T wrote:

Hi All,

I have seven cherry tomato plants. For the
forth week in a row now, I have harvested what
I estimate to be 100 cherries (each time).
My legs are actually sore from stooping!
(I would say "make it stop!", but I'd
be lying.)

But I can't grow a regular tomato for my life This
years' regular plant actually had a tomato on it.
(It was on half price close out). So I thought,
Yippee! this one is going to fruit a lot.
But NNNNOOOOOOOOOOO! It was the one and only
fruit. And it did not grow any bigger than a golf
ball. The love of my life teases me about the $2.50
tomato.

What the #&Y^* !!! ???

i dunno, around here we do well but it takes a long
time to get a large tomato from the time i put the plant
in the ground until we can harvest.

did it start out growing well and stop or has it
always been growing?

we plant the end of May and we do not get harvested
tomatoes until mid-to-late August. so that's 75 days
of plenty of water, sunlight and proper temperatures
for pollination.

i suggest you step up gradually as you develop
your topsoil. i.e. get the next size up from cherry
tomatoes in the plants you select and see if those
will work, but of course, never use just them and
keep some cherry tomatoes as at least then you know
those work.

did you ever see more flowers?

my guess is that the temperatures get way too hot
in the mid-summer and your subsoil is very tough.
with those temperatures and aridity those plants are
going to be sucking up large amounts of water just
to stay standing upright. you may need partial mid-
day shading, you most likely will need several cubic
feet per plant of relatively decent soil and that
plenty of water... did i mention a wind-break?
you probably could use that and plenty of mulch
(not touching the stem, but otherwise enough to
keep the soil from getting too dried out.


songbird