Like the economy, production is increasing!

If you've been reading my blog, you already know that I'd had a tough time with the Black Krim tomato plant I've been growing this season. The plant is generally fine and healthy, but fruit production has been next to nothing. I planted it back in late May and thus far, I've picked only ONE tomato from the plant. Well, the good news is that I've got 5 more tomatoes growing on it. And I've still got several flowers that may have fertilized but were stopped before committing to full tomato growth, possibly due to insufficient fertilizing of the soil.

What I've been doing now is applying Jobe's Tomato Vegetable and Food fertilizer every other watering, and then adding a high nitrogen rich fertilizer combined with Epsom salts on the alternate watering. We've been getting some pretty strong rainy days here and there which is the "regular" watering, that probably flushes out fertilizer. Container growing is definitely a different type of gardening and you have to rethink your ways, as nutrients do not stay in the soil as well as with in-ground soil. So... I may actually get a few decent tomatoes for the tail end of the season.

The Black Krim has now topped out at over 5' tall.  This is a BIG plant, for container growing. Unfortunately, that cluster of two tomatoes you see above is at the top end, so I definitely don't want to trim those off in trying to contain the height. But I will probably snip above it.  The only issue is that flowers are much more abundant at the top, rather than below. I wonder if cutting them prematurely will incite the plant to try growing them further down the plant.

The Black Krim seedling is doing fine and finally has its first tomato. It's a little peculiar looking with a slight misshapen appearance, but hopefully it'll grow out of that and look mostly normal. There is an abundance of flowers for its size and I'm trying to get them pollinated. I've let one sucker grow into a secondary production stem, and I might leave it to just 2-3 of them.

The Lemon Boy had a slight problem at one point, where the reservoir ran dry and then I thoroughly watered it after that (watering from above to moisten the soil and also filling the reservoir). As a result, some cracking appeared on a couple of fruits. The cracks healed and didn't look too bad when the tomatoes were small, but now that they've enlarged the cracks look more pronounced. At least they won't affect the taste!

Otherwise, it has a nice population of tomatoes continuing to grow that I expect will have a couple ready for picking in about another week or two. I did find one tomato that started turning color while being very small in size (comparable to a golf ball), which was tomato #4. I suspect the lack of fertilizing stunted the growth, or it was just random chance.

The stalled proto-tomato waited for the right time to grow

 As you can see above, this mature cluster has one tiny tomato nestled in the bunch. This was a flower that I thought was going to be aborted. However, it kept hanging on, the sepals staying mostly green and healthy. Since they are all connected to the same truss, I suspect the priority of nutrients were going to the other fruits. Once they achieved a size near maximum, the little runt finally got its due of nutrients and began to grow. It's definitely going to be lonely in a few weeks after the others are reaped.  ;-)

When Lemon Tomatoes Are Smilin'