Life of a Tomato: Week 3

It's now week three of our watch, and the Black Krim tomato is still progressing. Over the last few days, we've had quite a bit of rain which is very unusual here. But I can't see that it has influenced the tomato's growth in any way. Much like the first two weeks, it seems to have approximately doubled in size. If anything its growth has slowed some, but not to any great degree.

.

Life of a Tomato: Week 2

Our Black Krim tomato is now two weeks old and is as funky shaped as ever. Although the picture isn't the best--for some reason I can't get our camera to focus--you can get a pretty good idea of its size and shape. The tomato is about twice as big as it was last Friday. You can see that it is much larger than the one to the right in the picture. That tomato is similar in shape and size to all the others on the plant.

.

First San Marzano Tomato

Our San Marzano plant has produced its first little tomato. This plant has had a rough time of it, having had its stem broken on two occasions and almost wilting away from some sort of blight at another time. The new tomato may not have time to grow large and ripen, but I now feel like the plant's a success nonetheless.

.

Sunmaster Tomatoes

Some of our Sunmaster tomatoes are decent sized now. I wish they would hurry up and ripen! This is the only plant of the three holdovers from the Spring that I've been impressed with. The other two, a Black Prince and Lemon Boy, have done very poorly in the Fall. We've harvested one small tomato from the Black Prince, while the Lemon Boy hasn't even hinted at producing anything.

.

Life of a Tomato: Week 1

It's time for the first weekly update on our Black Krim tomato. As you can see, it's grown quite a bit since last Friday. I would guess that it has tripled or maybe even quadrupled in size. It is about twice as large as the plant's other tomatoes. Yet even beyond its larger size, this tomato looks different than the others. Where they are very round at this point, this one is shaped like a boat or the letter "u." It's turning out to be a pretty interesting tomato so far.

.

Okra Update

Our okra just isn't doing so well. It doesn't seem to enjoy the cool and windy weather we've had recently. The plants have almost stopped producing over the last week and, as you can see by the picture below, some of them are looking pretty bad.

.

It's Red

I think we can conclude that the ripened color of our ever-changing bell pepper is red! The thing is definitely getting ripe, as it's softer to the touch everywhere that it has reddened. That wasn't the case as it turned from green to purple to dark brown to almost black and back to green before this latest change. Finally!

.

Life of a Tomato

Over the coming weeks I will do a series of posts detailing the life of a single tomato. I think it will be interesting to observe its development from its earliest stage. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and allow us to follow it all the way through ripening and onto the plate. If not, it will still be fun to see how far along it gets. I've chosen a Black Krim as our star. It is the first of these to appear on the plant and is the product of a huge bloom (at least twice, maybe three times the size of the others). I don't know if that has any bearing on the size of the tomato produced, but we will see.

.

Very small tomato

Late Tomato Blooms

We're getting lots of blooms on our tomato plants now. Unfortunately I think it may be too late. The weather forecast is calling for low temperatures in 45 degree range (7 c) all week. That may be too cold for the plants to set tomatoes and, even if they do, I'm not sure that they can ripen before even colder weather arrives. That's one of the most challenging aspects of trying to grow vegetables in this climate. The optimal weather conditions in the Spring and Fall just don't last long enough. It seems always to be too hot or too cold. Anyhow, the good news is that we already have several tomatoes ripening on the vine.

.

Bell Peppers of Many Hues

Our bell peppers just can't seem to settle on a color. First, the things turned from green to purple. Then, they took on a sort of a dark brown color before returning to green. Now, as you can see by the picture below, a bit of red is beginning to show. If they turn completely (or even mostly) red, I'm going to to pick them!

.

about two weeks ago

.

same pepper this morning

November Tomatoes

I thought I'd start off November with a few pictures of what our tomato plants are producing. The Sunmaster that survived the Summer is doing the best by far. It has about 15 or so tomatoes growing and more starting. We're also getting tomatoes on the two Early Girl plants and the Hawaiian Tropic. The Black Prince, Black Krim, Ace 55, German Queen, and San Marzano all have blooms, but no tomatoes yet.

.

Sunmaster

more Sunmaster

Hawaiian Tropic

Early Girl