What the heck do you do about birds. I've almost given up growing any beefsteaks because in invariably when I say, "ah that tomato is just about ready to picked," the next day 1/2 of the tomato is gone.While the birds look well feed. You'd think with 4 cats, two of which are quite good hunters, it wouldn't be such a problem.
I feel your pain-- my father-in-law was on a tomato kick while they were living here. Somehow instead of growing his own darn tomatoes in his yard I was expected to grow them in ours. We had over a dozen plants and enough yield to feed the National Guard, but at times our backyard looked like scenes from "The Birds".
We kept the plants off the ground with Wal-Mart's 99-cent metal frames that you stick in the ground and drape the plants over. We looped a few feet of fishing line a couple of times through CDs (to keep them from sliding around) and tied the ends between the frames.
The birds can't see the fishing line very well so they keep running into it, and they don't like the way the CDs move & glitter in the sunshine. They get discouraged and move on to other food sources.
We also began picking the bigger tomatoes as soon as they started turning red and ripening them indoors. Of course I was picking cherry tomatoes several times a day!
We discouraged the occasional critter with Volck oil spray and fertilized with Miracl-Gro, although the fertilizer was probably overkill. My FIL kept complaining that the weather wasn't hot enough (over 90 degrees) to get a really good crop. If that's really the case then I'd hate to be in charge of a successful tomato garden!
