Ildi Died -- Cutworms or Windstorm?

In the late morning my wife called and told me that Ildi was dead. She noted it had the same damage that Saint Pierre had – weakness at the stem – and also in the same pot.

It's interesting to note that we had a bit of a windstorm two days before Saint Pierre died. Coincidence? We don't know. A likely scenario is that there's a cutworm in the soil that took out these two plants. To prevent further damage, I brought home a bunch of toothpicks during lunch hour. Later in the afternoon my wife strategically placed them into the soil around the remaining seedlings.

In the evening we ate the Stupice tomato. It was good, though perhaps a tad watery from being slightly overripe. My wife thought the skin was a little thick. The taste reminds us of Husky Cherry Red – simple tomato taste.

This morning I did a lot of “training”, a little over a half hour's worth of maneuvering branches. I could have done even more.

I noticed that Sweetie and Emerald Evergreen have tomatoes on them.

Ildi Planted; Michael Pollan Plant Has A Tomato On It

Last night I planted, watered and fertilized Ildi in the container that held Saint Pierre. I've adjusted the on line documents to reflect the new tomato seedling.

The other remaining seedling is called Big Pink and I don't know where that's going to go.

I did some more “training” and in doing so, noted that Michael Pollan has a tomato on it.

My wife watered the tomatoes in pots.

I helped out in the garden as well with my wife's irises and a few other things.

New Seedling Sprouted; I'm Speaking Tonight

On Sunday I fixed the “moats” around all the tomatoes in the front yard. Also, I did a little bit of “training”.

My wife watered the front yard tomatoes on Monday. I took a day off from tomato activities.

My wife informed me that one of the seeds planted in the pot that formerly held Saint Pierre has sprouted. We don't know which tomato seed that is and won't know until it shows fruit three months later.

I was going to “train” the tomato plants this morning but there's a light rain!

For those interested I'll be speaking tonight at the Los Angeles Visual FoxPro Users Group this evening. I hope to see you there!

Three More Plants With New Tomatoes; Saint Pierre Removed

I did a little bit of “training” in the evening. I noticed that Saint Pierre was wilting and gave it some water.

There were at least three more plants with new tomatoes on them: Red Currant(2) (Red Currant(1) had a tomato at the time of planting that wasn't removed), Sweet 100 and Volunteer(2). Speaking of Sweet 100, my wife moved the pot because it was getting too much sun in the original location.

We went out to dinner and came back to a little bit of light. I worked on the back yard tomato document. I entered tag information for four or five tomatoes before the sun set. I've gotten most of the containers in the back yard and one or two of the ones in the ground.

My wife looked at Saint Pierre and it didn't look any different than before. She thought that it might be attacked by cutworms and took out the plant. Turns out that the stem was bruised so much that it couldn't support the rest of the plant. We suspect that maybe wind gusts over the weekend and on Monday injured the plant beyond repair.

So my wife took it out and replaced it with tomato seeds from three different types. We're sorry to see Saint Pierre go but it just means another opportunity to grow plants from seed.

This morning I completed the front yard tomato document for 2010. It is 16 pages long.

More Plants With Tomatoes...

On Wednesday and Speckled Roman had tomatoes on them. Toni's Round, fertilized on evening I staked most of the back yard tomato plants. I fixed the cages where I found that had come apart. I noticed that Black Cherry and Speckled Roman had tomatoes on them. Toni's Round, fertilized on Tuesday, looked slightly better. After these and various other minor chores such as “training” the tomato plants I waited for the sun to get low and began adding tag information to the back yard tomato plant document. The darn thing is already up to 50 pages long.

My wife had moved Saint Pierre to be next to Hungarian Heart. Hungarian Heart is next to our house and flourishing – it's not getting too much sun. Saint Pierre was drying out too quickly and hopefully the move will correct that.

I didn't have too much time to do much Thursday evening. Three back yard tomato plants had new tomatoes on them – Ananas Noire, Principe Borghese and the first volunteer tomato plant in the back yard.

Later, my wife and I visited her parents. Their tomato plants are doing great!

20 In The Front Yard, 56 In The Back Yard

We had progress on a bunch of things relating to tomatoes this weekend.

On Friday I added stakes to all the front yard tomato plants and fixed a few cages. I added stakes to a few of the back yard tomato plants. I added fertilizer to the new plants as well to all of the container plants. I fixed the fence around the “koi pond”. I noticed that Nyagous has a growing tomato on it.

None of this took very long. My wife watered all the tomato plants in the ground and that took much longer than the little things I did.

Not as much happened Saturday as car trouble took care of most of the day.

I'm slowly “training” the tomato plants more and more as they grow. There's not much to do now and I don't have to do it every day but that day will come.

We've been planting so fast that I haven't been able to take stock of what's been planted in what location. This was handled next. I had started it on Saturday but didn't get very far. Sunday morning was a cloudier morning which made it much easier to enter the information onto a Net Book computer in outdoor lighting conditions.

On Sunday my wife and I, along with Liz and Ricardo and our “seed lady” went to the LA Garden Show. Liz and Ricardo bought about 7 or 8 tomato plants while we came away with a couple more.

At home we had four more tomato plants to plant. We planted Poma Amoris Minora Lutea in the “koi pond” (and dispatched a couple of large cutworms in the process), planted Hungarian Heart and Saint Pierre in a pot in the back yard. My wife transplanted White Cherry to the side of the container and planted Brown Berry with it. What that we believe we're done planting for 2010!

I dumped the remaining dirt back in the ground used for our soil testing sample. I forgot to mention that the soil test was finally, finally submitted late last week.

I updated our spreadsheet with the today's tomato plantings. We're managing 20 seedlings in the front yard and a whopping 56 in the back yard. Yikes!

On a side note, I was able to identify the plant with no tag that has a tomato on it – Yellow Perfection.

While I had our tomato listing intact it still took a couple of hours to prepare the spreadsheet for 2010. I believe that is fully ready to go.

Also, I've started the documentation of our 2010 tomatoes – getting the information off of the tags or labels on the tomatoes. A couple have already been lost but I'll do my best to capture as much information as possible.

This morning I noted that Violet Jasper has a growing tomato on it.