Wrapping up the Tomato Season: No. 5 Tumbler Tomatoes

I am back from my Easter break and in an upcoming post or two will reveal all the photos of my lovely long weekend away with the folks. I really want to highlight my uncle's veggie patch and garden (my aunt's too) Was just sooooooooooo pretty. However, I haven't got around to uploading the photos so in the meantime it is back to the tomato season wrap up posts. And this time the featured yummy tomato will be red and yellow tumbler tomatoes. Ok they weren't red and yellow on the same tomato (no miniature hillbillies here.) No, I had three red tumblers and two yellow tumblers. The tumbler tomatoes almost entirely occupied my hanging baskets from which they cascaded down beautifully. Cherry tomatoes really, that bush quite well in an overflowing fashion. They all grew so differently yet each really fruited impressively well.


The yellows were the first to fruit. They were tasty, subtle and juicy. Yet being the first to fruit they were also the first to die. The heatwave knocked them for six, and they never recovered. This one was really ruined by the heatwave but still managed to produce 48 fruits. This was less than the others (other than the one below) but I think if the heatwave had not hit, many of those that spoiled would have been saved (the tally only takes into account those that were ripe and good enough to eat)


Also one yellow was planted in a pot with a red, and while the yellow flowered and fruited first, it only produced seven fruits!



The red simply took over. I thought it had died, as this hanging basket was up too high to easily verify. Yet on the day of the cull I found mr yellow alive and holding a few last tiny fruits. The red in this pot was pretty prolific, managing 78 fruits of quite good size and taste.


One red grew in on itself, making it hard to reach the fruit but protecting it so well from the sun. It produced larger fruits which were as tasty as its smaller rivals. In all it managed 90 fruits!!! I am not sure where all these went, though some were made into crispy dried chips.


The other red was inside, and he was an absolute mammoth. Maybe I fed him too much from too early an age or maybe this shows the power of perfect sun, shade, water and calmness. He housed the lego mansion for a long while, only losing it when the wilt, that seemed to affect all myy tomato plants in the end, took hold. In the end he produced 60 fruits.



These are definitely coming back next year. Not only do I have two more hanging pots, they will probably constitute the only red and yellow cherry tomatoes in the garden. I had a Tommy Toe this year, and some random Kmart tomatoes that turned out to be cherries, and I will post on them later. While they fruited magnificently, they just fill the space of something more exotic on my tiny balcony. Whereas the lovely tumblers can take a hanging basket and make it their own fruity home. I'll probably have more yellow than red, that's just my preference, but hopefully they will be as plentiful and as unique next year.