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I’d say we got 0.6” of rain here when Augie got 1.6” so I’ll be watering today. That’s normal for MO/Ozarks. There have been times my neighbor buddy 6 miles away gets zero rain while I get an inch and times when it’s been visa versa.

My tomato plants are quite varied in size.

Three Red Deuce from the Amish store. They were short, stocky and had flowers. I pulled the flowers off of one and let the other two go on to tomatoes. Those two ended up each having three tomatoes but the plants are still short and not real healthy looking. The one I pulled flowers off of is a nice dark green, twice as tall and wide and has a few tiny maters and a bunch of flowers. I should have pulled the flowers off of all as was my instinct. Not worried much about this variety because it’s used as a commercial tomato which means thick skin, keeps well and has no flavor just like what’s in the grocery store. I pulled the maters off of one to see what happens. Now new flowers yet so maybe I did it in. They’re determinate.

Three tomato plants I got from Lowes. Early Girl, Cherokee Purple and Black Cherry. They were and still are small but look healthy are are starting to take off.

My seed starts. Three Chadwick Cherry and three Tappy’s Heritage. All healthy looking but vary in size. All were treated the same so I must have hit some high nutrients spots when transplanting. One’s gone from 18” to 42” in 2-3 weeks.

An issue with using the lean and lower trellis is the variety of plant sizes due to being multiple varieties and buying tiny starts and adding to the ones I started from seed. I have mater plants from 12 to 42 inches tall.

That 42” tall one is right next to one half the height and the 42” would be leaned in the direction of the short one before the short one will even reach the trellis to start leaning it. That means I’d lean the tall one over the short one.

I added some rope going from one trellis to the other and will lean in that direction on the rope instead of leaning it over a shorter plant. The nice neat lean and lowering is out the window and things will look quite interesting(weird).

Moral of the story. For lean and lower, all one variety in a single row and same size to start with is best. Also plant them all at one time with the taller ones on the end that the direction of the leaning will be. That way the tall ones can be leaned first while the others are still reaching for the trellis.

In summary; year two, still learning.