First Tomato This Year

Our Winter Tomato Bears Fruit

 We harvested our first tomato from "Little Tomato That Could" this year. By this I mean the tomato plant that came up as a volunteer in one of my planters last fall. My husband, Don, refused to let me pull it up. He and I nurtured it all winter, and today it has borne us a big, edible-looking fruit. I was worried about a spot at the bottom of it turning into blossom end rot, but whatever the blemish is, it looks like it is just a little spot that can be trimmed off. Don loves tomatoes and will have the honor of the first bite. I hope it tastes good after such a long effort on all our parts!

The Little Tomato Last Fall

The close-up picture of the fruit at the top was taken with my new Canon PowerShot A1300 point-and-shoot digital camera. My beloved Nikon P60, the one I had toted all over Italy and all through my honeymoon, finally gave out on me. So far I am quite pleased with the new camera and the quality of the pictures it takes. It has a faster flash and takes more reliable pictures in dimly-lit rooms than my Nikon did. The older Nikon would take great pictures, but sometimes I had to fiddle a lot with the settings to get what I wanted. The new camera is a true point and shoot. Light, easy, and reliable.

The Little Tomato That Could, End of May

The Little Tomato's first fruit

It's been a month since I've updated my posts on the "Little Tomato That Could." This is a little plant that came up as a volunteer in one of my outdoor pots in November of 2011. Don Burke, my then-fiance, now husband, likes to rescue forlorn-looking creatures, and I've rarely seen a plant that looks as pathetic as that poor tomato did last fall. He stopped me from pulling it up. He nurtured it all fall and winter with reluctant help from me. The plant has gotten a little brittle, and the last time Don moved it, about half of it broke and fell off. Ever the optimist, Don took one of the broken vines and stuck it in some dirt in another pot. That part is still alive, but I'm not sure for how long.

The original "Little Tomato" has bounced back from the rough handling. It is even producing one early and large tomato, which is in that green-turning-yellow stage that tomatoes reach as they begin to ripen. I hope it turns red and that it avoids blossom end rot. The moisture content has been hard to manage in the pot that Don has been growing the plant in, especially with our summer weather so hot and dry. I don't have high hopes for it. I already see a little sunken area in the green tomato that looks like the beginning of the problem.

The Little Tomato That Could

The Little Tomato last fall

The Little Tomato That Could, End of April

The Little Tomato is starting to produce fruit. The plant that my husband rescued back in November and that we have nurtured through the winter is now producing flowers and tiny green tomatoes. We were wondering if it would bear fruit at all, since it's of uncertain and probably hybrid parentage. Don is one proud papa, and I don't blame him!

Little Tomato Today

Have I ever mentioned that Don eats tomatoes (apples, too) like nobody I've ever known? I hope these tomatoes mature into something wonderful to reward him for all his efforts.

It looks healthy, although it's not the handsomest tomato I've ever seen. It's certainly a far cry from the pathetic Fall seedling pictured below.

Little Tomato in November

The Little Tomato That Could, End of March

It is now the end of March, and here is how "The Little Tomato That Could" looked last weekend.

For those readers new to my blog, this tomato came up in our Southeastern Virginia garden last November, and we have been raising it as one of our "rescues" through the winter.

It seems to be recovering nicely from the burns it got from growing too close to the fluorescent bulb Don had put in its winter trash-can growing space. It really likes the outdoors and the sunshine it is getting on the garage side of our house. We put it up against a brick wall to give it a little extra shelter and heat at night, too. It is even trying to flower. We really didn't harden it off, but that doesn't seem to have hurt the tough little plant.

flower buds

I must admit I was pretty skeptical when Don declared last November he was going to try to save it. Now I am hoping this seedling of unknown heritage will produce some decent fruit. If so, we'll definitely have the earliest tomatoes in our neighborhood!

The weather has turned cool both last night and tonight, so we've brought the tomato inside for safekeeping. It will go back out tomorrow, though, when the high is supposed to be back up in the 70s and lows in the 60s at night.

more flower buds

The "Little Tomato That Could" Early March Update

The "Little Tomato That Could" is still growing in our bedroom and getting to be a good size. In fact, it's outgrowing the garbage can that it lives in. Like Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street it wants to pop the lid right up and peer out at the world. It has burned some of its leaves by getting too close to its fluorescent bulb light-source. Don needs to raise the bulb up again to give the tomato more room. I'm starting to think less about "if" it lives and thinking about "when" it is ready to harden off and move outdoors. Tomatoes can go outdoors around here towards the end of April, less than two months away.

I was planning to find some space for the tomato in our vegetable beds this summer, but Don wants to raise this particular tomato from a hanging basket. He is very protective of his project and wants to finish raising it himself. The squash Don rescued from our kitchen compost bin isn't doing as well. It is looking sickly, and I don't think it will make it until spring.

The "Little Tomato That Could" Again

I should preface my update on "The Little Tomato" with the fact that my fiance and I have three dogs and one cat, and all of them are rescues. This means that nobody else wanted them, and by taking them in, we probably saved their lives. The three dogs came from the SPCA of Northeastern North Carolina, and the cat from a total stranger on the Freecycle Network.

But my fiance has more sympathy for and patience with the underdog than even I do. This year I found a pathetic tomato plant that was sprouting in my fall garden. He wouldn't let me pull it up but has nurtured it. We've had unseasonably warm weather in Southeastern Virginia this year, and the plant was in a container along the North wall of the house, and we'd covered it with a cloche, but we finally had a cold snap about two weeks ago where he had to bring the tomato plant inside the house or lose it to a killing frost.

But I am a worrywart. And I knew that the tomato couldn't live in our dimly-lit living room. I watched the weather forecasts carefully, and when the days were supposed to be relatively warm and sunny, I'd been putting the tomato out on the front lawn to feed on the energy of the sun.

So, there we were, with me lugging the heavy planter onto the front lawn every day and my fiance lugging it back in each afternoon or evening as the temperatures started to drop. But the tomato was unhappy. It was exposed to winter winds, had insufficient light despite our efforts, and was looking increasingly poor.

So Don converted an old garbage can into a house for the tomato. He put a light in the lid and put the light on a timer. He put the tomato plant in its new home in a corner of our bedroom. Then he found a squash plant that had sprouted in the moist darkness of our worm composting-bin and decided to rescue THAT. So now we have a baby squash plant keeping the tomato company. And something else is coming up in the planter; Lord knows what! The plants get 14 hours of compact-fluorescent light a day. A regular plant light would be better, from what I've read, because it gives a broader spectrum of the lights plants need. The fluorescent tends to make plants grow leggy. But we'll have to risk it, because Don likes to conserve energy.

I'll post some pictures below of the tomato plant and its new companions. So far they are looking healthy, and the tomato has certainly turned quite green. The worrywart in me worries that the plants might need better air circulation.  And if Don finds any more plants he wants to rescue, he's going to have to build us a greenhouse!

The Little Tomato That Could

Yesterday we checked up on "The Little Tomato That Could" again. It seems not to know its seasons very well and started coming up in the fall. At my fiance's insistence, we have been nurturing the little thing now and then, when we think of it, to see how it will grow and how long it will live. While I cannot report that the tomato is going strong, I CAN report that the tomato is still going. The cloche has been a big help since the night temperatures here have occasionally dropped below freezing. The tomato is up against a wall, and we have a jar of water sitting next to it. Since it is in a sunny location, the thermal mass helps. I suspect it would be growing even better if we paid it better attention than we do. We did bury its stem deeper when it started to show its first true leaves to encourage growth in its root structure. Here are a couple of pictures, taken December 28, 2011.

Here are pictures of the cloche, from my November 16 post:

I should also report that our Corno di Toro pepper plant is still producing peppers, although the plant itself is looking quite yellow and very sorry for itself. If the peppers grow, by some miracle, into a ripened state, we will save some seeds, because this plant has been an amazing producer under extreme hot and cold conditions.

Update on January 6, 2012: I am sad to report that our pepper plant has succumbed to the hard frost we had earlier this week. We will have to pull it up and compost it. The "Little Tomato That Could" is still alive, because we brought it inside for a couple of days. I have put it back outside under its cloche to help it get enough sun, now that the weather has warmed back up, but will have to watch the weather reports carefully.

Weekend Chores, Recent Purchases, and Plans

I decided I want some fresh sage for our upcoming Thanksgiving feast, so Don dug up a sage plant at my old house to move to our new one. He dug up a little hazelnut shrub we'd like to try to save while we are at it. It was one of three we planted as part of a research project for the National Arbor Day Foundation. Two of these special hybrid shrubs died, but this one lived, although it hardly thrived in its old location. We hope it will fare better when we move it up here where the soil is a little better than at the old house. I'll attach a link that shows us originally planting the three shrubs. Personally, I think the compost may have been overdone/too fresh/part of the problem for the shrubs, but the hard-packed clay at my old location was NOT the place to plant them, according to materials I received with the shrubs. Visit Hazelnut Shrub Project for those who want to see how we planted them at the old location.

So far the tomato plant and pepper plant are still alive despite the first hard frost the night before last. The cloche is protecting the tomato. Don also put a water jar in the cloche to absorb the sun's rays and provide some thermal mass to keep the plant warm at night. The sunny location against the warm bricks at the side of the house seems to help, too.

I planted some peas a few weeks ago in an empty planter to provide some green manure and protect against erosion this winter. The peas are coming up vigorously. They are a cold-hardy pea and should make it all through the winter, by my guess. I didn't inoculate them, so I hope they will actually fix nitrogen in the planter. A type of bacteria has to be present in the soil for the pea plants to do their job of transferring nitrogen from the air to the soil.

I promised myself I would start gardening here at Don's slowly and methodically as we have time to build beds. But I caught a sale of 2011 seeds at 50% off at Seed Savers Exchange, and already I can see that we are going to have to start thinking about putting in several beds to keep up with all the gardening I want to do. I bought tomatillos, three kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of pepper plants, cucumbers, nasturtiums (which are edible), and I can't remember what else. I also saved seeds from last year's garden, and I want to plant onion sets, different kinds of garlic, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pole beans, zucchini, and possibly Hubbard squash as a trap crop. Whew! I may have to invest in one of those online garden planners to keep up with planning out what goes where, crop rotations, etc. Even if I grow just a select few of each kind of plant I want to grow, this is going to take up some space. And we want LOTS of tomatoes...

November 16, 2011 Container Garden

The Little Tomato-Plant That Could?

I should have mentioned where I live in my earlier post. Climate and gardening go together so location is important. I live in Southeastern Virginia. The property I am moving to has better soil than the hard-packed clay of my last home, but the trees block a lot of sunlight, so that will be a challenge. I also have NO vegetable beds here at all, just one small flower-bed planted with peonies and day-lillies.

The tomatoes I planted this past summer were hybrids. This gave them superior disease resistance but means they are not supposed to be able to reproduce, or at least not very well. One little tomato seed didn't get the message, because it is growing fairly vigorously along the South wall of our house in a container. I have no idea where this little volunteer came from, or why it decided to give life a try in November.

I don't have much hope for it, but my fiance refuses to give up on the little guy. We have put a cloche over the plant. A cloche is just a jar placed over the plant to protect it from the cold. We should be covering the tomato at night but pulling the cloche off during warm, sunny days to let it get some air, but both my fiance and I work, so the plant has been getting random attention at best. Don (my fiance) plans to cut the bottom off of a bigger jar to give the little plant room to grow if it so desires. We'll see what happens.