I noticed the first flower among my gold nugget tomatoes a few days ago, and that marks another milestone on the path toward tomato wine.





I took this photo on 6/21/07, and since then one or two other flowers have bloomed. These tomatoes are a lot more patient than I am. I’ve done my part. I tended them as seedlings, I transplanted them, and now its up to them. They’ve got flowers to open. They’ve got fruit to ripen! What are they waiting for?

I transplanted more Gold Nugget tomatoes last night, six more to what I’m calling the “east block.” That’s to distinguish them from the four in the “north block” that I transplanted on the 29th. I did it the same way: deep planting hole, pinched out the lower leaves, added a ground up antacid tablet and some homebrew organic fertilizer. So far so good. The north block tomatoes showed no signs of transplant shock at all.

In the photo, it’s hard to see all six Gold Nugget tomatoes, but the stem of the sixth one is just visible on the left side. The row of plants in the front of the tomatoes, the ones that look like onions, are onions (a man’s gotta eat too). So my tomato vineyard is a reality, with 10 vines in the ground! I’ve still got two in pots that I’m not sure what to do with.

I’ve been reading up on blossom end rot, and it turns out that there may be something to the old (I would have called it a “wive’s tale”) practice of putting some powdered antacid in the planting hole of each tomato. The rot is caused by a calcium deficiency in the fruit, and the calcium chloride in antacid tablets might be just the thing my tomatoes need.

So each tomato got one ground up antacid tablet. I mixed it, and a handful of my homebrew organic fertilizer, into the soil in the bottom of the planting hole.

I ground up the antacid tablet, scooped out a bit of fertilizer, and dug the planting hole. I made the hole deeper than you’d expect just by looking at the plant or the pot it was in. That’s because I planted each tomato deeper in the soil than it was in the pot. I’m taking advantage of the tomato’s ability to easily grow new roots from the stem. Doing this puts the existing roots deep into the soil and stimulates new root growth from the just-buried stem.

In the above photo, I’m pinching out some of the bottom leaves because that part of the stem will be underground. When all was said and done, I had four tomato plants tucked into their new bed.

The two small plants, in the foreground of the photo that don’t look like tomato plants, aren’t tomato plants. They’re peppers, and I know that has nothing to do with tomato wine, or any other kind of wine. I do grow some things to eat, though, and they’ve got to go somewhere. So four pepper plants, I cropped the other two out of the photo, will be sharing some real estate with the “North Block” of my tomato vineyard.

I used to write software for a living, and one thorny issue never far form anyone’s mind was the release date. This was the result of changes, unexpected problems, negotiation, compromise, tests of will, overtime, threats of violence, and – ok maybe not threats of violence. Not explicit ones anyway. The point is that the actual date on which software gets delivered is often different from the date on which it was promised. So it is with my tomatoes (I never imagined those two sentences going together!).

I had planned on transplanting them on the 22nd, but more recent forecasts tell of cold nights ahead. I want nice warm 50+ Fahrenheit (10+ Celsius) nights before I transplant them, and it looks like the 27th will see lows of 44F (a bit less than 7C). So I’ve slipped the release date, um delayed transplanting I mean, to the 29th. Once a software guy, always a software guy …

In the meantime, my tomatoes and other transplants (I do actually eat some of my vegetables) will commute to the patio every morning. And it’s getting to be quite a traffic jam in those pots.

I’m making tomato wine this year, and for me that starts with growing tomatoes from seed. I transplant them into the garden when it gets warm enough, meaning overnight lows of 50 Fahrenheit or higher. The latest forecast is for lows in the mid 40’s for the next 10 days, though, so I should delay transplanting them because it’s still too cold.

The photo above shows my Gold Nugget tomatoes on 5/10/07, and as you can see they are getting crowded in their pots. They need to go somewhere else soon, either the garden or other pots. No matter how carefully it’s done, digging up the plant and relocating it delivers a shock that temporarily stunts the plant’s growth. Repotting them would mean delivering this shock twice in a short time, once when I move them to new pots and again when I move them to the garden. So I should transplant into the garden right away to avoid this.

I’m not sure how I’ll resolve this dilemma yet.

For my tomato wine, I’m growing Gold Nuggets. They’re cherry tomatoes that turn yellow-orange when ripe; here’s how they looked on 4/24/07. In the ten days it took to expose the roll of film, process and digitize it, the seedling have grown from less than two inches to over four inches tall; maybe I need to rethink this whole digital camera fad 🙂