Beaverlodge Slicer

This plant was supposed to be a compact, determinate plant, that above all, was short. It even says you could grow it from a hanging basket. Ha, yea right. This guy has grown to 7' (with no sign of stopping) and is very lanky. The fruit of this plant doesn't even look like the fruit from the website. The only similarities are the potato style leaves. I think there was some cross-pollination going on with the seeds parent. I wonder if the rest of the seeds in the packet would grow the same plant.

It is now 100 days old. It took 5 days to germinate, 30 days before it was potted in its final container, flowers at 42 days, and the first pick was at 94 days resulting in 52 days between flower and ripe fruit.

The fruit is mildly sweet, mildly acid with a delicate citrus flavor. The tomato squeezes like a bell pepper - it has a meaty exterior with a hollow feeling interior (although it is not hollow inside). The meat is nice and tender. They average 50 grams per fruit, and are a lot smaller than what I expected.

It's a good tomato, and I enjoy it, but I want to try some other varieties that are in the dwarf category with a max height of 3' instead.

Balcony Garden at 10 Weeks

Balcony Garden at 10 Weeks

So far, Bloody Butcher and Stupice on the far left in the black buckets, are doing the best. They have numerous tomatoes, tons of blossoms, and though none of the fruit has matured yet, there are some full sized fruits. In fact Stupice has had some full sized fruit for about a month, not sure why they're not ripening.

Black Prince is the tallest (3rd from the left), standing about 5' above soil level.

Next to it, SF Fog is large, super bushy, and covered in blossoms. It has the largest mass out of all of them. Some blossoms have set and there are small tomatoes growing.

Next to it, Azoychka, Carmello, Svetlana Red, Gigantesque and Ispolin are doing the same. Most of the blossoms have dropped. I believe it is due to the high winds causing stress, but in an attempt to get them stronger and keep the blossoms, I added lime to the soil a week ago. Yesterday I began supplementing the water source with phosphoric acid which should promote blossom growth. I then sprayed the plants down with Cal-Mag. Hopefully that changes things.

On the far right, the Straight 8 cucumber has so far yielded two full size cucumbers. There are a lot of small guys waiting for mature fruit to get picked so the resources can go to them. The cool weather has slowed growth down considerably, but at least it's producing.