Cherry and Heirloom Tomato Plants

This plant seems to have contracted a bacterial infection somehow. I never got any tomatoes from it.




I got about 7 cherry tomatoes from this plant. They were good, but not any better flavor-wise than farmers' market tomatoes. The satisfaction factor was short-lived since it took months to grow these things and a matter of seconds to eat each one. Kind of depressing.


This is the end of my zebra tomato plant. It managed to produce one full-sized tomato, but not a particularly good tomato, sadly. It was a bit mealy.



What you see is all I got.




Early on my plants were looking bad. See my post on mold to learn why.




This plant is particularly purplish. My gardening books would have me believe that this means it is lacking a nutrient, but my attempts at fertilizing my plants haven't been successful (though they were for my 3rd grade science fair project).




First signs of a tomato blossom




Here you can see the plants getting larger after transplant and starting to look like real tomato plants.








Cherry tomato

On May 3, I noticed that all of my tomato plants had developed brownish spots with a yellow ring and that the bottom leaves in particular were the most infected and starting to wilt and drop off. I hadn't looked at the plants since April 30, so the problem may have begun sooner.

I do not know what it is or what caused it. The symptoms seem to match the description of early blight in my gardening book.

Prior to developing these symptoms, I watered all of the tomato plants with a fish emulsion fertilzer diluted to 1TB:1/2 gallon of water. I wonder if the fertilizer upset my plants. The reason I added fertilizer is because the leaves were turning a very dark green and the stems and veins were a reddish purple. I thought the reddish purple indicated a need for fertilizer. My dad thinks that the leaves turning dark green was a good sign and that the reddish purple stems and veins were not necessarily a problem.

The heirloom tomatoes seem to be more affected than the cherry tomatoes. I may be trying to grow varieties that are not well-suited to southern California, or that are not disease resistant. Also, tomatoes like heat and sunlight, and have gotten little of either because of the extended rainy season followed by an early gloomy season.


Cherry tomato plant





Cherry tomato plant--this is my strongest, biggest, tallest, and least-affected tomato plant.


Cherry tomato plant