The War on Worms and More Excitement

My plants are growing like crazy!  In the past 5 days, almost 10 baby Roma tomatoes have popped up on one of my plants!  My 2 Romas that have been growing for the past 3 weeks are getting quite impressive, but neither of them have started turning red.  Here's one of them:

I've had a hard time finding the flowering time for the kinds of plants I'm growing - all I can find is the maturation time of the whole plant.  What I really want to know is how long it takes for a single fruit to mature.  From the plant log that I've been keeping, I can tell that it takes between 2 and 3 weeks for a jalapeno fruit to mature.  The first two jalapenos that grew were first logged on Aug. 2 and were picked on Aug. 21.  The third jalapeno was first logged on Aug. 6 and was picked this morning, Aug. 22.  All three are about 2 inches long, but I haven't taste-tested them yet.  In the same amount of time, my two oldest Roma tomatoes have gotten very big, but they're obviously not mature enough to pick yet.  The internet is good for a lot of stuff, but it won't tell me how much longer I have to wait on my tomatoes!

At least a fruit has finally popped up on my Cherry tomato plant!  But more exciting than the Cherry tomato is my Bell Pepper plant!  I finally have Bell Peppers!  I counted 3 this morning, but there could be more.  Just like the Roma tomatoes, they pop up so fast and so tiny that they're hard to spot and keep track of.  Look at how cute the Bell Pepper is!

What I love about this picture is that it shows the entire life cycle so far of the Bell Peppers.  You can see the tiny bud in the middle, then a bud slightly larger and lighter in color as the leaves turn to petals, then the white open flower, and finally the adorable Bell Pepper fruit!  I'm not sure if they're going to get as big as the ones I see in the grocery store, but that would be amazing!  Either way, my dog loves Bell Peppers, so hopefully we'll get to taste them in a few weeks.

But back to the Romas - The War on Worms is still underway!  Here's a picture of the enemy:

It's weapon is that big black spike on its butt, but it obviously doesn't know how to use it because it's pretty harmless.  I picked at least a dozen of these evil worms off my Roma plants yesterday.  My neighbors probably thought I was crazy because I was out there screaming at those dumb worms!  After I couldn't find any more worms, I went back inside and did some research.  Apparently these are Green Horned Caterpillars or Tomato Hornworms because they're specialized eaters.  They attack tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and maybe a couple other veggies.  I've found a couple on my other plants, but they're mainly just on the two Roma plants.  Then there's a completely different kind of caterpillar on my Cherry tomato plant.  They better watch out for me, though, cuz it's on!