First Megabloom of the season

Berkeley Tie-Dye tomato being grown in a 40 gallon grow pot from saved seeds last year. I thought it was an heirloom variety, but that appears to be incorrect.  Hopefully whatever it ends up being is tasty and huge.

Let the season of monster tomatoes begin!

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.