Sunday Bloody Tomato Sunday

Gloomy and gray weather today. The same kind of weather that has killed half of my tomatoes!

If this were a cooking blog, I’d be writing about how I burned the sauce. But it’s a gardening blog, so I’m going to write about how I lost my crops. Curse you humidity! Curse you heavy rains! Curse you freakishly tall and heavy tomatoes! Curse you vacation!

No. No curse on vacation.

While I was away, the blight did indeed set in. Hard. Before I left I could see that it was coming, but I was hoping that we’d get a magical break of hot, dry weather. We didn’t.

In fact, what we got was more humid. And we got lots of rain. My tomatoes were so tall that even while the blight was working away at their lower halves, gravity was tugging their upper halves down, down, and more down.

Collapsing plants are one thing. But blight? Yikes.

The thing with early blight is that you can treat it with copper. It even says that it’s organic. But good lord! The warning label pretty much reads like:

Do not breathe the mixture. Do not look at the mixture. Do not apply while you are within 75 feet of the mixture. The fact that you are holding the bottle and reading this warning label means that you have less than three hours to live. Kiss your family goodbye and let them know that you have successfully applied the mixture and that the blight will be gone. Probably. But actually, probably not. Anyway, thanks for buying!

Given that there is fruit setting on my plants now, it just didn’t seem like a good idea to put that stuff on. Hard decisions followed. After propping many of the plants up (you can re-stake a branch that has bent… tomatoes are tough and can survive that) I had to take a step back and decide to sacrifice the few for the many.

Or actually, sacrifice the half for the other half! Of my roughly 16 tomatoes, 8 are gone. Here’s the mass grave. (For the faint of heart.. look away!)

I am most distressed that the Mother Russia plants, both of them, are gone. I was truly looking forward to them. I still have two very good looking brandywines. I’ve got one solid Roma and one that is likely to die. I’ve got Purple Cherokee and Old German and Pink Caspian. I will still have a fair amount.

But it’s just not what I was hoping for!

Ah well… next year I’m afraid I’m going to have to let the garden soil rest without any tomatoes. This is the second year in a row of blight and it’s probably not going away.

For now, I will enjoy my beans, peppers, the idea of potatoes, and my few remaining, healthy, happy tomatoes.

What To Do With Blooming Tomatoes?

The tomatoes are just about 6 weeks in the garden and they are… large. Generally speaking, an indeterminate tomato doubles in size each week early in its cycle, then they pretty much keep growing until you or the frost tells them to stop. This is certainly the fastest I’ve seen my tomato plants become gargantuan.

Early on in their lives (in some cases before transplanting) they began blossoming. I did what most gardeners do at that point – begrudgingly plucked the flowers. I wanted the plants to become established, secure their roots, throw out some leaves to catch some rays. The inner workings of vegetable plants change once flowers emerge. Reproduction becomes more of the singular focus (my own flowers emerged at about age 13!) and that means the plant system begins giving itself over to the fruit.

So, I snipped away those early flowers. It’s still a bit early, but… I’ve got not just blossoms, but several tomatoes growing

Roma

The romas, a much earlier determinate variety, on the front side of the garden are fruiting like crazy. No worries there. The little cage I used for this plant is probably insufficient, but I’ll just stake up stray vines. This plant’s brother is in a slightly different spot and is much more insufficiently caged. It’s producing, but I’m not banking on its long-term survival.

For the indeterminates.. yikes. Big freaking plants. German Johnson is like a very tall guy right now. A few blossoms and one plum sized fruit that is growing each day. Of the five Brandywines I’ve got, they all look very healthy with just a few blossoms each. One of them is already sporting several tomatoes ranging from acorn sized to.. bigger acorn sized, to maybe a raquetball.

Brandywine

Purple Cherokee has a dusting of blossoms and several frutis. I’ve got two Mother Russia and one is healthier than the other and has a few fruits going. The Trophy plants (2) and the Early Girl (1) and the Caspian Pink (1) are doing okay, but no fruit.

Purple Cherokee

The cherry tomato plant is a freaking monster – it’s got clusters of fruit all over it.

Cherry

At this point – because I am in the midst of the newly-typical Connecticut summer (hot and very humid, humid at night, fog/mist in the morning) and the extra whammy of limited sun, I am worried about fungal/bacterial diseases. Wet plants that stay wet breed ick. For most of these plants, I’ll pull off a few of the leaves and stems at the bottom of the plants. I’ll wait to make the determination, but certainly the lowest leaves that I haven’t already pruned can go. This will improve air circulation. Ick usually starts at the bottom of the plant and I’d prefer to not give it anything to latch onto yet.

Angry Tomatoes Wait For Me To Leave

I’m pretty sure they saw the signs.

Lots of books…. hmmm. A list of booze to buy. I think we all see where this is going… yeah. Yep. Suitcases. And that crazy cloth carrier thing they put on top of the car. Yeah. This is it fellas! They’re going on vacation. Commence ripening!

We’re headed to New Hampshire for a week and the rascals in the garden know it! The tomatoes are thickening right before my eyes and I think there will be about 10 Cherokee Purples ripe by next Wednesday. And the bastard brandywines… 5 of them will probably be ready to go while we are 200 miles away.

I’ll teach them. I’m going to eat my own farm fresh veggies while away!

The tomatoes in New Hampshire are cuter anyway.

Tomato Mulching: Grass

Now that my tomatoes are settled in and comfy it’s time for some bedding!

A lot of people swear by red plastic for tomato mulch, but that just seems unfounded for me. Why red? Plastic mulching is probably fine – maintains a more even soil temperature than other mulch options, keeps weeds out just as well. But why red? Not sure I’m buying it!

I’d love to try a green manure mulch – something like hairy vetch planted with the tomatoes. But, this year it’s just back to something tried and true.

A fairly thick layer of grass clippings (3″ or so) works great. Dried or fresh. About the only thing to worry about is the huge nitrogen boost that grass will give, but since the decomposition of the clippings takes a while it probably won’t impact your plants. Too much nitrogen before fruiting can lead to a green leaf boost and reduce fruit yield. (Hitting the plants/soil with some seaweed powder or something is what you want to do to promote fruit.)

The nice thing about using grass is that you can just let it compost on top of the soil, turn it in for the next year.

Mulching of any kind does some good stuff:

1. Maintains a more even soil temperature. Applying mulch too early in the season can keep the soil temp too low, but once the temps warm up you can keep it in the sweetspot longer.
2. Prevents erosion. Keeps your soil where it should be.
3. Improves moisture retention.
4. Blocks weeds.

Give it a shot. Grass works great and is easy to find!

Tomato Controversy: Pruning – A Sucker Born Every Minute

Depending upon who you ask (and they’ll often tell you that it further depends upon what variety you are growing and how you are supporting them) tomatoes either don’t need or do need pruning.

Let’s get down to what I think works according to the general consensus of whatever science there is.

1. Pruning will reduce your total fruit yield, but what is yielded will be larger.
2. Pruning is not required, but it in many cases and in many zones will improve the plant’s odds of avoiding fungus invasions and other disease. Overcrowded plants can create little humidor environments with moist air stuck inside and limited air circulation! Keep in mind that removing too many suckers etc. can actually hurt your fruit. The leaves create little sun umbrellas that help eliminate sunscald. The more sun and heat that your zone gets, the better it is to leave more leaves.
3. Focus your real pruning on your indeterminate tomatoes. Smaller determinate (bush) tomatoes will have their burst yields reduced if you prune them. From time to time, I prune away smaller lower branches or suckers from determinate plants like Roma, but it’s just to keep things off of the soil. For semi determinate varieties like Celebrity, prune just a little – wait for flowers to emerge and prune off the suckers (we’ll define that in a second) below the first flower cluster, but not the sucker just below it – skip one in other words.
4. Wait until the plants have settled nicely and have grown a bit. For my bigger indeterminates I’ll wait until the first few suckers (seriously.. we’re going to define that in a second) have developed into branches/vines and my plant is filling in the cage or the stake.
5. I’m gonna get you sucka! Prune the suckers. Okay, so moving on… Alright, alright. The definition of suckers. You’ll see it defined something like – “the little shoots that form in the crotch (yes.. crotch) of a branch and main stem”. Run your finger up a tomato plant, starting at the base of the stem – the main vine. You’ll hit a branch soon. Look right where the main vine and branch join and you may see a sucker – a new branch shooting up at about a 45 degree angle. Left to its own devices, it will soon turn into another vine and will even grow fruit. Leave a few on to grow and “pinch” off the others. That’s pruning.

Experimentation is probably the key here. Some people swear by pruning others swear while pruning (like me.. man that’s a lot bending over) and others swear that pruning is a waste of time. See what works for you. Do it all the way! Do it half way (a little thing called “missouri” pruning where you only pinch off the tip of the sucker), but do something for goodness sake!

The downside of upside down

(I could write these titles all freaking day.)

So, following the cool experiment outlined by Cindy Haas of urbangardencasual, I have built my upside down tomato planter.  I used a cat litter bucket.  And that amuses me.  Especially because I left the label on the bucket and I’m expecting conversations like this one:

Person Visiting Me: Are those tomatoes upside down?

Me: Depends upon your perspective.

Person Visiting Me: In a cat litter bucket?

Me: Yes.  A cat litter bucket.  Would you like some salad?

Can’t wait for that.

In building the thing I did some good stuff and I did some stuff I would do differently.  First, I just used 6-foot tomato stakes for the end braces.  Two of them angled together and tied up with twine.  The cross piece is also a tomato steak, just a little shorter.  I got those all tied up together to form the thing that would hold the bucket.  Two mistakes here…

1. It’s not high enough.  Once hung, the bucket hangs leaving only about 4 feet or so.  The tomato is eventually going to reach earth and be very, very confused.

2. I attached the cross bar to the side braces.  Before I hung the bucket on it.  That’s right.  Before.  This was fundamentally stupid.  I then had to do some clever engineering with the bucket handle to get it on the cross piece.  Don’t be dumb like me.  Put the bucket on first before securing the cross piece.

I put a Bradley tomato in it.  At the same time I planted a Bradley in a container on my deck.  The one that is hanging survived the transplanting much better.  It’s a bit wilty here from various shocks, but it should perk up.  We’ll see how they both do in the long run. 

Give it a shot!  And make sure you stop by Cindy’s post to tell her what you are up to.