Rat Wars - part 3 - What am I defending?

Hornworm

Oh how I hate these. Look at this huge bugger I found gobbling down one of my baby tomatoes. I put it on the garden clippers for size context. I suppose sacrifices of some must be made for the good of the whole but my goodness he's a fatty. I hope there aren't little hornworms running around that I haven't caught yet. These buggers are the ones that put the little and sometimes BIG holes in your tomatoes. If you listen closely in the quiet of the night you can actually hear them crunching. Then take your flashlight and go a picking....

These caterpillars are so big (three inches long or more) that it would seem to be easy to control them just by picking them off. And so it is, sometimes. The problem is that their pale green color provides excellent camouflage, and the nymph and larval stages are far smaller and less obvious. If there are only a few, picking them off works well. If there are more than a few, other measures may be called for. One of these is Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis, an organic treatment that can control numerous other problems as well.

Tomato Harvest #1

The first tomato harvest happened so suddenly I almost missed it. We had weeks during June and early July of marine layer cloudiness and cool temperatures. I enjoyed it but the plants weren't all that fond of it. A couple of my tomatoes even developed a case of "cat facing" which is an appropriate name for what they look like. See picture. I only have a couple like that fortunately. Catfacing is an abnormality that develops on the blossom end of susceptible tomato varieties. It results from cool weather at blossom time and causes the fruit to pucker and have deep crevices.

Here I am all proud with the days harvest. As you can see it was bountiful and there are plenty more where that came from. Dena is in the kitchen right now making some sort of tomato soup.

cite Colorado Extension

Red Neck Trellis

This Better Best Boy tomato plant, yes there's only one there, is so out of control I had to use a 6' ladder to prop up this side. There's another trellis on the back side to the left of the main plant because there are some 8' off shoots there bearing fruit and they are sagging from the weight. The same thing was happening on this side so what's a girl to do? Why spend money on another trellis when you have a ladder around?

First Harvest of the Summer of 2010