Thursday, August 13, 2009

Tomato Rescue

When I went out to the garden last night to pick some lettuce, I took a walk around as I always do to check on how things are progressing. I noticed that my pink tomato plant had the stem bent over with the weight of the single tomato that has set on it. The stem was in danger of breaking so I had to figure out a way to support the green tomato. This plant is staked, but the one next to it has a cage. I was reminded of Engineered Gardner and his slings for his melons. I decided I could create a sling for the green tomato and attach it to the cage and hope that the stem will recover. I thought about using scrap fabric, but decided that the mesh plastic of an onion bag would do the trick. I placed the tomato into the mesh and then used velcro tomato ties to attach the bag to the wire cage in three places. Hopefully I've saved the sole fruit from this plant.
The neighboring plant (with the cage) is a mystery heirloom. It has these three nice looking fruit set but no others.
My most prolific tomatoes seem to be the Sweet Chelsea Cherry (which is almost ripe) and my Green Zebra which has about 10. The roma tomatoes have about 6 or 8 fruit on them but I think I lost out by pruning too many suckers. My Yellow Brandywine has just two fruit. Here are the cherry tomatoes which should be ready to eat any day now.

4 comments:

Blossom said...

Great tomatoes. I especially love the ones in the last picture. A series of them.

miss m said...

Those onion bags are so practical. There's a fine example. Great thinking.
Your toms look wonderful.
I have a couple of green varieties too. How do you tell when a green tom is ripe ? lol. By tugging it I suppose ... If it's soft and comes easy off the vine, I guess it's ripe.

Emily said...

Someone noted on a previous post that the green zebra tomatoes turn a lighter yellowish green when ripe.
I'm sure they'll feel softer too.

miss m said...

I just saw that now on the July 29th post ! Your words exactly. Sorry ! lol. I'm glad to learn about the yellowing. I Will be looking out for that. Thx ! :)