The point is... it's super late for my garden to still be producing. I use the word "still" very loosely here. My tomato plants produced an average of 1-4 tomatoes each this summer. Not that awesome :( The only one that did decently well was the seed that came from Kroger cherry tomatoes. That one produced like crazy! I still can't figure it out.
Anyway, for awhile there (after each tomato plant had produced a tomato or two) they stopped cold. Nothing happened during the entire months of August and September. I kept reminding myself, "This is the weekend I'm ripping up all those spent tomato plants for the compost pile." But of course, being the procrastinator that I am, October came and the plants remained outside. I stopped watering... I stopped checking on them... I had given them up for lost.
But just look at what I found today!
Tomatoes! More than one of them :) And not just on the Kroger cherry-tomato plant (although it's going crazy.)
Check this one out! It's pretty big.
Cherry tomato plant.
And look at the bell peppers. They took awhile to take off... but now that they have, I bet I have more than a dozen out there. On three plants!
Pretty pretty. (Especially after a storm.)
Glad I didn't rip them up early!
2 comments:
Hey Carissa, I might have an idea about why the tomatoes weren't growing - in that third photo down, it looks like you have a sucker growing. If you pick off the suckers, the plant stops putting energy into growing itself and puts more energy into producing fruit (tomatoes). Suckers are when you have a stem coming off a main steam (like \/) and another one grows in between (like \|/ ). When you see the suckers growing out, you just pinch them off. Probably too late to put this to use now but it's something to remember - actually, with most plants, traumatizing them in some way will make them produce more, because they think they're in danger so they put more energy to producing fruit (with a fruit tree, you can hit the trunk with a hammer on a couple sides). Just one thing to keep in mind - picking suckers makes your hands smell like tomato plant!
BTW - you mentioned about one post only having one view. Just wanted to let you know, I read every post - but it's on my RSS feed so I don't have to remember to check it, it'll come to me automatically. I don't know if that's counted, but I thought I'd let you know!
Kate... I wish you were here to show me exactly how to identify a sucker because I'm sure I have them growing out the wazoo! I knew to keep the plants trimmed somewhat, but I didn't know to pinch off that certain formation. Thanks for the tip! I need them!
And as for that one post that had "one view"... I think I'm just getting used to the new blogger interface. I think it actually just had one view that day. Oops.
Post a Comment