Dear possessive and intrusive fluffy rodents. The tomato cafe is now closed to you. You have taken your share of my tomatoes, squandered them, and tortured me for far too many years for this to continue. I will continue to feed you the damaged tomatoes, those that crack and have blossom end rot – and I think I am generous for that, since you only ever take a bite or two then leave them, useless, except for compost. If you even attempt to get past my barriers, I have no guarantees for you, or your friends. The gauntlet is down. Make my day.
Take that, squirrel beast!
protecting the prized Spotted Roman tomato
The Spotted Roman tomato is getting big, and there are two others on that small plant. I’m greatly interested to see what that will look like at maturity and what it will taste like. It is a paste tomato, like the Romas, so it will be interesting. My cluster tomatoes appear to be ripening as Chocolate or Black Cherries, which makes me happy. I need to make markets for the tomatoes that I continue to plant, so that I’m not always guessing what I have. There are a couple of Yellow Brandywines that should ripen soon, but I’m not sure how you tell, other than feel, since they start yellow, and stay yellow. I’m a simple girl, and need a color coded garden.
In other good garden news, I left several onions alone, well after their projected “date to maturity”. They didn’t bolt, so why pull them. There was one onion, that I’d been so curious about, because it was apparent that it was the mack daddy of them all. And it was.
Big onion
It isn’t the biggest onion I’ve ever seen by far, but it certainly is the largest one I’ve grown. I’m impatient, and am proud that I let this one get as big as it did. (It looks much larger in person, like most caught fish, I guess.)
Austin Urban Gardens 
[…] kinda curious to know how Austin Urban Garden’s pre-emptive strike on her tree-rats is […]
It is working great! All tomatoes remain in tact and safe. It is a little bit of a pain to have to unwrap the enclosure to get to ripe tomatoes, but at least the tomatoes are still there for me. I’ve been tossing the few remaining tomatoes with blossom end rot into the yard, so they won’t starve. They aren’t touching them. Evil rodents.
Hahhah! Evil rodents, indeed. So far, the biggest effect the rodents have on my yard is planting pecan trees everywhere, which I honestly can’t figure out. There are no pecan trees anywhere NEAR my yard (unfortunately.)
We’ll see if they start to notice the tomatoes. Glad your methods are working!