You Say To-May-Toe, I Say To-Mah-Toe

We haven't picked the first tomato yet, but will probably do so tomorrow.  We planted the tomatoes from seed in early January like we always do.  This year's tomatoes seem bigger, healthier than in previous years.  I'll tell you why.  Lime.  I limed the soil this year.  Getting the soil pH right enabled the plants to use all the nutrients in the soil that were previously locked up. 

We grow indeterminate heirloom tomatoes and this year, the plants are over 6 feet tall and still growing!  Absolutely covered in blooms.  Can you see them?

Here is a tomato that will be ready to pick pretty soon.  It is always nice to get early tomatoes.  As it warms up, all the pests like stink bugs show up and scar up the fruit.

Indeterminate tomatoes vine, whereas determinate tomatoes make a bush.  We have 62 tomato plants planted on a number of 15 foot long rows.

Here's the crazy thing.  It has been very dry this spring.  We haven't had much rain at all.  I have not watered the tomatoes since I put them in the ground.  How can that be?  Mulch!  I laid a thick layer of hay in the walkways and around the tomatoes and it has served as a barrier to keep moisture in the soil.  It also keeps weed pressure down.

Check these tomatoes out.  The seeds for these were given to me by a lady from church who saved them from some tomatoes she bought at Wal Mart.  Perhaps you've seen these?  They sell them on the vine, sort of like a cluster of grapes.

Here is the key to keeping indeterminate tomatoes tamed.  If you don't control them, they vine all over the place and your garden becomes unkempt and unruly.  The taming mechanism?  The Florida Weave trellising system.  All it requires are some t-posts and some baling twine.  As the tomatoes grow, every five inches we tie a new piece of twine and zig zag back and forth all the way down the row in and around the vines.  Then wrap tightly on the other t-post and come back on the opposite side of the vines and tie securely on the t-post you started on.

You can see a better illustration below of how the twine criss-crossed supports the vine.

I pull the twine very tight.  Sometimes too tight, and it scars up the vines.  But that's okay as long as the plant keeps thriving and putting on blooms and fruit.

Won't be much longer now...

Hopefully we'll be able to translate all these green tomatoes into red ripe ones we can enjoy.

We'll eat them raw, make pico de gallo, dry some, and can some.