So it’s been about six weeks since my last tomato update, and boy do I have an update. I have tomatoes coming out my ears!
Tomato Harvest to Date
Two of the three tomato plants are thriving. The third has recently started to produce, but they’re pretty sorry looking tomatoes and I’m not sure I trust them. However, the other two plants are thriving. They’ve been producing about 7-8 tomatoes a week since my first harvest. I was worried my plants would have stopped producing by now due to heat, but we’re having an unusually cool summer, so my plants are going strong!
I created a garden journal by grabbing a sturdy spiral notebook out of the closet. I labeled each page with a plant. I record the planting date, and how much fruit I pick each time I pick it. I also record any issues with the plant, as well as the dates I fertilized it.
So far I’ve picked 41 tomatoes between the two plants. At one point, I had to give them away because I was going out of town and didn’t have time to eat them all.
Eggshells Make Great Fertilizer
Although I have an organic tomato fertilizer, I noticed that my tomatoes were getting blossom end rot. This usually indicates a lack of calcium. Since my soil is sandy, I need to fertilize more often. Rather than buy a special calcium fertilizer, I dried a bunch of eggshells and then ground them up. I’ve been adding lots of eggshells to my compost as well, so it should be very healthy once it’s ready.
Future Tomato Plans
If I’m going to make sauce from my tomatoes, I either need to plant more tomato plants or find a way to preserve them until I have enough ready. My plants are vined, so they produce over time rather than all at once. I can’t make sauce with 6-7 tomatoes, but I’m not sure if freezing them is a good idea. Anyone have experience with this?
So, next year, I have four options:
Plant more tomato plants. 3-4 healthy plants would give me more to work with.
Don’t vine them. If I let them be bushes, they’ll produce around the same time.
Vine one and bush one. The vine one can be for eating, and the bush can be for sauce.
Just enjoy fresh tomatoes as they come and make sauce from canned tomatoes. This is probably the easiest option since I plan to grow so many other vegetable next year. That would mean planting 1-2 plants max and vining them.
Is anyone else growing tomatoes? How is your garden growing?