Looks like no Cream Sausage tom’s this year as both plants were pretty much stripped by deer overnight. Just infuriating. Plus, two of the Pink Honey plants were hit hard as well, but there’s one left that looks OK. The plants were all on one side of the patch, and I guess they got their fill as the other plants look unscathed. I also think the fact that it’s getting so dense foliage wise in the patch, they don’t want to get up in that mess. Looks like I’ll have to make some changes in the fishing line fencing.
2 Likes
Just after the rain we had two night ago, a serious downpour, each tomato plant has at least three to six small tomatoes! Will have that sandwich afterall!
3 Likes
This is Polish Linguisa tomato pictures and report. Very vigorous plant and quite productive. It has a few seeds and a thin skin. It is quite juicy for a paste tomato. It is not a bad tomato at all but Romeo and Hungarian heart are better in the same class.
3 Likes
Romeo is a large impressive tomato, productive but less so than Polish Linguisa. Very meaty tomatoes and I had a hard time to find seeds in them. I understand why seed companies do not sell seeds of it. They have very bright pink color of the flesh. The taste is mild and somewhat bland. Keeps very long on the counter. Very good tomato for processing.
7 Likes
The doodette picked our first two ripe toms today, one each of Chocolate Cherry, and Jaune Flamme. Inspection this morn revealed no new hooved devil incursions.
After 1.6" of rain yesterday, the disease looks like it’s picking back up where it left off. Plants are huge now, hard to walk between some of them, which might be a deterrent to the deer. I’ve basically stopped staking the plants, as I’ve just about run out of stakes!
3 Likes
I’ve never grown the bigger variety toms before, so this is a first for me. I ordered in Brandywine Sudduth and Neves Azorean Red (easier to say NAR…) and they also threw in a few Rose de Berne seeds.
Anyway, I didn’t really want to pick the Brandywines that I did, but they all had splits after we got a half inch of rain. But I put the biggest one on the scale yesterday and it read one pound-10.1 oz so I took a pix on my cell phone to send to the kids. Then this morning when I put it on the scale again and it shows one pound 9.9 oz. So it lost a teensy overnight. Anyway, probably not that big to folks used to growing big varieties.
But I also found splits on the Rose de Berne
I haven’t taken any San Marzano yet, but a couple are close. I think the fruit looks cool the way they hang there.
I also planted some seeds from a 20 cent pack I got some where that just said “Beefsteak” I was thinking that was a style, but that’s all the package says. Anyway the plant is only a couple feet tall, and I don’t think it’ll get much taller but I counted 35 tomatoes on there.
8 Likes
Wow!
1 Like
I had to go out of town for a couple days. While on the way back home Sat, I called the Mrs, and she said there was some minor damage/pilfering in the tomato patch (again). That’s 4 out the last 5 of nights/early morn raids by deer, even after I added some more fishing line fencing to the perimeter. Since the lines seem to be intact, I can only assume that they’re jumping into the pepper part of the patch (smaller plants, less weeds), and then proceeding with their crimes. I wouldn’t think they’d jump something they couldn’t see, but apparently not.
She told me yesterday on the phone that she didn’t notice any real significant damage, but I was out there last night with a spotlight, after shooing off deer from the cuke plot and saw that there wasn’t hardly any fruit left. I went back out this evening and saw nice big plants, but not many tom’s. I can’t say for sure, but there might a handful of plants that haven’t been either chomped on and/or de-fruited.
Interestingly, the pepper plants look almost totally unscathed. They are getting really large and just loaded with peppers. I see cloven hoof prints around them, but I guess they have no appetite for them.
At this point, I’m past being f@%&ing furious about all this. Now, I’m just resigned at this point that we just won’t be getting many tomatoes this year. Sure, almost all the plants have blooms on them, and could produce some more fruit, but we’re almost to August, and there won’t be time for the new tom’s to mature. And, that’s if we don’t get any more raids. Over 40 plants, and basically nothing to show for it. So defeating.
As I said earlier, at least the beans are kicking into gear, we’ve picked probably 10# of cukes, and the corn is starting to tassel, at about 5ft tall.
It doesn’t look like we’ll have many potatoes either, the heavy rains after planting seemed to have done those in as well. Our sweet taters’ leaves have been stripped clean, so none of those either.
Next year, nothing will be planted down behind the barn as there’s no way to protect that area, and it’s furthest from the house. We had corn and beans in the same plot last year, and the corn was broken and/or chomped by prob deer as well. We’ll plant our tom’s in the plot by the old house, and just have to come up with a better way to protect it.
To add insult to injury, the power steering pump pulley on my old F150 truck decided to fall off today after working on it, so that’ll have to be fixed now! The hits just keep on coming…
2 Likes
@subdood_ky_z6b next year I suggest you to put a fence around the veggie garden (not necessarily expensive or tall) and put your dog inside the garden during the night to sleep. Even the smell of the dog and the occasional bark would possibly keep them away.
3 Likes
I swear by plastic deer fence from http://deerbusters.com. Good prices, and the product works like a charm. I’m kinda lucky in that i’m 30 miles from one of their shipping depots.
I’m surrounded on 3 sides by a regional park, so deer are a part of life. Barbed wire does nothing to keep deer out, but 8’ plastic deer fence works perfectly. On deer. Rodents just chew through it.
4 Likes
I helped my Son-In-Law put some of this around his garden a few years ago, it was cheap and it worked good. (He’s a terrible gardener and pretty much let it go to pot, but the plastic fence did work to keep out the deer)
2 Likes
Thanks, Scott, I remember you recommending them on another thread. We’ll weigh our options for next year. We don’t have a significant rabbit (or other rodent) problem, so the mesh would probably work OK for our locale.
I bought two 1300ft rolls of barbed wire, and 5ft T-posts last year, just for keeping out deer, but never put them up, I figured it prob wouldn’t work.
I was in the bean patch today running lines for the vines to crawl up, and noticed some browsing there, with incriminating hoof prints in the mud… Arrgh
1 Like
I have found that deer slip through barbed wire fences. I bet they even enjoy getting scratched by the barbs. The problem is exacerbated if you a) put the wires too far apart or b) don’t properly tension all the wires. They’ll use any slack to allow themselves to slip through.
2 Likes
Exactly! They don’t even slow down when they do it either. I see them enter my ground all the time when I’m in a tree stand hunting. There will be a group of them and half will jump the three strand fence as if it’s nothing (and it isn’t) and the rest (often does) will go between the 2nd and 3rd strand while still doing double time and not even slow down. It’s no thang to them - at all!
3 Likes
I did use my T-posts today in the tomato patch. I put up the 5ft posts, and on those, placed a black weed barrier sheet along them. So on one side of the patch, namely where the peppers and tomatoes meet, is this barrier.
The reason I’m trying this is my thinking is that they are jumping the fence where there is less vegetation (peppers), which they ignore, and proceed into the tomatoes. The sheet obscures their view, and although they could jump this 5ft sheet, they prob wouldn’t if they can’t see the other side.
Of course, they could jump over the fishing line fences on the other three sides of the patch, and render this move pointless. I’m betting they won’t jump into a dense area of foliage, but I have been proven wrong before trying figure them out. I am running out of options (and time to get any ripened fruit) and thought this might work.
We do have enough of this sheeting to put all the way around the patch, so I should just do that, but we’ll see how this works out.
2 Likes
So far my biggest winner of about 5 new varieties I tried this year is Chef’s Pink- a big Brandywine type that is extremely vigorous and has born the largest tomatoes earlier than any other varieties of this type I grow and is rapidly producing more and more. There were some cracks, as can be expected from our monsoon of a season, but they are sealed and shallow cracks and don’t affect the usefulness of the tomatoes.
It is only one plant (I gave away a few others and all were remarkably vigorous), one site, one year, but promising nevertheless. Seed from Totally Tomatoes.
4 Likes
Checked out the patch this morning, and no new damage, so I guess it worked for one night, maybe. Or they may not have even been around the patch, who knows.
We went almost two full weeks with no intrusions at all, and then they hit it for 5 days over the last week. We have some big tom’s that I hope we can harvest, but they are still green.
I noticed yesterday while mowing that my fishing line fence around the strawberry patch had been knocked over. We had already had some nipped plants before that, so I don’t know how many got hit last night. I checked them today and could only count maybe 30 plants that haven’t been totally defoliated. The grass has really started to fill in the patch, so it’s hard to tell where all the plants are. I need to weed it badly.
If those plants do lose their leaves after growing for a while after planting, will they recover next year, and send out new leaves and runners next year?
1 Like
Try this maybe. Get a big bag of cayenne pepper and spread it on the plants and tomatoes. When they sample it the deer should get an unpleasant burning sensation that may serve as a future deterrent. Then when you harvest your remaining tomatoes do a thorough washing to get rid of the cayenne before you consume it yourself. I’m spreading cayenne around my place strategically where I know the raccoons go in hopes it’ll get all over their thieving paws and make anything they steal taste SPICY!!! Works best when weather is dry so the cayenne does not get washed away.
Anthony
3 Likes
If using cayenne powder, don’t be down wind. I usually dilute mine in a duster and it still can take your breath away. If you have frozen cayennes you can make a spray. Just blenderize with some water and garlic maybe and strain through a double paint strainer before putting in your sprayer. Apply in the cool of the evening.
1 Like
Thanks for the suggestions. The fact that the deer don’t even touch ANY of the peppers is interesting. Both sweet and hot peppers.
I was just in the patch this morning, and there’s no new intrusions. So, maybe the sheet is working? Of course, they may have been out of the area, too.
1 Like