Sigh of Relief

When my Black Krim had gone for over two months with only one tomato and a string of blossom drops, I was not feeling very happy about the plant's prospects. I couldn't imagine what I was doing wrong, as my other tomato plant (the Lemon Boy) was doing just fine with bearing fruit at nearly half the height.

I had tried "spanking" my tomatoes and spraying apple juice on blossoms, but it just didn't seem to be working (the apple juice appeared to encourage blossom drop). Then I started flicking the sepals of open flowers, causing them to vibrate that way. I didn't know if it would work. I had to be patient and wait.

Well, about a week later I can breathe a momentary "sigh of relief." A number of blossoms on the Black Krim started to show possible signs of being pollinated. First, the blossoms weren't dropping after the petals began to wither. Second, the connecting stem to several flowers were thickening. Third, the sepals were actually growing longer, instead of closing up. And fourth, I could start to see a slight bulge in the base of the blossoms. This was all looking VERY good.

But of course, I didn't want to get ahead of myself. At the 4 week mark after the first tomato had appeared, another fruit started to grow. In my eagerness to get a better look at it, I pulled off the withering petals that covered it. There it was, a pale green little pearl. But two days later, it started to develop a brown spot on it that completely enveloped it within a few more days. The fruit died. I'm not sure exactly why this happened. It could have been my early exposure of the fruit by pulling the petals wasn't a good idea. Or, the plant just wasn't quite ready to support another fruit. So, whatever the reason, I decided never to pull the withered petals again!

I'll wait a couple of days before taking photos, because I'd rather show more substantial development. Meanwhile, we had a rather extensive rainy evening yesterday that extended overnight.  When I checked on my tomatoes this morning, the smaller Lemon Boy had started splitting! It wasn't quite ripe, but there was no choice to take it off the vine.  Alas, I didn't think to use my camera and ended up eating it without any visual evidence.  How did it taste?  Good!  A little "green", in that it could have used a few more days to ripen, but it was certainly better than store bought.  The larger Lemon Boy is still on the vine and hasn't split. It's still firm so I may leave it another day, maybe two. When I remove it I'll definitely document it and review the flavor experience.

Tomorrow: First eating!

First Tomatoes

Well, I've finally got some serious blushing going on with two tomatoes--one Black Krim and the other Lemon Boy.  I'm just a little disappointed that the first Black Krim has turned out so small.  It's actually smaller than a tennis ball!  So much for an 8-10oz beefsteak tomato. But I can't be too hard on it. This is my first attempt and my container size is probably limiting. I'm providing water and nutrients more frequently so my hope is that the subsequent tomatoes will be larger.

Early Black Krim

Black Krim -- a bit small!

Meanwhile, the Lemon Boy is nicely on target.  This variety is known for small to medium sized tomatoes, so  mine are looking about normal.  One is already bright yellow while its sister is a pale yellow with a cluster of green ones hanging behind.

Lemon Boy -- Bright Yellow!

Lemon Boy -- Nearly Ripe

Lemon Boy -- Green Cluster

I'm really curious to see how the cycle repeats. Presently there are about 6-8 flowers that I'm trying to get pollinated. There are a couple of buds but they're starting to look a little soft, like they may drop. It might just be one of those things where after harvesting a fruit, the plant will eventually sense the loss and divert energy to new blossoms and fruits.

Blossom Pollination

It's easy to put a tomato plant in some potting medium where it gets ample sun and just water it a couple of times per week. For the most part, you will get a plant that grows and produces leaves. But of course, the whole point of growing a tomato plant is to reap the reward of fruits. And this won't happen if the blossoms don't get pollinated.

First and foremost, you need to have blossoms and they won't appear if the plant is lacking essential nutrients. They will also drop even before blooming if the temperatures are too hot or too cold, or the plant is experiencing other stresses. So once you've got those needs taken care of... what's next?

Pollination!

The tomato is a huge genus, with over 7,500 different varieties! Why is it that we only hear about ~50 varieties at the most when it comes to independent or hobbyist growers?  From what I understand, there are 9 species of tomatoes, only 2 of which are actually edible (so people say 7,500 for the impression it makes, when it's actually not useful).  There is also a considerable gap between commercial and home-gardener cultivars; home cultivars are often bred for flavor to the exclusion of all other qualities, while commercial cultivars are bred for such factors as consistent size and shape, disease and pest resistance, suitability for mechanized picking and shipping, and ability to be picked before fully ripening. And sometimes it's just a matter of availability, where many varieties simply never leave their locale or perhaps have one or more qualities that aren't considered financially attractive enough for wide distribution. The Internet is certainly changing this quite a bit.

Of these many varieties, the heirloom and some hybrid varieties are open pollinators that can self-fertilize. This means that the pollen from a given flower can pollinate the ovary of the same flower. They are not "self pollinating", in that the flower cannot trigger this to happen.  Something externally needs to occur, such as a visit from an insect, rapid vibrations from the winds, or intentional shaking by the grower's hand.

So what exactly are the mechanisms for pollination?  A diagram may be useful here.

Diagram courtesy of BioGraphixMedia

I really like this diagram. Look at how the inside of the tomato echoes the ovary. The ovules become the seeds. This is why "full" pollination is important, as each grain of pollen essentially becomes a seed.  If a flower doesn't get enough pollen, either the fruit produced will be lopsided or the fruit may end up aborted altogether.

Here's another useful diagram with a little more annotation detail:

Diagram courtesy of GeoChemBio

Tomato blossoms go through several stages:
1. First formation -- you see a small growth that looks different from the beginnings of a leaf. It is a branchlet or truss that will produce buds.
2. Bud formation -- buds begin to appear from the truss, which can typically vary from 1 to 6.
3. Enlargement -- the bud continues to grow larger, until at least a half-inch or more.
4. Opening -- the bud opens up, the sepals separating, to partially expose the 5 petals.
5. Widening -- the sepals spread further, allowing the petal star formation to take shape.
6. Ready for fertilization -- the petals are wide open and the anther cone wrapped around the stigma is prominently displayed.
7. Nearing end of fertility -- the petals have opened even wider, looking like the flower is being blasted by air.
8. Fruit or Fall -- if the flower didn't pollinate, it will fall off. Otherwise, it remain and the stem will show signs of thickening. The petals and anther cone withers, while the sepals remain green.
9. Bearing fruit -- the center starts to swell, causing the withered petals push aside or fall off. You will see a small pale green pea, which is the start of a tomato.

Here are some photos taken of blooms from my plants:

Awaiting Fertilization

Petals Starting to Wither -- Pollinated?

Close-up of Anther Cone and Stigma

Aborted Flower

Success! Fertilized Flower Produces Fruit

Petals & Anther Shrivel and Peel Away, Revealing Fruit

I'm not a biologist or expert gardener, but I am fascinated by how nature's biology works especially when I'm actively involved with part of it. The tomato pollination/fertilization cycle is an interesting one. And the more you know about it, the more effective you can be at optimizing the production of fruit!  :-)

More tomatoes

At this point, the Lemon Boy has 4 very obvious tomatoes plus one about the size of a huge blueberry. It also looks like one or two other blossoms have fertilized, but I won't know for sure until another week. Overall, I'm rather satisfied with how well this plant is doing, especially since it didn't get started under ideal conditions (my biggest mistake being top soil instead of potting mix).

Lemon Boy - 10 weeks

Lemon Boy - 10 weeks

The Black Krim has gone quite a few weeks with just one tomato and many blossom drops. But finally... FINALLY there are signs that some of the blossoms may have fertilized. At the moment, it looks like 3 could become tomatoes, and possibly a 4th.  The existing tomato hasn't been increasing in size much and is starting to show some color change, so I think this size is pretty much it. It surprises me, because being the lone tomato for over 5 weeks, you'd think that it would enjoy more nutrients and grow larger. I'll have to read up on techniques to help encourage larger fruit growth, so that the others won't be as small. I strongly suspect it's an issue of not fertilizing enough.

Black Krim - 10 weeks

OK, so I browsed around the Internet and also checked out the TomatoVille forums, and I'm almost certain now that I've not been providing enough fertilizer to the plants. My fear of adding too much nitrogen caused me to cut back a little too much. I have a liquid fertilizer on hand that is "2-1-2", meant for orchids.  So that means 10-5-10, which is about in line with at least one tomato fertilizer I've seen referenced. I've already added some during the last watering and going forward I'll pick up some fertilizer meant specifically for tomato plants.

Fertilizer and Potting Medium

I so wish I'd known more about fertilizer and potting medium before I began this little tomato growing adventure this season. It turns out that this is the most critical aspect of tomato growing. It can make all the difference between a prolific producer and an anemic one, assuming you have good growing conditions.

What kind of fertilizer do you use?

With fertilizer there are two main approaches you can take: store-bought and home-made. Store bought can be very expensive, depending upon your selection, and not necessarily make a dramatic difference. Home-made can be extremely cheap but also a bit time consuming, with mixed results. A lot of this will be dependent upon your choice of potting medium and frequency of application.

In my first endeavor, I made a slight mistake from the beginning.  I put my tomatoes in "top soil" instead of "potting mix". It is said that traditional soil will make moisture control problematic and the dirt will end up packing down, making the tomato roots work much harder to spread out. The only good thing is that the top soil I chose was nutrient rich, providing a good foundation of fertilizer. I really didn't do much else in the way of fertilization either, other than a couple dozes of plant food every couple of weeks.  I'd heard about how tomatoes need lots of calcium, so I crushed up a bunch of eggshells I'd saved and spread it in the soil bed where I put the plants.  I also sprinkled a lot in the top of the soil, mixing it in with the expectation that it would break down over time and provide the plant calcium throughout the growing season.

Next time, I'm doing it a bit differently!

First and foremost, I think it's a really good idea to leverage natural fertilizer as much as possible. This is the way plants normally get their nutrients to begin with, from organic matter that has been broken down. Compost is ideal... however, it does not necessarily provide the best combination of nutrients. Plus, it's rather inconvenient to prepare compost in an apartment situation. You can certainly buy it... but you won't really know for certain how good it is until you try it--worth risking a whole growing season? I wouldn't try it.  There is something to be said for commercially produced fertilizer from respectable sources. If you search the Internet enough you will find plenty of testimonies about various fertilizers and can then make your choice based on that (such as "Fertilizer Program -- Containerized Plants"). The trick is finding the right amount for a reasonable price.

Potting Medium

I've read quite a bit about potting mediums and there are so many opinions, so many choices that it's mind boggling. The best thing is to find someone growing a plant in the way you'd be doing it (size, material, location/region) and abide by their choices if they are presenting impressively positive testimonies. If money wasn't an issue, I would get Premier Pro-Mix HP Mycorrhizae. It is a potting medium highly regarded by professional growers. The only trouble is that the smallest size is 2.2cu-ft and the cheapest price I've found is $30 at Lowes. It might be worth getting and using in combination with another medium to extend it enough for planting needs across a couple of seasons.

Fertilizer Nutrients

Tomato plants need about 16 different nutrients, with 4 of them being essential.  The 4 primary nutrients are nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, and calcium. You'll mostly see the first 3 referred together as N-P-K. I've read that the average ratio most plants require is 12:4:8. It just so happens that Miracle-Gro makes it, named as "All Purpose Liquid Plant Food" (analysis 12-4-8). You can get it quite cheaply through Amazon, a 32oz jug for just under $7. But is this recommended for tomatoes? Not really. From what I understand, their preferred nutrient ratio is a little different depending upon the growth stage. While nitrogen is essential for enabling absorption of other nutrients, too much can actually block absorption and incite the plant to produce more foliage rather than growing fruit.

For example:

Stage 1 --  First true leaves till plant is 14"-16" tall
N-100 ppm
P- 40 ppm
K-200 ppm

Stage 2 -- 14"-16" until 24" tall when first fruit set is 1/4" to 1/2" in diameter
N-130 ppm
P- 55 ppm
K-300 ppm

Stage 3 -- After fruit set till maturity
N-180 ppm
P- 65 ppm
K-400 ppm

So the highest ratio of nitrogen to potassium is in the first stage.  Then across the next two stages of the season, the amount of nitrogen is reduced.

But then you have commercial products like Scott's Miracle-Gro Tomato Plant Food providing an NPK ratio of 18-18-21 (or 6-6-7), while Tomato Tone provides 4-7-10 and others giving 10-15-10. What's really the right amount?

In my estimation, the availability of all essential nutrients is key. The issue is making sure that none of them are too scarce or too plentiful. The plant will draw upon what it needs. However, too much of certain nutrients can interfere with the uptake of other nutrients, causing toxicity or "fertilizer burn."  A little is better than none at all or too much. As long as some fertilization of the essential nutrients is provided, the plant should do well. Yet unless you find an optimal balance, you can't expect your tomato plant to be a prolific producer. Yes, it's easy to envy photos from other tomato growers showing massive tomatoes or copious clusters of them. But then, they have likely invested a significant amount of time finding their own optimal tomato growing techniques for their situation. My hope is to eventually find a good technique that I can reproduce year after year with very good tomato growing results--not necessarily the most optimal, but at least above average.

Stakes and Mulch Time

[NOTE: the content of this post is about 2 weeks old, posting retroactively]

One of the amazing things about a tomato plant is how it can exhibit slow or normal growth and then suddenly in a matter of a day or two show a tremendous growth spurt of several inches. I wish I had the time and knowledge to do time lapse photography, to see exactly what my plants are doing.  If you browse YouTube you can find a few time lapse tomato growing videos (tomato time lapse from seedlings; fruit growing). In a matter of just a couple of weeks, my plants showed a rather notable spurt of growth.  The Black Krim became so tall and wide that I had to jump ahead on installing a larger set of support stakes. It also had a number of suckers sprouting forth that I dispensed with.

Black Krim -- 9 weeks

There are several techniques one can use to support tomato plant growth. In the beginning a central stake is paramount. This is where the plant is small but growing large enough where the wind can blow it around by a few inches. A simple 12 inch or longer stick inserted close by the central stem and lashed together near the top is what I did for both plants at the 4 week mark. At 7 weeks, I took a hard plastic blind adjustment rod and inserted it for greater support of the faster growing Krim.  Now, it wasn't enough. I'd thought about buying a cage and installing it, but I didn't like the restrictive nature of an elaborate setup. Usually the cages are either boxy or cylindrical.

I went with good old fashioned eco-friendly bamboo. Bamboo is thin, light, and super strong. I drove one in the center, replacing the blind adjustment rod, and then another three in a triangular pattern.  Next, I took gardening tape and wrapped it around the stakes to provide some additional stability. It didn't really work that great, because the tape would either be tight or go slack depending upon how it was tied off. The good thing about the tape is that you can untie it and re-position as needed. However, as the plant gets a little bigger, I think I'll install some thin rigid sticks horizontally to provide better support,  at a couple of different levels.  The tape will be useful for lashing the stems to the stakes. I'd been using twist ties to do the lashing, but the hard cardboard and plastic isn't friendly to the skin of the plant, whereas the tape is soft and gentle.

Lemon Boy -- 9 weeks

I added a set of stakes for the Lemon Boy as well, but didn't need to add any tape yet as the plant wasn't unwieldy enough. I also covered the top soil with mulch.  This is an ambiguous "forest product" mulch, so I have no idea how much of it is wood chips, bark, and other organic matter. It has "brown coloring" in it... which wasn't detailed at all. Anyway, the mulch layer helps keep the soil moist (the top soil had been getting dried out and dusty, but the mulch totally cured that), avoids soil splash onto the plant, and foils potential weeds.

Lemon Boy -- 9 weeks

While the Lemon Boy was still noticeably shorter than the Black Krim, it has been flourishing in all other respects. A good coverage of leaves (just enough to shade blossoms and absorb the sun's rays without being too bushy), a handful of fruits, and no signs of disease. I'm hopeful that this plant will keep going strong like this for the rest of the season, providing the weather doesn't become uncomfortably hot.

Fear of the Heat

As we now head into July, the ambient daily temperature is going to go up and strings of 90+ degree days will be coming. Tomato plants don't like super hot weather. As I noted in my last post, blossom drop can start happening in the low 90's.  I thought that maybe on the hotter days, I should bring the plants indoors (which will be awkward as I try to get them through the window). I could pour off the water reservoirs (so I don't lose the nutrient rich water) and slide them on in... but I think I'll leave that as an extreme measure, if actual temperatures get above the mid 90's.

Meanwhile, because the Black Krim seems to be the more sensitive of the two plants, I put up a large white plastic bag punched through the stakes.  This would allow me to roll the bag down and protect the upper half of the plant, providing some much needed shade and perhaps lower the temperature by a few degrees. Blossom drop tends to be a reactionary thing over a couple of days (meaning, one or two major hot days and then blossoms fall a few days later), so I'm not sure if this practice is doing any help yet. Once the hotter part of the day has passed, the bag can be rolled up so that most of the plant is free of coverage except for the very top. It'll be interesting to see if this little technique works out. If it does, then I'll look into fashioning something a little more permanent and easier to manage.

Blossom drop results in no crop

At the 4 week mark, my seedlings had started to show signs of growth. The Black Krim already had a sizable tomato in the works and the Lemon Boy was starting to show signs of a few blossoms setting fruit despite its anemic size. Over the course of the weeks that followed, nature gave our area some serious thunderstorms accompanied by a deluge of rain. The sub irrigated pots performed well, allowing excess water to drain out and prevent the pots from causing too much moisture saturation of the soil.

Black Krim -- 7 weeks

Black Krim -- 7 weeks

The simple 12" stake was no longer cutting it, so I took a spare plastic blind adjustment rod and inserted it, providing a significant boost in rigidity for the main stem.

Black Krim -- 7 weeks

So the Black Krim demonstrated about a 20% growth increase in just a couple of weeks. Although a number of blossoms appeared, many fell off prematurely. Temperatures had been getting into the high 80's/low 90's, which I've read is about the borderline on blossom drop. This is where the flower bud is aborted before it blossoms. It just turns brown and then a light touch will easily dislodge it from the stem. In other cases, a bud would end up blossoming but the flower would fail to set and eventually fall off. Given how the Krim was twice the size of the Lemon Boy, I was stumped as to what the plant wasn't happy about. They were both given the same growing conditions. Would this plant end up producing only one fruit for the whole season? The trick is keeping a watchful eye for notable issues (like leaf issues--curling, browning, spotting; very sparse blossom buds; stunted growth or too much foliage) and just add a dose of patience.

Lemon Boy -- 7 weeks

Lemon Boy -- 7 weeks

On the other hand, the Lemon Boy had two tomatoes that continued to swell in size, while a couple more blossoms were fertilized and began to show signs of growing fruit.

Lemon Boy -- Tomato Size Comparison

The largest tomato had already surpassed the size of a ping pong ball. Given the size of the plant, I found it a bit peculiar, especially when looking at many photos of early tomato plants. The Lemon Boy was certainly enjoying the conditions I was providing when compared to the Black Krim.

Lemon Boy -- Early Fruit

Here you can see the relative sizes of the older and newer fruit. It's just a coincidence that they're two pairs.

Lemon Boy -- New Fruit