We have tomato weather but no tomatoes! That’s not surprising for June here in TN as most tomatoes don’t produce ripe fruit until July. Knowing that fact though doesn’t diminish the desire for that first fresh from the garden homegrown tomato!
Our plants are doing very well so far, healthy and strong with stout stems and trunks. At this point in the season that is all you can ask for! We have flowers forming with the promise of fruit to come.
Most of my tomatoes are in cages. There are a few that will need tied to stakes to keep them up. I’ll be weaving some to stakes in another area. The raised bed in the next picture has about 10 tomato plants in it. I companion planted marigolds between a few of the tomato plants but they are not large enough yet to show up nicely in the picture.
Here’s a close up of one tomato from that bed. I do minimal pruning on our tomatoes. I try to keep the tomato plants to no more than 3 main branches but as the season progresses (and the heat goes up) I get a little lazy and just let them grow. I do try to pinch back as many suckers as possible. You can propagate the suckers easily if you need more tomato plants. Just put a 4-6 inch sucker in a glass of water and it will root very fast.
Our first ripe tomatoes this year will be from this ‘Mini-Orange’ tomato plant. It has fruits that are about 2 inches in size perfect or halving or quartering and putting in salads.
