16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Squirrels (I assume--I see them crossing our deck frequently) have been nibbling the tomatoes; this morning I found 5 small ones left on the welcome mat (to appease me?) and about a dozen scattered on the deck; one of the geranium blooms lopped off, some of my begonias. I have 3 large cherry tomato plants on my deck--will have to make a trip into town to buy some Repel!

There are 3 ways to deal with squirrels:

1) feed them
2) eat them
3) BEAT them

I like number (3); Just pick the maters at the slightest suggestion of color. And let them ripen inside. This is the most economical and ecological and humane method.
Live and Let Live !

Yeah animals are tough, and I'm lucky it's working out. As even with dogs, if hungry enough they will chance it.
I lost two dogs last year and started growing more fruit to fill the void in my heart, and the time I used to take care of them. And to keep my mind off our loss. I planted fruit trees and such, expanded the present garden a lot. Adding 3 new raised beds.. My wife was so missing our two dogs that died 3 days apart, I had to get another. Then I found myself having this new garden, and a new dog to take care of. I went from nothing to do, to no time to do nothing! But it worked out, he has been keeping the animals away and after taking one tomato, and not liking it, leaves them alone. He's really a great dog too. Again I feel blessed and lucky. Humbled by it all.

I could have got a tomato snatching, plum stealing lab like Linda has! Phew! That bullet missed me! Labs are great dogs. Jesse an Aussie has a lab friend, chocolate too! Ollie is his name, great dog! Oreo is a beagle and Jesse's friend too. His best friend, my daughter's dog, the same age (1 year) is a black pug Axel! They are so cute playing together! I often have to baby sit the pug. They are growing up together. Life is good.

This post was edited by Drew51 on Wed, Sep 11, 13 at 15:28

here they don't eat my tomatoes maybe because I feed them sunflowers seeds I have 5 squirrels in all and come every day and 2 chip monks

I was just trying to help.

If you can't get the tomatoes to ripen, you can eat them green. I'm no great fan of the flavor of green tomatoes, but if you add a good bit of hot pepper, green tomato salsa tastes fine to me, and tends to be less runny if you cook your salsa.

Even with green tomatoes, I prefer that they get fairly close to starting to ripen so they're not really very hard.

Good luck.

As for your other plant, see when/how folks in your community usually grow tomatoes. Timing can be very important, and can also be very different from one area to another. If you live in a mountainous area, it may even depend on how high up you are and which side of the mountain you are on.

I follow you Dave. I'll be hard pressed to get much at this point with them just flowering now an setting small fruit...but you never know when that first frost will hit.

thanks

How does Baby Cakes and Hooty taste?

I personally think that it is something of physiological in nature. I have had similar leaves on some of my tomato plants and they have been doing just fine.

Another quick followup...Neem is controlling the thrips and damage has stopped.

Gail, keep thinking about dehydrator for cherries, is the inexpensive ones are good enough to start with? I have been eyeing this square one for something like $60 or go better and splurge on Escalibur?

Hey Linda,
It's really up to you. I don't do a whole lot of dehydrating (just in the Fall), so, for me, a less expensive one is fine.

As I mentioned Amazon has some offered. I often rely on the customer's reviews to make a purchase.

Gail

Commercial growers refer to 4 color breaks:

Breaker 1, just a blush at the blossom end\
Breaker 2, some color about 1/3 up the fruit
breaker 3. color above about 1/2 way up the fruit
Breaker 4, close to fully ripe..

Then totally ripe, not a breaker stage.

Carolyn

I know color break is usually when color first develops on the blossom end. What about when the first color showing is on the shoulders or the side of the fruit, but there is no color on the blossom end? I always have some that this happens to late season, and I do again now. We have been getting night time lows in the mid 40s 2-3 times/week then back up to lows above 50 again. Does plant stress or cold do it? Would you still pick or wait for the blossom end to show color? I don't know why some ripen in a funky way, but right now I have one on the counter that is red 75% around the tomato but one side is stubbornly green.

Tom,

Hope you enjoyed those tomatoes, that plant did seem very happy in your garden :)

And there are actually 3 cacti in that picture, a huge Cereus peruvianus that has been blooming for me all summer since may, and yes, at night, although the flowers last well into mid day, a nyctocereus serpentinus, a skinny lanky cactus that has beautiful fragrant flowers that also bloom in summer at night, and a small cutting of a cereus peruvianus monstrose form at the bottom, similar flowering habit to the regular c. peruvianus but not big enough to bloom.

Those look awesome! I am hoping and praying those seeds become available for next year as I really really want to try them.

So are these plants that require darkness at night?

No it is a generic label for the Solanaceae family of plants and is reportedly derived from the fact that they contain an alkaloid poison brewed and used in ancient times to bring on the "shade of night" (aka death).

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: What Are Night-Shades?

Companies like Burpee, need to push HYBRIDs in order to survive and make money. There is little money in selling heirloom seeds/plants and there are a lot of little internet stores selling them. So I understand Burpee's strategy. Probably, there are a lot of paste tomatoes around that are even better. What is the advantage of size in a paste tomato ? Then there is the question of total production , per plant in pounds.

Larry, we had a particularly wet June and July here too and the tomato production has been awful. Tons of septoria and very little fruit. That said, I got a few nice-sized super sauce, but they weren't as big as the package said. Again, you're right, this year isn't really a fair trial since all of my tomatoes suffered. It was the worst tomato year I can remember. OTOH, the eggplant and peppers are thriving.

Yep. Milk as a fungicide is trending. I just find the numbers to not work out when compared to commercial ones. I may have to do it though, because I don't want the potassium bicarbonate I've been using to harm my freshly released lacewing larvae. Thanks Joe.

Kevin

My policy is to get rid of any yellow/ suspicious/ damaged leave, as soon as I spot them. Then, If I think it is caused by fungus , I will go ahead and spray or do whatever . Such leaves are just a source for additional infestation and do not make any contribution to the plant's life. Most soil born diseases are cause by : TOO MUCH moisture, TOO LITTLE air flow under and around the plant. So that is where pruning make sense (to me!) Some people believe in keeping the lower leaves(even the sick ones) as a source of shade. But I would rather use a mulch that will not remain soggy

Sharon, I see maybe one link that says too much sun, most speak of other environmental reasons for yellow shoulders. And if you look at the pictures at various links you'll see that it's mostly large beefsteak types that are susceptible to it.

And they aren't ones with wispy, droopy, dissected foliage.

Over the years I've seen it many times, not every season, and just ignore it b'c as several of the links say, it's really been impossible to ID a single cause.

I would suggest reading mainly those sites from Cornell and other places where the address has .edu in it.

Annoying when it happens? For sure. But again, in my experience it never affects ALL of the tomato varieties in the same season.

Carolyn

Hi Carolyn
I have read over the different links and considering the CDB was the ant that I had a lot of problems with BER it's not surprising. Like you mentioned its not affecting my other plants. I'm happy to report that after much worrying about Anna Russian it has produced some very beautiful and delicious fruit. And that is one wispy plant!

I grew, for the first time, 3 yellow/orange tomatoes this year: Limmony, Amana Orange and an oxheart. The oxheart will not be back again, due to lack of taste. I did enjoy the color variety. The AO was more productive than the Limmony; I will probably plant both again next year.

Every year is an experiment! And my "want to try" list is not getting shorter.

Aunt Gertie's Gold has lots of flavor. Highly recommended.

AGG is a large potato leaf type of tomato. Fruit are large. It is a late tomato, just getting into good production here in the past few days.

Jim

Leave them on as long as possible. You can use 1 or 2 as fried green tomatoes.
John A

Any that are almost ripe or even semi-ripe should have already been picked. Nothing is gained, and much can be lost, by leaving them on the vine once color break happens.

The fully green should remain on the vine as long as possible.

Dave