Small Red Cherry Tomato

Poor babies. I had a couple seeds in a small pot and they sprouted just fine. Once they got a little bigger, I put them outside. They were doing fine, and then came the hornworm attack. These worms are very common where I live and they grow into beautiful hawkmoths, but they eat voraciously and they can strip a plant in one feeding. ***The good news***: Those hardy little tomato plants grew new leaves, came back to life, and are starting all over again! I still have hope to have some nice cherry tomatoes even though I planted way late in the year.

Plants grew quickly to eight feet and produced like crazy until the middle of August. They stopped producing because of the heat until October. All tomatoes do that here. But picking all the tomatoes took forever because I had to stand on a bucket to do it. They taste great and are bursting with juice. I guess if I give them less nitrogen they wouldn't grow so tall. They got a disease but it didn't stop them. Only the lower leaves were affected.