Alternative title:  The Report of My Tomatoes’ Death was an Exaggeration

Other alternative title:  It’s a Winter Solstice Miracle!

After a scare with droopy branches, my tomatoes continue to soldier on.  It was a case of over-fertilizing and once I replaced the water, the two plants recovered with only some leaf damage.  As you can see from the picture, the Chocolate Cherry on the right seems to be doing better, but it’s a more robust variety anyways.  I probably should have removed the flowers from both to help with the recovery, but my quest for winter tomatoes overpowered my logic and common sense.  The chocolate cherry tomato plant’s flowers are turning into little tomatoes (yum!).  Now all that’s left is the waiting (and waiting and waiting).

The AeroGarden’s hood is a full mast (2 feet high) so now I’ll have to keep up with the pruning.  I finally put in the trellis system, which is why they look like marionettes.  The vines have been sucking up all the water I pour and then some. Most of the time, AeroGardens can go a week or 2 before you have to refill. These are so needy, but soooo worth it. Hopefully the next post will show fruit ready to pick.

Just when I thought things were going along peachy for my indoor tomatoes, this is what I found yesterday morning.

When I saw my plants in distress, I gave them more water and AeroGarden fertilizer.  Later on during the day, I jumped on the “Internets” to see what might be the problem and found an article about overfertilization.  If plants have too much, they cannot absorb water, which is what the saggy leaves reminded me of.   So it looks like I caused the droopiness by using some homemade “Comfrey/Turnip plant juice” a few days ago.  Either this liquid mixture was too strong or maybe the pH was too extreme (should probably check, huh?).  And of course by adding even more fertilizer, I made everything worse (my overenthusiastic self did it again).  So last night I replaced all the water in the AeroGarden with distilled only.  I think this did the trick as they look a little better this morning, though we did lose some lower branches.  I’ll post more pictures this weekend.

Every fall for the last few years, I’ve restarted my indoor AeroGardens, as the full spectrum light and green growth helps to keep away the winter blues (aka Seasonal Affective Disorder).  I’m taking a new bold step this time by growing cherry tomatoes from my saved seeds.  Last year I purchased a special extra tall AeroGarden (extends up to 2 feet instead of 1) with “mega” cherry tomato seeds included.  I wasn’t 100% happy with the tomatoes it produced as they had very little taste, most likely because I was being stingy with the liquid fertilizer.  So now I’m using my own varieties plus more plant food to hopefully grow better tasting fruit.

Getting them started was the first hurdle, as I have never saved tomato seeds before.  But Mother Nature trumps Snarky Nature every time and both (Snarky Orange and Chocolate) sprang up with no issues within a week.  My next issue moving forward will be whether or not the plants will get too big for their britches. I’ll have to treat them like bonsai trees and keep them properly trimmed, or I’ll have a jungle in my kitchen. If this all goes well and I end up with flowers, I’ll spend the following month or so concerned that the Snarky Orange tomatoes won’t actually produce orange tomatoes. They are the third generation of the SunGold hybrids I grew in 2012. They volunteered this last spring and on a whim, I decided to just let them go wild. Out of four volunteer plants, two produced orange tomatoes and two produced red cherry tomatoes, which I guess is not uncommon. I saved seeds from the tastiest orange tomatoes produced but genetics are a funny and random thing. Guess we’ll all find out later this winter.  Can you just feel the excitement?