Mind you this time only two fruits with horrible dry weather.

Rain has come and I am trying to save some seeds.

Reproduction

What happened to my Cherry Tomatoes?

We are going through some erratic weather conditions  and the single Cherry Tomato Plant wilted away in dry weather.
However it produced hundreds of tomatoes before it died, I scattered seeds all over the place and  I was pretty sure that few will germinate come the rainy days.

This plant was seeded / germinated by the not so frequent birds that come our way.

I know by experience that all the seeds will get washed away like the seeds I used to spread all over our compound but never germinate in our compound but down below on our access road.

We are at a higher ground.

I remember about the vine that produced a beautiful white plant never germinated in out garden but down below in the neighbors hedge.

The seeds of course I got from the Botanical Garden fence.

Just recently I went to place where / perimeter fence/ I got the seeds and the vine is no more there.
This /story was 10 years ago/old.

The weather is too horrible even the Botanical garden cannot save its plants.

Last weekend I plucked few seeds from this wine and this time I planted  them in a pot.
It is not yet germinating.

Coming back to cherry tomato, with above experience I put large number of seeds in a smaller pot and placed that on a prominent place on big pot where I decided to put the pipal tree which I ill treated for 2 years to see how it survives.

True enough they germinated filling the pot.

They were slender and not ready for replanting.

For three days I forgot to water (I was busy) and all of them dried up.

I went into panic mode.
I could not find a single plant in our compound.

Watered them and only two slender ones survived.

Replanted them on a big pot they were still destined to die.

One tomato plant that was surviving could not take the challenge from the weeds.

I am down to zero now.

The the same weekend I sow the seeds of the vine, I went to put some food for the fish.
I found a small tomato plant just close to the where the mother plant wilted away.

There were no tomatoes seen.

Then just for curiosity sake, I lifted a branch to see there were 3 ripe tomatoes hidden.

I was so excited like the Archimedes, (luckily I was in shorts and securing my integrals) plucked them and sow them all over.

They are germinating now.

They are the second generation plants.

I want to see how many generations I can take them forward.

Interestingly enough there is a folk belief that young plants near the mother plant survive better.

There is a scientific reason for this.

It is called the allelopathy.

The mother plant produce allelochemicls to suppress other invading plants who are competing for the the same territory.

These chemicals saved the day for me not my personal efforts.

Three days of absence did the damage in my case.

Believe in nature and they look after the nature if man does not interfere.

 

Banana growing in the East is such an endeavor.

They are Nature Vultures.

Cherry Tomatoes

At the beginning of the year when I decided to blog on a topic at random I decided to use a plant (plant for my life) as a topic, if I run short an idea and get bored.
I could write only a few and there were many topics that came at random, I had to put that ides on a back burner for sometime, especially because of the World Cup Cricket and I had enough new Linux distribution downloaded to write about.
then again I thought I will restrict to drought resistant and somewhat alien to my city.
Never ever I though I will write about cherry tomatoes.
I have very little time for gardening and what I call my gardening is not really gardening.
It can be rephrased as “garden patch watching”, in other words it is a little patch of garden left to elements and let it grow everything and anything in that area.
The little patch allowed to grow and go wild.
My interventions are if the spell is very dry (which is now) and no rain make sure I water them late at midnight and over weekends if nasty that hinder community growth are found pull them out.
My seeders (not Linux seeders) are the birds.
I am very fortunate that we live in the pathway of bird migration (winter birds) and type of birds were little bit more this year than that last year.
Left over rice and food is thrown all over and they do come very early as early as 4 am in the morning an as late as 5 to 6 pm.
I some time get up with them singing (but lazy to get up and see who is coming and who is not coming) but make a mental note of the various sing songs they mix the ariel ambiance (like the common cuckoo).
Few months ago, I saw a tomato plant on the wall side of the foot steps leading to rear of the house (very few walk up that path, except me to feed the fish in a little pond/tank) and growing in a crevice. Probably the seeds have been taken there by the ants but nor recovered in time.
It started growing slowly and then quickly crossed the narrow foot (its spread was over the foot steps) path and even the dog did walk gently over it. My dog loves plants and their smell and have the habit of sniffing the leaves and discriminating them from the civets foot steps at night.
Tomato is a tropical plant and love dry and warm climate and my intention was to watch it as a bio-indicator(mind you tomatoes are very very cheap nowadays).
It started flowering and bearing beautiful tiny fruits.
Very soon they were garnishing the dinner table (without telling anybody I picked a few washed and kept them on the dinner table).
Now it is very dry and no rain for few days and it is drying up with reaming fruits all over the place and when the rain comes they will germinate and few will be taken to various places by ants and to the back garden.
The spread is left to nature and I want to see how many of them survive.
As a small insurance I took a few of them and spread among the roof top garden.
Believe it or not I have a young pipal (Bo) tree on the rooftop which I have treated with absolute disdain (unlike many Buddhists) for the last three years except watering it when it is near to its final hour.
Irony is in this Buddhist county I cannot find a place to replant it (in this Kandy city-ritualistically Buddhist) but our Buddhist go to India to warship the sacred pipal tree.
I am using it as a bio-indicator and if it dies, I am pretty sure there will be a significant drought in this country.
This tree also thanks to the birds who visit us.
When our coal power plant is in full swing, surely we will lose some more birds including migrant and i want have seeders except Linux guys who seed me with Linux derivatives an not living seeds or plants..