On growing tomatoes, I am not there yet. Last year I had a plant which produced four tomatoes. A ripe one disappeared from the plant, and must have been eaten by a garden visitor. There is one for which I do not remember the fate, and the two harvested ones were unevenly ripe. The plant kept growing and flowering, and I, not knowing better, thought that the lack of tomatoes was due to a lack of bees. And I tried to induce pollination with an electric toothbrush to no avail.
This year I planted two kinds directly into the soil last spring, and purchased some plastic tomato supports. One kind gave exactly one, nice-sized tomato, and the other kind yielded many tomatoes on plants which grew tall, and branched. The first tomatoes were about two inches in diameter, but now in the last week of July, they are little more than one inch.
This producing tomato cultivar, “Money Maker”, is not one which I will plant again, because the tomatoes have a very thick skin. I understand that we can start seeds now to be planted in the fall, I intend to try several kinds of cultivars, to see if they will grow in our back yard under our conditions, and to see if we like any of them!