As Ted always says...

I encourage you all to enviously admire Big Dog's picture parade of ridiculous basketball size tomatoes, then blissfully ignore them and resolve yourself to the world the rest of us live in. I just clipped and weighed my #3 tomato and it checked in at just under half the size of Big Dog's #3. Yes, i still have 2-3 other promising fruits on my plants but only "promising" in the world of us checker players. 

And as Ted always says...to sum up the way this competition is going...I submit to you the following analogy:

Big Dog:

The rest of us:

Plenty of Season Left

Raccoons got my #3 tomato last night. A nice multi-lobed Big Zac that was somewhere in the 1.5-2 lb range. They didn't get my #2 tomato though. This same Mega Marv plant produced a 1.94 lb tomato earlier in the season. It's definitely getting a spot in next year's lineup.

Jumbo Container Mater

This should provide some inspiration for the container growers among us. A 4.20 lb monster grown on a 16" plant, in a container about as small as the plant.

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=247392
I wonder if that guy's son is going to be mad at him someday for posting a picture of him on the internet in his underwear?

Not giving up

Well, after my one promising tomato turned out not to be enough to compete with you insane growers, I sort of got lazy and let my big zacs go wild. But through some encouragement from Big Dog about plants making it well into October and possibly even November, I took another good look at my plants. There are a 2-3 promising tomatoes in the works. So I lavishly clipped off what would have been several decent meals or pots of spaghetti sauce. I've had good luck ripening some of the previous sacrificial fruit in the window sill so hopefully all are not wasted.

I'm just banging the Big Dog drum and telling everyone to keep after it!

Leaderboard Update

Aaron was laying low, hiding the fact that he had three tomatoes totaling over 5 lbs on a single vine, the biggest just over 2 lbs. Well done!

It will now take ~ 1 2/3 lbs to make the podium. Can we get that number up to 2 lbs by the end of the season?