I'm out

The first frost caught me by surprise last night. The overnight low in my backyard was 35 degrees, but that was cold enough to produce a nice coating of frost on my plants. So I went out and harvested what I could. There was one jumbo left on the vines.

This came from the same Big Zac that produced a 2.7# tomato a few days ago. At one point, I had 4 large tomatoes on this vine. I'm looking forward to seeing what this plant can do if I narrow it down to just one tomato.

So that's it. The giant growing season is officially over for me. Time to start prepping and planning for next year. Does anybody else have any large tomatoes lurking in their patch, or can we put a nail in the 2015 season?

Big Zac

Ok, so I'm not very good at eyeballing the weight of tomatoes. I thought this one might be ~2 lbs. Baby pictures included.

 

New CO State Record

My goal for next year had been to grow a 4 lb tomato. My goal now is to grow a 4.66 lb tomato.

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryViewOne.asp?eid=247747

Sleeping Giant

Farmer McGregor has been sandbagging us. Lurking in his vine jungle was a tomato just .01 lbs shy of the old (pre-2015) Colorado State record. Greg thinks it's a Big Zac, but he's going to have sort out the vines to be sure which plant it came from. Well done, Greg!

With this tomato, the leaderboard now consists entirely of tomatoes over 2 lbs. Who would have predicted that at the start of the season?

The key to growing a giant?

What does it take to grow a giant tomato? Genetics? Fertilization? Good soil? In an attempt to answer this question, I did some data mining on Fred's Giant Tomato Contest. It turns out that the number one factor in determining success is the first name of the gardener. Growers with first names "Aaron" or "Mark" grew 10 out of 11 of the top tomatoes, while growers with the first name "Fred" failed to bring a single tomato to the scale. Statistics are a powerful tool when applied correctly. I hope this analysis has been helpful.

The Gardener Strikes Back

Rodents have had the upper hand in my garden for weeks. Now, I'll find out if I'm dealing with mice, squirrels, or, as I've been assuming, raccoons. I figure mice and squirrels will be helped by these cages, while raccoons will be hindered.

Almost...

In a late push to make the podium I clipped this guy off yesterday. Geometrically, there is still a bigger one on the vine but this one seemed awfully dense for it's size. Hoping the other is just as dense and it may push the extra 0.2 lbs needed to squeeze into 3rd. BTW this one, the aforementioned "bigger one", and the one in my last post below were all on the same cluster. All single-lobe, non-magablooms. There are a couple young multi-lobers growing on that plant so I'm still hoping for greatness!