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| my daily pick of cherry tomatoes |
Showing posts with label growing tomatoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label growing tomatoes. Show all posts
tomatoes in my garden
The roma tomatoes are a bit selfish in giving out fruit this season. The cherry tomatoes, on the other hand, couldn't be much happier in welcoming me to the garden—they're multiplying like rabbits.
die, you suckers!
I’ve had very few successes in growing tomatoes. Then and now, I have way too few fruit on my plants. I've got about four roma tomato plants but so far, I only have a handful of fruit.
After I’ve spoken with another backyard tomato grower over the weekend, I realized my own tomatoes’ problems: too much foliage, so not much fruit.
Crawling through Google’s motley advice on proper tomato pruning, I found that pruning yields more and larger fruits.
The expert tomato growers also say that it’s best to prune early, when the potential problem stems are just tinny weenie suckers. So as I go through my tomatoes, I found myself crying out, “Die, you suckers!” without the guilt and with all satisfaction, heh.
One advice I discovered says to keep tomatoes free of these side stems beneath the first fruit cluster but since I’ve pretty much left my tomatoes to their own devices, the profusion of foliage can’t be solved by simply pinching off the suckers.
This time, I had to do some major snipping. Where there were bigger (and leafy) side stems, I had to cut down to the first couple of leaves on the side stem. I hear it’s best so as to prevent trauma to the plant.
I hope all the pinching off and snipping didn’t traumatize my tomato plants though. I’ll have to look see tomorrow afternoon, after they’ve withstood the hot weather. Hope the pruning don’t get them sun-scalded.
After I’ve spoken with another backyard tomato grower over the weekend, I realized my own tomatoes’ problems: too much foliage, so not much fruit.
Crawling through Google’s motley advice on proper tomato pruning, I found that pruning yields more and larger fruits.
The expert tomato growers also say that it’s best to prune early, when the potential problem stems are just tinny weenie suckers. So as I go through my tomatoes, I found myself crying out, “Die, you suckers!” without the guilt and with all satisfaction, heh.
One advice I discovered says to keep tomatoes free of these side stems beneath the first fruit cluster but since I’ve pretty much left my tomatoes to their own devices, the profusion of foliage can’t be solved by simply pinching off the suckers.
This time, I had to do some major snipping. Where there were bigger (and leafy) side stems, I had to cut down to the first couple of leaves on the side stem. I hear it’s best so as to prevent trauma to the plant.
I hope all the pinching off and snipping didn’t traumatize my tomato plants though. I’ll have to look see tomorrow afternoon, after they’ve withstood the hot weather. Hope the pruning don’t get them sun-scalded.
finally, a roma tomato sighting!
A while back, I said that I forgot to label my tomatoes so in my garden I didn't know which is which. I've only ever seen the cherry tomatoes so I'm still to witness roma tomatoes in there.
Oh, did I forget to mention that I grew too many tomatoes from seeds this spring and gave the ones I didn't need to J, my kumpare?
(Kumpare is a Filipino word that refers to the father of your godchild--a generic name used for each other to signify the baptismal ties. Of course, the female counterpart is a kumare, so I'm J's kumare.)
So I don't know if I had romas or not.
Finally, I discovered I had one roma tomato plant in my vegetable garden!
The discovery was fueled when I was staking in supports for my growing tomatoes.
I hope there's not just the one, otherwise we'll have a glut of cherry tomatoes in our house and J would have a surfeit of roma tomatoes in his, heh.
Oh, did I forget to mention that I grew too many tomatoes from seeds this spring and gave the ones I didn't need to J, my kumpare?
(Kumpare is a Filipino word that refers to the father of your godchild--a generic name used for each other to signify the baptismal ties. Of course, the female counterpart is a kumare, so I'm J's kumare.)
So I don't know if I had romas or not.
Finally, I discovered I had one roma tomato plant in my vegetable garden!
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| my first roma tomato fruit for this spring's growing season |
The discovery was fueled when I was staking in supports for my growing tomatoes.
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| tomatoes finally staked. i took a long while to get round to this task so some of the tomatoes were already bending (see far right, bottom plant) |
I hope there's not just the one, otherwise we'll have a glut of cherry tomatoes in our house and J would have a surfeit of roma tomatoes in his, heh.
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