Fall Tomatoes

The Fall Tomato season is upon us.

Chico III

I mentioned previously that I took a few cuttings of the Blueberries tomato plant  - I ended up with 3 (which makes it sound like I tried to start more than 3 - I didn't, I only ever had 3, so rooting hormone for the win, YAY!), I gave 2 of the rooted cuttings to coworkers who were so in love with the copious amounts of tomatoes I brought in from the plant that they begged me to do cuttings (they're actually the main reason why I decided to get the rooting hormone) (the coworkers, not the tomatoes).

I pulled out the original Blueberries tomato plant because is was leggy as all get out and planted the Blueberries cutting in its place.  I severely cut back the Purple Cherokee, I removed the Dwarf Arctic Rose (since it died), and trimmed back the Chico III and Japanese Black Trifele.  I did all this in late August, I think (I'll confirm with my garden journal).

The Purple Cherokee ended up with a huge ol' Tomato Horn Worm on it, and it plant looked so devastated that I figured it wasn't worth keeping, so I ended up removing it in late September or so.  The other plants were doing fine and started flowering.  And then they started fruiting.  I've noticed some tomatoes disappearing from the Blueberries and the Japanese Black Trifele (the low-hanging fruit if you will).  I think the Timmies are taking them (aka opossums).  The blueberries tomatoes I don't care so much about because there are a bunch of them and they're nowhere close to ripe - but I do care a little that they've made off with the 2 almost ripe Japanese black trifele tomatoes.  Oh well, c'est la vie...and I can always hope that the Timmies are eating the cockroaches which live in the Asiatic jasmine.

[aside: I call all opossums "Timmy."  I don't remember why I started doing that, but I think it had to do with the momma opossum that used to live in the yard, and after she disappeared, one of her babies stayed around so I started calling it Timmy.  And then I just started referring to all the other opossums as Timmy as well.  It's kinda like every black and white springer spaniel dog is a Zip-dog, or every black and white long-haired tuxedo cat is Figa-cat.  In any case, I've noticed a few different opossums around and my cat gets along with them so I'm claiming she's started a band called Ivy and the Timmies.]