Tuesday, August 12, 2008

First Tomato!

Today I finally picked the first tomato. It's off one of the two paste tomato plants. There are two more that look like the will soon follow on these plants, but no where enough to make a sauce. Still no sign of ripening on my heirloom and beefsteak type plants.

I took advantage of a break from yesterday's rain and the time before this afternoon's thunderstorms to examine the plants. I found more tomato hornworm caterpillars and saw their damage. The small ones got squished, the larger one I tossed into the hedge. Another variety of caterpillar was also making a snack of my green plants. I took care of him. There were also a handful of slugs around near the lettuce plants.

I also noticed a fair amount of yellowing of my tomato leaves and this weird bulls-eye type rotting happening from the center of the leaves. I know it's probably due to all the rain we've had. Yesterday was rain pretty much all day and the forecast for the rest of the week includes showers or thunderstorms every day.


Also my buttercup squash is doing well but I don't know how I'll know when to pick it. Any ideas?

2 comments:

Marcia said...

Congratulations on the first tomato!

For the squash look back at the seed packet or seed catalog for the coloring of the mature squash. I would be sure to pick it before it drops off of its own accord.

Meredith said...

It's neat that you're growing heirloom tomatoes. I hope they fruit for you. I hadn't heard about heirloom veggies and livestock until I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. But now I have a new appreciation for them. Someday I'd love to have a garden like yours. It'll be awhile - so by then hopefully you'll have lots of wisdom to impart :)