It's Like We Water-Boarded It

We got a Topsy Turvy* tomato plant hanger thingy last year. It wasn't a really successful horticultural experiment then. So we tried again this year with a cherry tomato plant.

I've never seen a cherry tomato plant grow like this. Granted, we did hang it upside down.

It grew straight down for a day or two then decided to turn sharply upward. At this point it began growing at a rate of about three inches a day. I'm not even kidding. It was amazing. Thinking about the rate of cell division going on blew my mind. Just growing up and up and up... but not producing anything even remotely like a tomato flower.

It seemed to be saying, "To heck with you, Gravity. I'm going to grow as big, tall, and gangly as I possibly can under mostly my own support [note some twine we had to add to keep it from falling over and breaking off]. Then and only then will I make tiny tomatoes. Just in time for it to turn cold and my tiny green tomatoes will never ripen. I'll get those jerks back for hanging me upside-down!"

Do you think it was just really stressed by being upside-down? Maybe it freaked out and grew as big as possible trying to get far away from its oppressors reaching out for help in all directions. I have a feeling it just wasn't getting enough sun.

To give you some scale, I can't reach the top tiny red tomato. Erik has to reach and stretch to water it at the top and he is kind of tall. The plant itself, if the bottom of it were on the ground, would be about four and a half feet tall.

I have eaten approximately three tomatoes off this plant all summer. Right now there are a lot of beautiful green cherry tomatoes on it. We had a 90 degree day over the weekend. But the following day was only about 65 degrees so I think our growing season has come to an end. It's getting quite cold at night now.

So a big boo and hiss to the Tomato Fairy this year. Even our right-side up tomato plants didn't do very much. However I shall not complain too loudly as we had more than a bountiful raspberry crop this year to make up for any tomato inadequacies.

* Our tomato plant looks nothing like the plants on their website. I might submit our weird monstrosity to their gallery and ask what we did wrong.