Tomatoes

Even with the late start, the tomatoes are doing well.  They've reached about 6' tall and are doing well with the new staking hybrid system.  I've been using the mini sprayers on the drip line to keep the ground consistently moist while doing a slow deep watering about every 10 days.  I fed them with fish emulsion which I've been doing about once per month.  There are only about 8 tomatoes on the vines and I think this is because the very warm weather we had in the past few weeks. Tomatoes don't really like to set in temperatures over 90 degrees.  Hopefully, the mildness of this past week will make some more of those babies pop up.

I found a nasty horn worm chomping on my plants the other night.  I had seen the signs for a few days but was unable to find the culprit, so I snuck out with a flashlight around dusk and caught him red handed.  Of course I gleefully took out all of my aggression on him.  I realized I should have taking a picture of him before he became a green slimy blob and the after picture was a little too gross to post. So, you'll just have to take my word the he was punished appropriately.

(Horn Worm Damage)

(Horn Worm Damage - branches cleaned of leaves)

I bought this great book the other day called " Bug Off" by Jerry Baker.  It had great natural remedies for getting rid of every critter you can think of.  He has a recipe in the book for a citrus spray for any soft bodied caterpillars, slugs, snails etc.  He says to take citrus peels and boil them in hot water.  Let the solution sit 24 hours and remove the peels from the water. Spray the solution on the plants (not in directly sunlight of course).  I'm going to try this on a test section and see what happens.

On a lighter note the Kellogg's breakfast has a potential two pounder plus hiding in the lower half that is still growing.

(Kellogg's Breakfast)

The Pineapple also has a few nice size ones coming in.

                            (Pineapple)

This is my first time growing the Sioux, so I really don't know what to expect from this guy.  It's supposed to be very heat tolerant, so I'm hoping it will set more midsize tomatoes than the others, but it's been rather disappointing so far.

I'm going to do a little bit a research and see what I can do to help these guys a long.