Week 13 - Week 14 

After a long wait the fruits have finally ripened so it takes 14 weeks for the whole cycle of life in a tomato to restart. It takes 8-9 weeks for the plants to develop the fruits and another 5-6 weeks for the fruits to ripen and be ready to disperse its seeds.  In one of the blog entries for the plant journal I have managed to dissect a tomato fruit and I had asked why it had the jelly stuff around the seeds I now realize that this could serve as buffer between the seed and the enviroment such as the gut of an animal. 

The tomato plants are now around 167 cm to 200 cm high. These plants are still growing despite bearing fruit. Notice that in the second picture the plants at the end near the shed have grown higher than the rest. What I noticed is that in the morning these plants had beed shaded by the shed roof they only recieved light of equal amount to the rest of the plants at around 9-10 am. It seems that this has triggered the growth of the plant to go into over drive compared to the others.

In the week 13 I also managed to look at yellow leaf curl problem. I noticed that the curling problem could be related to an enlargement of the vascular tissues of the leaf. A normal leaf has the transport tissues of around 0.5 - 1 mm in affected tissues it is around 2 - 2.5 mm in diameter so there could be an abnormality introduced by the virus on the leaf. I tried to look at the normal leaf and diseased leave with a 100x and 450x microscope I managed to borrow from the microbiology lab at work. But it seemed to be the same. I also noticed that some of the plants that have been affected have gotten better.