Saturday, July 21, 2012

Tall Tomatoes

My black cherry tomato plants seem to be doing ok. I've plucked a few ripe tomatoes so far and there are loads more on the way. I've been restricting the plants to a single central vine, pinching off all suckers and side shoots as the appear. I usually get lazy and miss a few and end up with wild bushy plants. But not this year. The plants have reached a height of 7'6". With the height of the container they are up over 8'6". But the tops don't get much sunlight so they are growing rather spindly up there. I should move the plant out from the wall closer to the edge of the balcony but I'm afraid that if it falls over it will crash into and damage my pigeon netting.


The tomatoes and peppers are going really well this season. The watermelon appears to be in trouble but hasn't aborted yet. And the celery was started a little late so it can be forgiven if it's a little tough and woody (I've also been lazy with watering it so my expectations for the celery are low). I was hesitate to plant too much this year because I didn't know if I'd be around much but now the calendar appears to be clear so maybe it's time to fill some of those idle container with some fall crops: beets, radish and lettuce. Not too late for some bush beans either.

3 comments:

jeannie said...

Wow! That is an impressively tall black cherry tomato plant. i am also growing these and they are getting tall and producing flowers. i haven't seen them setting fruit yet but that's okay if they set fruit later as we have plenty of tomatoes from other plants on the vine still green and some beginning to ripen.

Jeff said...

These are just starting to lick the ceiling above my balcony now. That's 10 feet. I just went out to pinch them off but I can't reach. They don't get as much sunlight up there so the last 2 feet of vine grows skinny with few leaves. But there are flowers up there. I can't imagine the plants setting fruit up that high though. Maybe it's time to get the shears and just snip the that last couple of feet.

Lawrence said...

Read about your aphid probs.... I just cured my indoor basil plant which was suffering from white little aphids all over it!! All I did was dunk the stem and leaves of the plant into a solution of Oak leaves and water. I did this once a day for 2 days. ( 99.99% cure after the first dunk !) (I had a bunch of oak leaves which I had previously torn up in to shreds and soaked overnight in a large bowl of water .) Also I changed the plants location to the bathroom (away from 2 other plants it was with ?not sure if relevant??!)