Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Tumbling Toms

Hey Mom, this is for you.

This year I decided to try some Tumbling Tom tomatoes (wow, how alliterative is that?) They are small cherry tomato plants that are supposed to do very well in hanging baskets and be very prolific for their size. I've always been very curious about them, so when I decided to put windowbox planters around our wooden playset, I decided to give them a try.

The result: I'm very happy. By the time I decided to do this, it was too late to start my plants from seed so I ordered them from a company on ebay since that was the only place I could find live plants. I was very concerned at the beginning, as they were extremely root bound and already had small tomatoes on them. However, after vicious tearing apart roots and breaking off all the small tomatoes, the plants did very well and have been my earliest producers.

They don't look very happy today, but that's mostly because I spaced watering (they're in self-watering containers, but you still have to water at least occasionally). I had decided to go out and take some pictures of them today and realized that they were wilted. But, never fear, they will come back. At least you can see how densely packed the tomatoes are. I've been impressed with how many tomatoes they've fit into a small space and they taste pretty good, too.

My mom and I had talked about these earlier this summer and I wanted to update with how they are doing. But I also thought that others of you might have very limited space but still be interested in growing a few tomatoes. These really amazingly heavy producers for such a small space. I think you could plant one or two hanging baskets or put them in the edge of a pot and be eating at least a few tomatoes every day. You can see I have 3 tomato plants as well as 3 flower plants in a 23" container. Not bad.

And that's my public service announcement for the day. Thanks for tuning in.
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