Do tomatoes need sun or just the leaves?

This year I have been plagued with critters (rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, birds--take your choice) who take one or two bites out of not-quite-ripe fruit (both tomatoes and acorn squash) and leave the rest to irk me. I have tried netting, anti-rabbit sprays, etc. with no success. My current attempt is to place containers like plastic pots or two quart milk bottles with the tops cut off around the fruit that have almost reached full-size. So far this seems to have some promise.

My question is, does the fruit need sun to develop, or just the leaves? Some of the tomatoes enclosed in black pots seem slow to ripen, but that may just be a statistical anomaly.

P.S. I have a green cherry tomato I don't especially favor but was growing as an experiment. Naturally the critters ignore it.

I've noticed that tomato fruits exposed directly to sunlight get sunscald, but I don't know if they actually need sunlight without full exposure in order to reach maturity.

Interesting question Don.

Don, tomato plant foliage is what needs the sun b'c it's photosythesis that makes the energy necessary to form all the enzymes and other organic products that lead to the ripening process of the fruits.

With a good foliage cover sunscald should not be a problem although it can be with some of the wispy, droopy heart and paste varieties.

Sunscald turns out to be a problem when harvesting begins and the foliage is rearranged in the process of doing that so that fruits are often more exposed to the sun.

Carolyn, who for a whole week could post with her regular browser but now it's back to using another browser just for DG, so my replies will be delayed. Sorry.

Thanks, Carolyn, that is what I guessed.

Update: I harvested one ripe protected tomato today. Another cover, which I didn't tie up securely enough, was knocked down by a critter and the tomato half eaten. Sigh.

Don, some folks will pick their tomatoes at the blush stage. Look at the blossom end and if you see it beginning to show a pink color you can pick it and it'll ripen just fine in the house (or at least somewhere the squirrels/birds won't get it).

Carolyn, didn't you once say a tomato as all the "flavor" it's gonna get at that stage? Sugars/acids, etc?

Also, am wondering which browser you are using. My computer is so old I have to use FireFox for most sites but sometimes have to open Internet Explorer to use certain features for other sites. No fun, especially since my IE browser is version 6 and I can't upgrade to the newer ones. Just wondering if you are in the same boat.

Shoe

Shoe, nope, I'm not the one who has said that all the taste a fruit will have is present at the blush stage but there are others who have said that.

About browsers.

I've posted here at DG for well over 10 years, as you know, and never a problem. Then out of the blue big problems. I still use AOL which is what I started out with in the early 80's, of course always upgrading when necessary or told to.

Last week I could post with no problems, then back to problems. I'm on IE right now and that works fine. Recently my IE browser was updated which also updates my AOL browser since IE also uses MS as a browser, but it's well known that the MS browsers of AOL and IE are not identical.

So the only time I have to go to IE is when I can't post at DG. Absolutely no problems at any other site be it a message site or not, in terms of dowloading this or that or whatever.

So there you go.

Wicked weather here, tornado warning, severe T storm warnings and we just had three hours straight of lightning and thunder but the tornado warning was cancelled.

And more to come tonight, tomorrow and beyond and we got devastated here in upstate NY with Irene just a week ago today.

Being chained to this walker it's a big deal if I lose phone and/or power, for all the obvious reasons but my medi-alert system has a battery that goes for 24 hrs if the power is out but that means nothing if the phone is also out.

Sorry, for the off topic but that's the way it is. For the past few hours I've been cowering in bed with my hands over my eyes so I don't have to see the lightning and trying to create pictures in my minds eye of places I/ve travled as well as songs that I've sung in the past. Anything to help calm this scardy cat.

Carolyn, who really does laugh when thinking of being raised on the family farm and the weather did what it did without radars on TV or computers and the like. AS akid the big event was when hirricanes would hit FL and they'd fly the plants from various air bases down there up to Albany sirport and lots of folks drove up to the airport to watch the planes land. LOL Anf when it was bad weather when the peaches needed to be picked many neighbors would help. And if there were ice storms neighbors would come to out home b'c at the time we had a coal burning fuirnace and my mother cooked with Propane so she made souls and stuff for everyone and we were all warm b'c with the power out most at that time needed power for both heat an cooking.

Hang in there, Carolyn. It'll be OK! Don't you have a cell phone as a backup in case your phone or power goes out? Even if the power to the charger goes out, the phone would work for a day - or you could plug it into a car. Seems like that would be a good thing for you, and a medi-alert system should be able to call through a cell phone, I'd think.

These F2 plants from the cross I made are absolute monsters, they're very thick and 3' above the 5' fence they're trained on, so they're standing 8' tall. The branches would probably be 9' or even 10' long if they were straightened out. Anyway, I can't even see into the tangle now, and I'm picking big ripe tomatoes from places where the sun doesn't shine - it's real dark in there.

So nope, tomatoes don't need sunshine - only the leaves do.

Carolyn, when I was a kid Springfield, Mo. didn't have any airliners or military planes around. There were only small private planes to be seen, and they were rare. When we'd hear an airplane, we kids would run outside yelling "ONE!" or "TWO!". We were betting on how many wings the plane would have, as biplanes were as common as those with one set of wings.

Dating myself, huh?

I'm hanging, as you asked me to Ozark. LOL

No, no cell phone here b/c I'm blocked in the directions of the two nearest towers b/c of terrain. Can't get any bars here to call out. But driving down the road a half mile works OK.

I felt kinda sorry for the nurses, aids and PT folks after each of my several surgeries since they could receive their cell calls here but couldn't respond with same. And there is that antique way of communicating via what's called phone lines, so they did that.

I think they're called land lines? LOL

I live in a remote area and cell coverage is very spotty and has been a big issue actually, for emergency service responses. Verizon is in the process of building more towers along the Northway, the major FAST way north that goes from Albany to Canada, but that doesn't change anything for me.

Carolyn, who is so darn glad that your F2 growouts are giving you so much gene segregation, thus diversity. And who also sees some ripening tomatoes out there but she can't go out there and Freda starts back to work tomorrow and it's supposed to be cold and rainy here through Thursday anyway. What lousy tomato results this year. But how wonderful to have Shoe and Craig L and Lee in NC who are helping with seed production and Neil in IL doing same.

Ozark, whose wife went into his carpenter shop yesterday and came out saying "Omigosh, did something DIE in there?"

She didn't know about the 16-oz. cups of F3 seeds (three different strains) I'm fermenting on the workbench. After that, I rinsed the seeds in the oldest cups and spread them on plates to dry - so the smell is considerably improved this morning.

Yep, I see on my weather page you are gonna get heavy rains probably throughout the nite, and flash floods. I bet the falls/creek in front of your house are really churning!

I'm like you, ever since getting hit by a tornado years ago I freak when the weather gets persnickety, usually staying wide awake till it passes and I can relax again.

Wish I could figure out your browser problem. Hopefully Melody, Terry, or other admin can take a peek behind the scenes and see how your computer is interacting with their server. I also wonder if you have a virus program that may be blocking DG downloads and such. If so you'd have to get a computer guru to come visit ya and check it out for you.

Sam, congrats on the F3 project...looks like it it going really well for ya. All my seeds are now fermented and nearly dried; now they are all over the place on plates in the shoffice. Maybe this week I'll get them labeled and bagged.

Shoe (off to plant some collards and cabbage before our big rains get here, two days of it, so they say)

Horseshoe:
I thought of picking off the partially ripe fruit, but the critters beat me to it. If they only pull off the tomato and take one bite instead of mangling the entire thing, I can sometimes let the damaged fruit sit inside until it is ripe and then slice off the bitten part--half a tomato is better than none?

I have been experimenting more with the two quart plastic milk bottles. Cutting around three sides about halfway down leaving the other side for a hinge gives me a shield I can clamp around one or two tomatoes if they grow in a bunch, and secure with a strip of duct tape. So far that design seems to be working well. Hey, maybe I can market them as Fruit Forts, Rodent Rebuffers, or Tomato Tents!

"Hey, maybe I can market them as Fruit Forts, Rodent Rebuffers, or Tomato Tents!"

Hah! Grinnin' here! Great names for a great idea! :>)

I'd watch the fruit though, hopefully they won't roast in the fruit forts; wonder if they should be painted or somehow made to not heat up like the greenhouse effect, etc.

Shoe (hoping you get some tomatoes before the critters do)

That's interesting about your browser problems, Carolyn. I'm not very sophisticated about the topic, but all of a sudden some moths back I stopped being able to access DG from home. Same computer, same system, etc., I just can't open it anymore. (Decided I was more productive at home without it, though, so I'm just spending less time here.)

I have no idea what the solution is, but it's refreshing to know I'm not alone with the problem!

Hmmm...sounds like it it time to let DG admin know of these things. Maybe they can read ya'lls servers or something and find a common link.

Shoe

J, I can usually open the site, sometimes fast, sometimes slower,and then it started with my not being able to post and now it's gone beyond that so that I can't even open some of the threads to read them. And for a whole week recently I had no problems at all. But now back to can't open some threads and post/

So I switch to IE, where I am now, and all is fine.

All I can say is that all the years I've participated here, using AOL as my browser, I only started having these problems a couple of months ago.

Carolyn

Carolyn, I'm not a computer whiz. However, my IE started acting unstable last week - slow to start, hanging up, and all that. I went to the Microsoft website and downloaded IE again, and that didn't help. So - I went to the Mozilla website and downloaded the latest version of Firefox. It's free, and now I'm using Firefox as my browser. I LIKE it - it's fast and it has lots of features and conveniences I didn't have before. You might want to try it.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/