Well he is dying. Half of him is dead and the other part is giving up section by section as the tomatoes ripen. It's been a sad year for this plant. I will end up with about 25 tomatoes in total, which is pretty weak. And even though each tomato has been absolutely breathtakingly sweet and perfect, I still wanted MORE!
Maybe it's my own darned fault for giving my money to the evil corporation that is Wal-Mart, but I saw this little plant in front of the store and it was so cute and had tomatoes on it, and the price was good, and I was easily impressed. The minute I got him home he tried dying a million times on me. Next year I will have to take myself elsewhere to find plants for my homestead (and yes I am still calling it a homestead, I now have a decorative pepper plant, and a succulent of some sort...so I'm growing things. Don't judge.) :P
You can kind of see the dying action thingie he's doing. The leaves, then the stem just shrivel up and die off. It started out looking like a phosphorous deficiency, with purple leaves, then all sorts of colors appeared and it started dying. I am waiting for the final 5 to ripen and then I will be taking him to the recycle bin. I don't want to compost him if he has a blight of some sort...I don't know if that will pass it on to other things planted in that soil? I guess I better google that and see.