Pics of some of the tomatoes I picked yesterday

[ranchhand]

Wow! That's a lot of nice maters! Well done!

Birds? They love to peck tomatoes just enough to ruin them and move on to another victim. A friend of mine in Austin used to hang red Christmas tree balls on his plants early on. The birds tried them, got disappointed and then ignored the red tomatoes when they came in.

 

[Carol Dee]

That is a lot of tomatoes! YUMMY. We are just seeing a few blooms. Early for us here. So I must be patient! The crate looks like you have a LARGE dog, too!

 

[vfem]

Jealousy is radiating from my every being!!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I harvest them the same way for the same reason. Another advantage is that I sometimes get the tomato fruit worm. If I leave them outside in the garage to finish ripening like that, I can better find the ones that are infested.

 

[Waylon05]

Wow! That's a lot of nice maters! Well done!

Birds? They love to peck tomatoes just enough to ruin them and move on to another victim. A friend of mine in Austin used to hang red Christmas tree balls on his plants early on. The birds tried them, got disappointed and then ignored the red tomatoes when they came in.

That's a great point - I've had success deterring birds with red Christmas tree balls and baseballs painted red. However, in really dry years like this, the birds don't give up as easily. In order to be effective in really dry years, you pretty much need to have the "fake tomatoes" outnumber the real ones and you need to constantly move the "fake tomotoes" around. It's not too much work to do that when you only have a few plants, but when you have more than a couple dozen plants, it's tough to keep up!

 

[Waylon05]

Thanks for all the nice compliments!

To all of you out there in cooler climates that are jealous because you're just now starting to get blooms - if it makes you feel any better, I'm sure yall will be collecting fresh tomatoes long after me since my tomato plants will be done by the end of the month due to the heat!

 

[Waylon05]

That is a lot of tomatoes! YUMMY. We are just seeing a few blooms. Early for us here. So I must be patient! The crate looks like you have a LARGE dog, too!

I do have a pretty big puppy! My two year old mastiff, Waylon, weighs almost 200 lbs.

Just to try to put the picture into perspective, his crate (where the majority of the tomatoes in the picture are) is 55" long and 37" wide!

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Handsome guy!

 

[4grandbabies]

Waylon would make a fantastic member of any family. Pat-pat to him from me.

 

[lesa]

What a cutie!!