One last try at tomatoes

I think I have said before that I am a lousy gardener, and I definitely have never - even at my peak tomato growing ability - had as many tomatoes on a plant as this. I have friends who do though, so it's obviously possible.

Anyway I'm going to try one last time. With the help of my very hardworking husband I now have a reasonable veggie garden. It has some compost (probably not enough) and some fertiliser (probably not the right kind), but anyway it is better than usual. We also found some tomato food and this time I'm determined to do the right thing. I decided to do this because I was in Bunnings looking for plants to grow and saw this punnet of heirloom varieties that included Ox-heart, which I am hoping is those wonderful tomatoes you get in France and Italy.

There are some black ones too and something else. My reasoning is that you can get 'normal' tomatoes for very cheap prices at the market so why bother growing them? And by 'normal' I don't mean horrible ones, but really tasty ones. Tomato growers are getting much better at providing a wider variety of fruit than before.

Once in my life - and I think in my childhood too - I was able to grow tomatoes. Not quite as profusely as the ones in the picture but by planting enough plants I had more than enough tomatoes. These days - no. Very, very few tomatoes, and those that do grow are eaten by something - birds, possums, gorgeously cute little marsupial things - we have just discovered two nesting next to the veggie patch and, of course, rabbits and kangaroos - maybe even deer. I think last time I really tried I got about two tomatoes that could be eaten. Currently there is no protection other than a mild kind of barrier to keep all the animals out - except the birds and the kangaroos - but then at the moment there are only things with green leaves - and not many of them at that. My husband refuses to put a really decent covering over the whole thing because he says it's ugly, but I think he is willing to net them when they are producing. I hope so, because otherwise the exercise is pointless it seems to me.

So I'm crossing my fingers. I have one of those cage things to put round them but I shall have to go and buy some more I think. Or I could just stake them like I used to and how my mum or dad showed me.

I had a quick look at tips and tricks - there are thousands but mostly they were all a bit daunting. So do I pinch out those little suckers that appear between the main stalk and the leaves? I think i was taught to do this so I'll probably try. And the picture on the left seems to imply that this is correct. I think it stops you getting too much greenery. The energy has to go into the tomatoes not the leaves.

Then to water or not to water? I just found one article that said don't water every day - just every few days and then for ages into the roots. Well that's probably a bit hard. And she obviously didn't live in drought-stricken Australia. The same article said that even if the leaves looked all curled up and thirsty this was just them protecting themselves from the sun - though if they were like this in the morning then, yes, they were thirsty.

I think then, my main problems in the past have been lack of food, maybe too much of the wrong kind of water - like vines they have to work hard to be strong - and the things that eat the tomatoes. Which might be tricky. I vow to feed them, and I will remove the suckers and then I'll try and stop my husband watering too much and cross my fingers that all will be well. If it doesn't work I'm never doing it again.