One Hundred Dollars a Month

A big thank you to Sarah B who alerted me to a recent newspaper article by Cisco Morris on my heirloom tomato picture post yesterday.  I don’t know what your tomato crop looks like these days, but my tomatoes are mostly green.

Since I am trying to grow 2,000 pounds of food in my backyard this summer, I need those heirloom tomatoes to ripen before the weather starts to cool down and the tomatoes stop growing.

But how am I going to do it you ask?

Well, for starters, I’m going to start picking off all the tiny little blossoms this weekend.  Why?  Because there simply won’t be enough time for all those little tomatoes to ripen.  However, I do think I will leave a few blossoms on my tiny cherry tomato plants, as they don’t take as long to ripen as the beefsteaks and larger tomato varieties.

Here are a few more of my tips to get tomatoes to ripen on the vine.

• Remove all blossoms By removing new blossoms, you’ll encourage the tomato plant to focus on what’s already growing on the vine.
• Pick small fruit Remove tiny tomatoes so let the tomato plant can invest its energy in the larger, established fruit.
• Drastically reduce watering This will trick the tomato plant into thinking it’s dying {cruel, I know} and by doing so it will encourage the other tomatoes to ripen.
• Stalk your plants daily Look for fruit that has just started to turn from green to red. Pick it and bring it inside to ripen.
• Remove the plant’s lower leaves  This will force the plant to put more of its energy into the tomatoes and not the leaves.

With any luck, you and I both will have bushels and bushels of tomatoes to harvest before the weather takes a turn for the worse.Grow Baby Grow!

What do you think?

Do YOU remove the blossoms around this time of year?  Or do you just leave them?

Mavis wants to know.

Ask Ciscoe: Oh, la, la ! Your Gardening Questions Answered ~Amazon

Ciscoe Morris answers 400 the most interesting, oft-asked, most urgent, and puzzling gardening questions. Master Gardener, certified arborist, teacher at the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture.

In his first book, he addresses the full range of issues from ornamental gardening and trees to vegetables, fruit trees, shrubs, lawns, containers, weeds, and more.