Until this year that is, when I decided that the deck would be a great place to grow tomatoes! I planted up six large pots, each holding a different variety. I was quite pleased with the results.
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Tomato plants are not the most attractive of ornamentals, but when they're going strong they're not exactly ugly, at least to my eye.
Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Sweet Millions (cherry), Celebrity, and a couple of other ones that I don't remember exact names for, but won't grow again.
Since we had a very wet start to summer (and middle of summer for that matter), watering was not too much of a chore. Since running a hose up to the deck last year this has become almost "easy" anyways, but I didn't have to do it too much until later in the summer.
So no problems with deer or woodchucks, but...
...those darn raccoons! I ended up installing a motion-activated light, and that seemed to do the trick. That light showed us that it wasn't just raccoons that love tomatoes, but opossums do too apparently!
We got lots of delicious tomatoes from these plants until midsummer when I neglected to fertilize and the fruits started getting weird (looking ripe on the outside but pretty much green inside). I'll be more persistent next year -- I'm definitely doing this again next year!
(These photos were taken at the end of July)
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This was the first year in many that I didn't plant any tomatoes. Too busy with travel and the book. Next year though I'll be doing it again, I missed them.
ReplyDeleteTough to share but your plants look so vigourous there was enough to go around. Irritating when uninvited guests help themselves though.
ReplyDeleteIt is a sad view what racoons did with your tomatoes! Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I have to grow my plants on balcony because I live in a flat so here it is impossible for animals to harm plants. I don't have my own garden, even small, so I have to manage in different way. This year my mon got me 3 seedlings of cherry tomatoes and I also bought a few on my own. For the first time I tried black tomatoes which seeds I bought on https://gardenseedsmarket.com/tall-field-tomato-noire-de-crime.html and surprisingly..they very delicious. Have you ever grown them?
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