Determinate or indeterminate, no way to know yet
Tuesday August 18th 2015, 11:00 pm
Filed under: Food,Garden,Wildlife

There was this volunteer tomato plant that showed up the last day of June, and I wish I’d taken a picture of it before sunset today–it’s bursting out the sides of my 36″ netting tent and covered in tiny yellow blossoms against the dark green leaves, very pretty. The first few clusters have grown up.

Cherry tomatoes.

I saw a glimpse of orange and lifted that cover to reach a bit blindly under the thicket of leaves for the first ripe ones–I’d never bothered to stake the thing in any way. I figured if one came right off in my hands it was ripe if not it wasn’t. That was a good one, and wait, here comes another, and another… I was surprised to get a range from ripe to greenish from that cluster but they’ll all be fully orange soon enough–clearly these don’t cling to the stem for dear life quite like my others.

They are the two on the left.  They’re larger than my Sungolds. I ate the ripest right there on the spot and noted that it had less flavor, less sweetness, was a lot more like store-boughts, but still, homegrown and they are (thank you vertical trampolines) squirrel- and pecking-free. Probably not the plant’s fault, come to think of it–you don’t get the sweetening effect of the sun when they’re hidden deep under there.

The other volunteer tomato, being up against the raised bed, it was like marking off a child’s growth against a doorjamb: I got to watch its height change. By the day. Four inches below, then four inches above the top of the planks across the weekend.

It’s starting to bloom too now. The first clusters of buds could be cherries…but there aren’t as many of them set together. The critters did get some of my heirlooms last year. Curious. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.


2 Comments so far
Leave a comment

Those look so good I can almost taste them!

Comment by Jody 08.19.15 @ 3:10 am

And today, at the farmers’ market, I decided to get heirloom tomatoes from the place where I get peaches and berries. They just looked so interestingly lovely. And irregular. I love that. And they will taste different, too.

Comment by Susan (sjanova) 08.19.15 @ 1:48 pm



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)