Tomatoes & Reminiscing

The tomatoes are going ‘gangbusters’ at the moment and setting fruit beautifully. I have never quite decided on whether or not pruning them of laterals is worthwhile or not, so this year I am going to experiment and chart the outcome. I know I always feel like I am not making the most of the plant’s potential when I trim off those laterals with little flowers forming even though the so-called experts recommend doing so.

Because the San Marzano tomatoes are in a wicking bed, the staking system I usually use is not going to work because driving stakes into the bed will damage the plastic pond liner. I am going to use the system I use in the greenhouse and see how that goes. This is basically a wire hook with twine spooled around it like a bobbin. The end of the twine has a clip which is attached to the tomato base and the twine is wrapped around the stem as is grows and anchored into an overhead support.

Using some of the poles I retrieved from the tip last week I constructed a support to rest some PVC pipe on which is what the hooks will lock into. I drilled a small hole into the PVC pipe so hook would fit in neatly.

Tomato frame

I then proceeded to prune laterals from plants on one side of the bed before winding the twine support around the stem and on the other side of the bed I just wound twine around the whole plant and hooked it up.

Comparing methods-Plants on left have been pruned of laterals, those on right haven’t.

Reminiscing

We had a bit of a birthday celebration on Saturday, and with the imminent (hopefully, find out tomorrow if our sale becomes unconditional) sale of our house two of the 3 kids now 24 and 25 decided that they would revisit their childhood and climb the tree in the back yard, while at the same time get down a car tow rope that has been hanging there for about 12 years. We have done a lot of work over the years and it is very sad to be leaving such a lovely setting.

Cam retrieving rope