The Cherry Tomato

Beware  - growing tomato is an addiction.

The reason for that is - there are so many different varieties of tomato, different types of plants – determinate, semi-determinate, indeterminate, different shapes of fruits round, elliptical, pear, kidney bean shaped , different colors – red, pink, yellow, green, striped, maroon, black, and different taste.

and when you experience, by observing the growing plants, the difference in the leaves, the vigor, the truss, fruit setting, one fine day you find yourself hooked to growing tomatoes.

Should you be worried, that you would get hooked? I think, it is far better to get hooked to it, than to do unnecessary things and or think about unnecessary matters.

This post is dedicated to a verity of tomato called ‘Cherry Tomato‘

 

 

 This verity is Red cherry baby by Navalakha seeds. The plant is dwarf and the fruits are set in long truss and taste sweet, its an early variety, good for containers and small balconies.

This is a wonderful cherry tomato verity from England called Gardener’s Delight this is an indeterminate verity the pic you see is already 7′ tall, and has started forming trusses.

 

The close look at the truss, now these trusses are interesting, very interesting as they are not like fish bone arrangement there is a truss within a truss within a truss.

I have taken the closeup of the truss with a white paper in the background so that the arrangement looks clear. there are more than 125 flowers in this single truss. and there were around a dozen such trussed on the main stem (I removed all the side shoots)

Fruit formation – I had sowed seeds of this verity in the months of January and when it started flowering , I faced the same problem of flower not opening properly and pollination along with many other fellow gardeners this summer. However interestingly as soon as the wheather became cloudy, I noticed bees visiting the plant and within a week fruits were formed.

The plant attained a height of 10′ and with each growing foot grew my difficulty in handling it, and a very old, experienced, and wise gardener advised me to experiment, and tie it up to form spirals, I did that and this is the result. Its a simple trick to handle indeterminate creepers, open to further experimentation.

 

The sweet red berries on the vine.

And harvested.

The other cherry tomato verity I grew, is called Cerise (it means cherry in French)

This plant was a bit delicate compared to gardeners delight and the trusses were also not as dense. but due to this load the stem got bend and almost got broken and was hung by a thin line when I noticed it. I immediately did the plastering of the broken bone.

After the plaster.

And, it was successful.

 

Happy Gardening

-FG

Technorati : cerise, cherry tomato, gardener’s delight, truss

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Tags: Cerise, cherry tomato, Gardener's Delight, Indeterminate tomato, Navlakha Seeds