2009 Container Garden: Tomatoes

It's been a while since I've posted, but now Spring is nearing and I'm getting the itch to plant 2009's container garden. Honestly, I've already succumbed to temptation and put out two tomato plants--one each of the Patio and a Silvery Fir Tree varieties. It may be a little early, but I couldn't wait and the weather is nice.

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Silvery Fir Tree (Started from seed January 10)

Patio

In addition to the Patio and Silvery Fir Tree I'll soon be setting out seedlings of the following varieties: Black Krim, Black Prince, Red Siberian, Hawaiian Tropic, German Queen, San Marzano, Brown Berry, Green Grape, and Bicolor Cherry. For the Fall I plan on replacing the poorest performers with Stupice, Black Cherry, and Jubilee.

Tomato Seedlings Under the Grow Lamp

A New Year

I haven't posted in a while, as we've been really busy with holiday travel, work, and just life in general. In regard to the container gardening there really hasn't been that much going on--other than a freak Las Vegas snowstorm that wiped out everything! Yes, we returned from Norway to find all of the plants dead--killed by snow! Unfortunately that included the Black Krim that had been the topic of my weekly updates. At least I had cut a few green tomatoes before we left and placed them in paper bags to ripen while we were away. So, the fall tomato planting wasn't a total wash. Anyhow, I am now preparing to start some seeds indoors for the Spring. Hopefully I'll have these out in the containers by the last week of February or first week of March. Will keep you all posted.

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Okra Containers (foreground) and Tomato Plants (background) under Las Vegas Snow

Here are some pictures I took while hiking in Norway with Marianne's cousin Gaute and his very cool dog Mano. It's really a breathtakingly beautiful country.

Life of a Tomato: Week 5

Our Black Krim tomato is still growing, albeit slowly. You can't tell from the picture, but over the last week it has gotten a bit thicker from front to back. We're lucky that neither the tomato nor its plant are showing any sign of damage from the cold nights we've been having recently. I've been worried about this, as the low temperature plummeted to a chilly 33 degrees (0.6 c) a few nights ago. Anyhow, I wish the thing would hurry up and ripen!

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Ripening

We're finally seeing a few tomatoes beginning to ripen. Two of the Early Girl variety are pictured below. They are about twice the size of a golf ball.

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Life of a Tomato: Week 4

Our Black Krim tomato is now one month old. It's filled out a little more over the last week, but it's growth rate has definitely slowed. I suppose our recent cool nights are responsible for its slow down. Nightly lows have been in the mid to low forties (4.4 to 7.2 c) and have even dipped into the high thirties (3.3 to 3.8 c) once or twice.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Sunmaster

more Sunmaster

Hawaiian Tropic

Early Girl

Resilient Tomato Plant

A few weeks ago, several of our tomato plants experienced some form of blight. The plants wilted and dried out very quickly, beginning with their lower leaves and spreading upward. Some of the plants, such as a Black Krim and Ace 55, lost all of their foliage.

Although I disposed of the seemingly dead Black Krim plant, I decided to transplant the remaining Ace 55 "stem" from its container into our empty (and very small) vegetable bed. I figured I had nothing to lose by doing this, as every other plant that I had placed in the bed had either been devoured by unknown bugs or wilted away in a manner identical to the previously mentioned tomato plants.

Much to my surprise, the Ace plant has made a comeback after about two weeks. It's starting to put on leaves and is showing quite a bit of growth. It probably won't have time to put on any tomatoes before cold weather sets in, but I'll keep watering it just the same. I'm curious to see what it will do.

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rebounding Ace 55 plant

Little Tomatoes

Since the temperature has cooled off a bit, our Early Girl, Sunmaster, and Hawaiian Tropic plants have started putting on tomatoes. All of them are still very small, but they are rapidly growing larger.

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Early Girl

Sunmaster

Hawaiin Tropic

Tomato Plant Repair

Yesterday either the wind or its four-legged counterpart Tessa (it wasn't that windy) flattened our only surviving San Marzano tomato plant. In the process, the plant suffered some pretty severe damage to its main stem. As you can see in the picture below, it was creased at the point where it was bent over. There was also a split on the opposite side of the stem.

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In an effort to save the plant, we retied it securely to its stake, and taped up the damaged portion of the stem. We're hoping the stem will regrow where it was damaged, allowing the plant to survive. So far it looks promising. As of this morning, the leaves above the repair showed no signs of drooping or wilting.

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repairing the damaged plant

looking good so far

Black Prince Tomato

Yesterday, I picked our first ripe Black Prince tomato in months. Although it was small and the only one on the plant at the time, I'm hoping that it's a forerunner of many to come in the Fall. I'm also pleased that it came off of the plant that had been completely defoliated by hornworms back in early July.

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Vegetable Update

Just a late Summer/early Fall update today on our various container-grown vegetables. The strongest producer at present in the okra. The four original plants are going strong and still putting out a decent number of pods. Over the last week, the two plants that I started later in the Summer have also started bearing. The daily high temperatures are still a bit hot for the tomatoes, but I have one Black Prince on the vine and just picked two off of the Sunmaster plant. We're getting lots of blooms but most are still drying out and dropping. Some of the plants are also looking a bit stressed and wilted on their lower parts. I'm hoping that when the highs fall into the mid to lower 90s (33 to 34 c) the tomatoes will pick up. The hanging basket cucumber plant is doing well. It now has a second cucumber growing. As for peppers, it seems that we are going to have several red bell peppers and the Habanero and Tabasco have put on lots and lots of blooms this past week.

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Cucumber #2

First Black Prince tomato of the Fall

Lots of blooms but no tomatoes on this Hawaiian Tropic plant

Sickly Tomato Plant

This Black Krim tomato plant isn't doing well at all. It was growing fine until about a week ago. Then, one morning, I noticed that the top few leaves had wilted. Since then, it hasn't grown any taller, the remainder of the leaves have deteriorated, and the stem has developed a brown spiderweb pattern that began at the bottom and spread upward. I guess it's some sort of blight.

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Veggie Output

Vegetable production is picking up a bit. If the daily highs will just cool off a few more degrees then things should really get going. I'm hoping that there are many more pictures like these to come over the course of the Fall.

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This Sunmaster tomato should be ready soon.

The okra has really picked up its pace.

This is going to be my first cucumber.

I Think I Killed a Tomato Plant

I decided a few days ago that something had to be done about the Sunmaster tomato plant that I had planted back in June. The plant had just refused to thrive in its five gallon container. About half of its leaves were always brown and its main stem never grew beyond the thickness of a pencil. It had put on three tomatoes at one point, but they remained small and ultimately rotted rather than ripened. So I removed the plant from its pot, dug a nice hole in my very small in-ground plot (see World's Smallest Vegetable Bed) and replanted it. As you can see by the results, it wasn't one of my better ideas.

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