Gardening babble
Thursday, July 17th, 2008 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsaikoToday I pruned the Cherokee purple tomato plant so it will hopefully produce more fruit. To be honest, I didn't realize I needed to prune it. I'm so use to growing determinate varieties (like my roma) that I didn't realize that the Cherokee purple was an indetermine variety that would benefit from pruning. Live and learn.
The roma is producing has about a dozen or so tomatoes on it right now. The first batch of four should be ready in another week or so. The others will ripen over the next month. I haven't lost a single fruit to blossom end rot, which is caused by calcium deficiency . Last year, I lost about half my crop to it. I managed this by finally finding tomato specific fertilizer which was actually tomato specific. You'd be amazed at the number of fertilizers promoted as being "for tomatoes" that have excessive amounts of nitrogen and little calcium. Never mind that calcium deficiency is one of the bigger problems with tomato plants.
I've got four tomatoes on the Cherokee purple. It's probably not going to produce as much fruit as the roma, but it'll produce fruit much longer than the roma. Maybe. Summers are shorter here in Indiana than in North Carolina. My roma was producing tomatoes up till the first frost last year. Then again, I also started it late. This year I started it early indoors. We'll see how that works out.
I'm going to record how much each plant produces in the lovely gardening diary![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
miome gave me. Then I can decide next year whether to grow both kinds again or stick to one.
I'm so looking forward to my first harvest!
The roma is producing has about a dozen or so tomatoes on it right now. The first batch of four should be ready in another week or so. The others will ripen over the next month. I haven't lost a single fruit to blossom end rot, which is caused by calcium deficiency . Last year, I lost about half my crop to it. I managed this by finally finding tomato specific fertilizer which was actually tomato specific. You'd be amazed at the number of fertilizers promoted as being "for tomatoes" that have excessive amounts of nitrogen and little calcium. Never mind that calcium deficiency is one of the bigger problems with tomato plants.
I've got four tomatoes on the Cherokee purple. It's probably not going to produce as much fruit as the roma, but it'll produce fruit much longer than the roma. Maybe. Summers are shorter here in Indiana than in North Carolina. My roma was producing tomatoes up till the first frost last year. Then again, I also started it late. This year I started it early indoors. We'll see how that works out.
I'm going to record how much each plant produces in the lovely gardening diary
miome gave me. Then I can decide next year whether to grow both kinds again or stick to one.I'm so looking forward to my first harvest!
