Are you kidding me

Ted pretty much shut the door on this year's competition. I have a couple mediocre tomatoes that I was going to bring in, but I'm afraid now that they might accidentally get crushed by Ted's 3.22# behemoth. The first place tomato is now more than twice the size of it's nearest competitor!

Ted also had a nice 1kg wagon wheel that damaged its stem and never lived up to its full potential. It's interesting in that it's shaped like it's grandparent, the 8.41# former world record.

Big Weekend

A number of big tomatoes came in this weekend.

Paul had a cool looking C-shaped tomato.

Bob produced what I'm guessing is a new PR for him.

Ted's was the biggest of the three, and now sits in first place.

New leader

Bob's misshapen monster motivated me to rustle around in my tomato patch in search of a more photogenic mater. I found such a fruit, and blissfully it had enough sand in the pants to retake the top step of the podium. But it's still just a baby.

1st Place

Bob stepped up with a Big Zac that's big enough for first place. Bob, when you said it was an ugly tomato, you weren't kidding!

First tomato on the scale

Big enough to make Fred envious, but just a baby at 1.25 lbs. I've lost 3 plants to disease and the rest are looking iffy. Who will step up this year?

Pollinating a 5 lb tomato

My first real bruiser of the year... got it all frosted up like a powdered donut with pollen from a dozen plants. We'll see if it takes! This one was so gnarly, I couldn't tell what was tomato and what was petals. It had at least 20 sepals, and at least 3 fused tomatoes. Perhaps a lot more. It took me maybe 15 minutes with tweezers to pick out all the petals to expose the stigmas.

Summer solstice update

Yesterday was the longest day of the year, so as far as daylight is concerned, it's all downhill from here. How are you making use of the available light?

The plant that I put out the beginning of April in my greenhouse with a space heater is now 4' tall.

And it produced a ripe tomato in the month of June! Picked and eaten, but not by me...

Don't get me started saying the R word. Although I think this could be the work of a Squirrel.

This picture was taken a week ago showing tennis ball sized tomatoes lined up on my 4' plant. This plant was just over 3' tall 8 days ago.

My trophy plants (3 Big Zac, 2 Domingo) are maybe a foot tall.

Meanwhile, my eating tomatoes in containers are probably twice the size of my giants. And they were started and planted out at the same time as the giants. Black plastic = warmer roots = faster growth?

Early start

Game on... one of these babies is going in the ground in the next couple of weeks. I just need to rig up my DIY incandescent bulb space heater, and I'll be off to the races.