Monday, June 07, 2010

Tomato Growth

My two plants are both big now and continue to add foliage.  Small insects are feasting and there are a lot of small holes in the leaves. It doesn't seem to be a big problem. I've picked off and squashed a few small green caterpillars. I'm sure this will become a bigger problem as the warm season progresses but seems controllable.

The Better Boy has just started setting fruit in numbers, maybe 12-15 small green fruit so far.

The Celebrity is another story. It has about 25 fruit between 1- 4 inches in diameter that are developing rapidly and maybe that many more smaller fruit. It is still actively blooming. I have no idea how much longer it will be before the first fruits are ripe but it seems like it will be awhile. This plant will have a lot of fruit on it before any are ready to eat. I wonder how many fruit a plant like this can sustain at one time? It doesn't seem to be a problem now, they all seem to be getting bigger daily.

If it seems like problem later I may pick some of the larger green fruit off for a gallon jar of refrigerator pickles. I love green tomato pickles.

So far, all I've done is water them. Pretty good deal, unless I experience some unforeseen tomato catastrophe soon.

2 comments:

Contrary said...

There's a new craze going around by which tomatoes (and others) are grown in buckets which have nice potted soil and the plants grow downwards through holes in the bottom of the buckets. The buckets are suspended a few feet off the ground.

It is growing in popularity in regions where the soil is kind of sandy like here in southeast Texas.

Steve Harkonnen said...

Try Sevin dust. Works wonders.