Upside Down Tomato + about a month.

Ernie has a delicious little tomato center. Now that I have made friends with the " fury little kids" who knows how many tomotoes his plants will produce this year:) I'm thinking his crop will be slim. I hear they have the cutest little bunnies out there:) Going down to get the canner checked out and ready! Wait, no......I'm with Linda going to buy lots of freezer bags:) Thanks, E & L...you were fab!

Have you tomato pros ever heard or practiced this one? Leave the first tomato to ripen on the vine until it begins to get soft. It produces "gases" that trigger the rest of the tomatoes in the area to ripen more quickly. That would be hard! I want every precious tomato for myself.

In addition to a fabulous tomato house, eweed, it looks like you have an effective method to stake tomatoes. I'd be interested in the details...what kind of wires and/or string to use, how to attach it , is there a wire or something holing it all down at the bottom, how to get the tomatoes trained onto the string...and any other info necessary. I have had tomatoes dwarf the tiny little tomato cages and pull them over, so I got bigger 54 inch ones, but they are still not very effective. I'm looking for a better way. I got a lot of tomatoes last year, but many of them were lying on the ground because the tomato cage was useless.

KATY,
I have heard of doing that to get the strongest seeds, but not sure if its an old wives tale or not. I HAVE heard of putting a banana into a bag of tomatos to ripen THEM.

Best;
bluelytes

Blue my upside down tomatoe is not impressing me though it is setting tomatoes it is not very pretty. Me thinks the plant should have been different as you I think suggested. About the ripening yes a gas forms inside the tomatoe that triggers ripening but to get to that point it takes so much exposure to sun and heat measured in units so I read some where wonder what google would say if you tried tomatoe ripening.


Somermoone and Dh visited last night and had a quick tour she can come back anytime she took time to weed a while YES YES lol.Karen what a shame you did not get the tour in the bright sunshine you would not believe how many tomatoes have begun to turn color today.

Maury hillfarm I use post well dug in at each end of the row angled away or out from each other attached to each other with plain old Raspberry wire. I tension the wire with a wire tighteneer which is a tiny rude little winch sold at farm stores to raspberry farmers and electric fence buildersthese are cheap little things about 3 bucks lol maybe 5 by now. Next is plain old sisal berry tieing twine that reaches to the ground wher it hangs loose. Then I fasten tomatoe leaders to the twine with little plastic clips I purchase from Johnnies seeds. I like this system it is simple fast and effective abd no more broken branches trying to get them back into the cage when they grow the wrong way.

It is a very impressive site to say the least. DH WILL have a smaller version for me for my next year's tomatoes:)))
Earnie~
I'll get out there when the sun is out and those babies are red! We had a wonderful tour...I'm going to get me a sign..."Will Weed For Food" What do you think?
We ate the beets and greens tonight...yummmm. We went to my Auntie's for dinner and took them with. "Where did you say you got these?", they asked. "Oh, some guy I met over the internet", I replied.
Onions strongly smell yummy::))) Thanks again! I'm still crackin up over your young un' chasing the cat on the deck...up, over, around and through EVERYTHING! Cracked me up...........Any more cherries out there??:))

I've decided to try these on my tomatoes this year, and see what happens.
http://www.charleysgreenhouse.com/index.cfm?page=_productdetails&productid=1707&cid1=-99&cid2=-99&cid3=-99

LARI,
that looks very interesting, you'll hafta let us know how it works

best;
bluelytes

Karen lots of cherries lol no sight of the birds but when they arrive they will strip the trees in four hours.

Larisab they will help in early spring but you will need to stay close to home and remove them when the sun comes out or open them when you leave. You can do almost the same thing by wrapping a large tomatoe cage with visqueen or plastic shrink wrap and fold the top over at night with the top open in the day it will keep the cool wind off and elavate the temp inside. Way cheaper than Charlies model.

Blue yep an internal gas ripens a tomatoe from reading it is my understanding the formation of the gas is helped along by so many units of both sunshine and heat. Ever notice some green ones don;t ever ripen? I look at the bottom of the tomatoe to determine if it is mature enough to finish ripening. I look for a starlike light green colored radiating towards the top if it is not cleary there those go for fried tomatoes or turned to relish by a lady at work.

Mauryhill did I help you or confuse you? Ernie

EWEE,
Well, THAT explains NONE of my tomatos (out of 7 plants) that STAYED GREEN from mid April until end of Nov. I think its happening AGAIN, :((

Best;
bluelytes

Ernie, ya I'll have keep opening and closing them, but I can use them for other kinds of plants at different times of the year, so I figured it's worth trying them out. I wrapped a couple tomatoes in plastic last year, and it did seem to help. It was hard to be sure though; those were my first tomatoes in this microclimate, which definitely has a bit longer growing season than the other Puget Sound areas where I've gardened.

I can relate to the birds issue. The first year we had blueberries, I kept wondering how to tell for sure, when they were ripe. One Saturday morning we woke up to the sound of our local Stellar's jay yelling his head off; I guess he was angry about the 40 some thrushes in our yard. He kept swooping back and forth over them, and our cats were going just nuts at the windows. It was a circus!! Anyway, it looked like the thrushes were combing for insects and worms, but when they left about half an hour later, not a single blueberry was left. I guess they were ripe!

Eweed, your explanation of the tomato trellis was very clear. I am familiar with the wire as we have it on our raspberry trellis. I don't know exactly what the clips look like, as I havn't looked at any yet (will try to find on-line). I plan on trying your method next year. One more question though.... do you clip all the tomato branches to the strings as they grow? My plants seem to be very bushy. Two of them are already taking down their 54 inch "heavy duty" tomato cage.

Maury think of a circle of plastic about an inch in diameter with a hinge and a little locking tab. You open the tab and place the string beside the hinge and partialy close it this locks the clamp to the string then you just close the clamp around the branch just under a strong lateral branch. You can usually hook two or three branches to each string depending on the plant or you can just hang more strings. A little practice and you will love these little clips because they are removable should you want to relocate them for some reason they also work for flowers and helping trelesed cuks get started . Send me an addressed envelope and I will send you a few to play with. Ernie

This message was edited Jul 11, 2006 11:18 PM

Eweed, Thanks for your offer, and sorry I didn't reply sooner....got busy, then forgot what thread this was in. Anyway, I looked up the tomato clips at Johnnie's and ordered a packet of them for next year. thanks for the tips.

Update on the pruning vs. non-pruning idea:
Last month I got two, 1-gallon, 18" tall Sweet Million tomato plants--the only thing they still had multiples of...half-price, though :)

I put them both in large pots (5 gallon, I guess), and have been treating them the same, except I pruned one "textbook" style, and haven't pruned the other.
Unfortunately I can't get photos right now, darn. I'm going to have to buy a new memory card.

Anyway, it's too soon to draw any conclusions of course, but the two main differences I can report are:

1) the pruned plant has 9 fruits on it so far, while the unpruned plant has 26. None are ripe yet; this is just an early count.
2) the bottom leaves of the unpruned plant are dying off, while the entire pruned plant is healthy.

If number 2) is something that ends up shortening the season for the unpruned plant, then the implication is, my dad's got it right about pruning. 'course, two plants is hardly scientific proof of anything, and these got a late start, to boot, but hey, I'm having fun :D
I'm think I'll try it from the beginning next year, with a variety that gets larger fruits... maybe Brandywine.

Meanwhile, of the "lightly pruned" tomatoes out in my garden, the first Sungolds ripened last week, and I think they're actually tastier than last year's. I'll have Sweet Millions ready to eat by tomorrow, and Black Prince by the end of the week. Even the Brandywine and Stupice are pinking up nicely. I guess I'll stop complaining about that heat wave now! I'm not planning to put the "tents" on until end of August or so, depending entirely on the weather of course.

blue, you got tomatoes on that upside-down one yet? If so, post some pics!! I am also curious to see how the bucket is looking as the year progresses.

blue got a good sized red one and four green ones but to tell you the truth the ones in the ground are spanking this one lol Ernie

my plants are so big they'd fall out of the bucket, do you constantly prune them

888111 they are growing out of a 3 inch hole from the bottom of the bucket how could they fall out? Are yours growing from the bottom of the bucket? Look at the picture at the start of this thread that Bluelytes took. Also I put one up in early July you can scroll back up and see.Ernie

Blue ended up with six good sized not large but still a respectable size for slicing pretty red ones. The planted in the ground ones did better.

I think next year I will either put cherries in them but determinante plants for sure.

Have a really good harvest of Romas going on this year very clean and clear and very ripe. The heirlooms are not doing as well but a couple are ok The Russian heirloom Azogchia {sp} is really prolific and have had roughly 24 ripe ones so far. Ernie

Eweed,
I tried this also, and I got about 12 small to medium sized ones. but I agree re: will use determinate next time, and maybe a more prolific variety, and a BIGGER bucket, lol.

Speaking of tomatoes, good reading here. We grow only heirlooms now, find them not as fussy as hybrids. Our tomatoes in the buckets have done super great, just loaded with fruit. This is our third yr. doing so. Hubby hangs the buckets, and under them on the ground, he plants more tomatoes. That way if water runs out the bucket, it fertilizes the tomatoes under them. We gave enough fruit away to start a store. Plus eating, and all the sauces, etc. In one bucket is cherry tomatoes, another one has med. size. Last yr. in the ground he grew a 2 and 1/2 lb. pink brandywine. This yr. he grew a 3 lb. kentucky yellow beefsteak. So far, that is our favorite, nice flavor, no juice so great for sandwiches, and very few seeds. Sorry, no pictures, no camera but the throw away type. Hubby ran over my good camera with my wheelchair and at 70 yr. of age, we decided not to replace it. But we have done pictures with the one use camera, just for our own keeping tract, and the tomatoe was on a scale. Both last yr. and this yr., the big tomatoes just sat on top of a 3# coffee can, with overlap on it. Oh, the bucket tomatoes, I think every 2nd watering, he gives weak fertilizer water.
Darlene