.

We met with Chris Erskine, a columnist (My wife really likes his columns) and a very sociable guy. On our way to lunch, hey, there's Mary MacVean, the columnist for the tomato article! My wife and I said hello to Mary, who was quite surprised. As I went over to give her a hug, Chris was asking us to hop on to the elevator. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to Mary or to explain why we were there. A literal “hug and run”.

So after we got home we planted four tomato seedlings, two in the front and two in the back. Black Krim and Babywine in the front yard, Black Krim in the “corner office” and Babywine in the “koi pond”. In the back yard we planted Turkish Striped Monastery, took out Marz Round Green and put it in a pot (Marz Round Green doesn't look good but not bad enough to toss yet) and replaced it with Plum Tigris.

I updated my on line tomato documents with these new tomatoes.

Later on we dropped the daughter off at Downtown Disney to meet with her parents and drove back, getting home around midnight. A long day.

So we had a net gain of three tomatoes in the ground, bringing us up to a total of 51 tomatoes, I believe.

7 More Plants In The Back Yard

Saturday morning, my wife and I planted seven tomato seedlings in the back yard. They were: Mexico (from our back of seedlings), Japanese Black Trifele (from our “seed lady”), Marz Round Green (again, from the “seed lady”), Black From Tula, Paul Robeson, Gardener's Delight and Green Grape.

Jeff Davis looks particularly strong and happy in the back yard.

We're now up to 48 planted seedlings (we thought we had 40 planted before Saturday, but it was actually 41) and the scary part is there's room for a few more. But we need the lemon tree pruned before more can go in. But my wife will be working the TomatoMania event in Beverly Hills next week and it wouldn't be a surprise for her to come back with a few more seedlings...

On Friday, my wife met up with one of the readers of this blog. She read the Tomato Seedlings post and asked if she could have some. Sure thing! After some back and forth, I got an address. Turns out my wife was visiting the "seed lady" that afternoon, and will only be a few minutes away. So I turned over the emails to my wife and let her handle it.

When we met in the evening, my wife couldn't stop raving about how nice this person was, how nice her garden was, how she gave her all sorts of books to read, especially English murder mysteries and I love English murder mysteries, how did she know?

I think she (we) made a new friend!

Sunday was spent in Murrieta celebrating Easter with relatives, so no tomato news to report. I do look at the front yard tomatoes a couple times a day and they all look solid – Jaune Coeur de Pigeon looking the best among our seedlings – with the exception of Speckled Roman, whose color isn't right.

I still need to stake them, however.