Hi Andrew, I sent you an email. Yes, I'm interested. Also, I haven't received an email of your response. So I'm hoping you received mine as well. Seems the email system here gets tangled up or something? Thank you!

Every variety is different in terms of how long it takes for a tiny, young green tomato to mature to a large, ripe tomato. Some of the early DTM varieties can produce fruit in about 50 days. Others take 90-100 days or even longer. There's nothing you can do except wait for nature to take its course. Many green tomatoes will set there at virutally their full mature size for a month or more before they even begin to break color. I've linked a website below that shows the progression of a Big Beef tomato. Look at how long it takes! Most of the tomatoes I'm harvesting now actually set on the plants in March or early April, if they helps you to evaluate when you planted and when you first saw small fruits. My earliest plants went into large pots in the third week of February. They began producing ripe fruit about the last week of April. Tomato plants I transplanted into the ground on March 12th and 13th have produced ripe cherry types so far, with the earliest bite-sized fruit on those tomatoes being ripe around the last week of April or first week in May. Though all those March-transplanted plants have produced tons of green fruit, none of the larger tomatoes have ripened yet. They've been in the ground about two months, so we will be harvesting the first full-sized ripe fruit from them soon. Based on what I'm seeing on the various plants, the harvest will be very heavy once it starts. I also think that all the plants in containers have produced ripe or almost-ripe fruit whereas the plants in the ground are further behind them, even though some of the plants in the ground were planted before some of the plants in containers. I suspect the containers are producing better because I have pretty much total control over how warm they stay (based on where I put the pots) and how much nutrition/water those plants receive. The plants in the ground are pretty much totally at the mercy of Mother Nature. Even in the containers, the plants with bite-sized tomatoes ripen earliest in my garden, then the smaller slicers ripen, and then the big beefsteaks types that produce large tomatoes ripen last. I hope this explanation of the timing here helps you gauge what your plants are doing in relation to when you planted them. What works for me is to ignore the plants. When I am busy for a few days and not looking at the tomato plants at all, it never fails that I'll walk into the garden and discover oodles of ripe fruit. It never fails. I haven't looked at my in-garden tomato plants in 3 days. I think it likely that when I finally get out to the garden to look at them, I might find some ripe fruit. A watched pot never boils and a watched plant often seems like it refuses to ripen fruit as long as you're watching it like a hawk. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Timeline

Green Grape. I had good(in fact, great) late production, but I couldn't stand the taste. Mine seemed to be determinate, but put on another impressive spurt of growth towards the end of the season. Mine were from Pinetree Gardens. If there is an indeterminate, is the taste better? JMO, Tom ***** Tom, the problem with Green Grape for some of us is that the indet goes to det all by itself. And Tom Wagner, the breeder of GG, knows all about it. I've had it happem three times now from indet to det. And I do agree that the taste of the indet, as shown in my book, is better than the det. I don't know what's going on and nor does Tom, from whom I got two indet plants when I was in Pasadena for an heirloom event and he drove down to Pasadena from Bakersfield where he was then living to the same event and also brought those plants which I coddled on the plane back East. But I still say that Green Doctors is much more tasty than any GG I've ever grown. For me Green Zebra doesn't do it.....too agressive, shall I say, taste-wise, but I do know that for many it's sweet and lucious, but not for me. Carolyn

I know a crazy person who puts peds (those nylon footies they give you at the shoe store when you don't have socks on) on her tomatoes when they start getting big. Obviously, she's not growing a ton of plants or anything. She says it works, but the thing with squirrels is that they all have their own personalities, and there's no one tactic that works on all of them. Sey: "Possibly squirrels. They usually haul away the things . Rats, mice eat at the location. Rabbits cannot reach too high." Yes, if it's still left on the plant, it's usually a rat, mouse, vole, etc. If there's no sign of gnawing, it could be a raccoon, which don't gnaw them off but pick them. Then you're really in trouble.