16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

If you got it at Kroger, probability that it is Heirloom Black, a hybrid introduced to compete in the commercial "heirloom" market.

Thanks Farmerdill ... yes, It was marked"Heirloom". As you pointed out it is some kind of so-called BLACK. I figure it must be productive to grow it commercially. My Black Krim performed very poorly this past season. I hope that this one will be better.

helenh - Nothing special - It comes from a Farmers Co-op
The poisons they sale now are very weak. BONIDE - Vegetable, Fruit & Flower. I only spry when stink bugs become a problem. The poison was weak but it did fair.
I used a different spry for my peach tree and it only made the worms fatter. Total loss. BONIDE Fruit Tree Spray and I followed directions.

Corgikarma - I once meet a man at Wal Mart that worked for the people who solded the store tomatoes that looked perfect. He told me the same as what you have written.
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You said = Grocery store tomatoes are picked green, treated to ripen and shipped across country. That's why they look perfect but have no flavor.

Well I had a small canning party Sey, the mixed Green Ramapo and 4th of Julys with shreds of carrots and napa cabbage with some bell peppers for the non spicey people that I plan on bringing to thanksgiving. Then the others are a mixture of Poblomo (what ever it is called lol), Beaverdam, Some more green tomatoes for fillers, carrots and cabbage again, Beaver Dam, Hungarian Hot wax, Large red cherry (but did not color yet),Bell peppers and some secret Cayenne peppers chopped that were just about turning color to surpize people.

I didn't want to mess with the scotch bonnets. Next pickling will resume in 2 weeks if the tomaotes dont turn. Also I checked out my plants it was hovering around 32F last night and they seem to be ok, next close frost is in about 10 days. Also right before the evening I very heavinly watered the fabric bags and soaked the surounding area.

O ! Those pickles look so tempting. I love colorful mixed veggies pickles like those.

This is the season for celebration. It has been a tradition among many nations around the world to celebrate fall harvest.

HAPPY HARVEST !

This picture shows my ollas with a tomato plant, garlic and lettuce. I have four 1 gallon ollas. This picture was in Feb 2012, the tomato plant was a volunteer which was an experiment to let it grow in winter. I usually put 3 tomato plants in the area in spring. The ollas are about a foot from the plants (not perfectly evenly spaced) with each plant next to 2 ollas. It doesn't freeze here and we don't have a mosquito problem. I haven't broken any of them yet. We even had raccoons dig one out of the ground and it still was not broken.

I still deep water the ground with a hose periodically in addition to filling the ollas.

This is an age old concept for desert areas to conserve water, where there is very little water and rain,
We are faced with opposite problem, a lot of time, a lot of places :: TOO MUCH WATER

I'm no expert but my first thought was that I'd be skeered !

One fall I took some very small (like 4") healthy looking tip and sucker cuttings from a plant that was going down to disease. The ideas was to see if I could overwinter them in the house. They did fine in a sunny south window, even set some small fruit in the spring, and eventually were planted back out into the garden. I think the dryer environment in the house was not conducive to whatever fungal diseases the mother plant carried in our cold fall weather, because the cuttings remained healthy. It's worth a try -- you can always toss them out if they start having problems.

Gray mold or botrytis is another disease that survives on plant debris over winter and can also be seedborne
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Thanks
In that case, a question comes up: IS THE BACTERIA SOIL BORNE OR AIR BORNE ?
If it is soil borne how did it get into my beds. It was the first year that I built and used them with purchased soil/compost. BUT then I bought all the seedlings.

Pick them a little on the green side and dip them in a solution of bleach and water to kill any nasties on the skin. Let them dry and then box them up. They'll keep then.

I know tha basics of that kind of grafting.
You have the two seedlings side by side.
Make small cuts (partial removal of stems. Then wrap them together until they kind of weld together.
Then cut off the top of one(potato) and the stem of the other one(Tomato). Now you have top of tomato and root of potato.
But it is easier to be said than done, I think.

Potato berry can produce seeds(like tomato seeds) If you plant them you will get potato plant.

Nevr tried the actually grafting, but the pomato was a standard advertisement in the Sunday supplements (newspapers) in the 60's and 70's. The one I remember that named the varieties used the Subarctic tomato grafted onto a Red Norland potato

If it weren't so late, Linnies Oxheart would be a new go to variety for me. In a really bad year, when most others gave few, and smaller than usual fruits, this one is still blushing a 1lb+ tomato almost daily, perfectly formed and beautiful. I can't wait to try it in a good year.

Opalka was the most productive, followed by Black Cherry.

Neither had exceptional flavor. Not bad, understand, just average.

Best flavored were Marianna's Peace and Stump of the World; unfortunately these weren't terribly productive.

Tomatoes accumulate sucrose which is produced in the leaves via a complex series of steps starting with water and carbon dioxide from the air. Vacuolar invertase breaks the sucrose down into glucose and fructose for further metabolism. Variations in the gene that produces vacuolar invertase and a few others associated with it result in sucrose accumulation in the fruit. LA4104 from TGRC has a variant of this gene that causes more sucrose to accumulate in the fruit.

If you want to have sweet flavor, you have to go back to plant health to ensure the leaves have everything needed to produce sugar in the first place. Once it is produced, it must be readily transported to the fruit. Once in the fruit, it has to be stored instead of being metabilized for fruit growth. That means a LOT of genes are involved in the processes and therefore there is a LOT of room for genetic selection.

With that said, get some Crnkovic Yugoslavian seed and see what you think.

Yes, lots of steps and enzymes involved, but none of that can happen unless photosynthesis produces the energy compounds ATP and GTP which are necessary to faciliate those reactions and end products.

So IMO conditions that lead to the most efficient photosythesis are the most important.

I still say that taste is in the mouth of the one tasting fruits and taste is perceptual and personal and depends on many other variables.

I can taste variety A and think it's sweet but another person can taste it and say it's a spitter.

BRIX levels measure soluble sugars, all of them,not just sucrose.

Crnkovic Yugoslavian? Yes, a variety I introduced by first listing it in the SSE YEarbook. From a fellow faculty member Yasha Crnkovic. And I've grown it a lot. Is it the sweetest variety I've ever tasted? I don't think so but it's a great variety IMO as well.

Carolyn

I grew all three this year. I was most impressed with Supersonic. It was larger than Ramapo and Jet Star. There was very little cracking. It was the most productive of the three. And the flavor was very good. I did not find the flavor of Ramapo or Jet Star to be any better than Supersonic. Supersonic will be my main tomato next year. Will also have an Early Girl and a Besser. Besser produced hundreds of golf-ball size fruits, there was no cracking, and the flavor was very good. It is a beautiful tomato on a veggie platter. It does need a lot of room - a very vigorous plant.

I never grew Jetstar or Supersonic but I grew the Ramapo and 4th of July this year. But I will try the Supersonic and Jetstar + the Morton next year.

As far as the Ramapo F1, I estimate that I had about 65+ per each plant so far out of 5 plants along with 1 4th of July plant that produced around the same. There are still 45+ tomatoes in total approching maturity that have begun about a month ago to sprout.

Last year I grew the Early Goliath but was brand new and 4 plants only produced about 40 maters but I think that was my bad since I did not fertilize ect and being new and did not water properly.

The photo below shows the head on shot of theRamapos in its current stage (the fourth of July is 2nd on the right but it is hard to see) and the last photo is one of the Ramapos with a Kellog Yellow Beefsteake in the backround that was pretty good too but was planted late in the season (around late June).

I guess what I am trying to say is that the Ramapo does not give up in producing for me yet even with 45F nights and mid 60s, however we have a frost approaching next week so it will come to an end,

- Mr Beno

This post was edited by thebutcher on Sun, Oct 20, 13 at 17:08

I think Earl of Edgecombe is a very cute plant but I didn't grow it in a pot. It is a smaller tomato with orange fruit.

And I would suggest that you take a look at some Dwarf varieties developed in the past few years with colors and sizes not seen before.

The link below is from Tania's website.

If you click on the various varieties you can see pictures and comments and seed sources for each one if you click on Seed Availability.

They would be perfect for a patio and indeed one of the incentives behind starting this project was to make available varieties for container growing.

Hope that helps,

Carolyn, and nothing wrong with Earl of Edgecombe,which I introduced by first listing it in the SSE YEarbookin 1997, I love that variety, I just think the Dwarfs might be more interesting for a patio.

http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Earl_of_Edgecombe

Here is a link that might be useful: New Dwarf Varieties

It is usually referred to as "zippering" and is a physiological response related to pronounced fluctuations in air temps at pollination time and during early fruit development. Most of the time zippering of fruit runs vertically but it turns up like this on paste types sometimes because of the long shape of the fruit.

Not really much you can do to prevent it but most of the fruit is still edible.

Dave

This post was edited by digdirt on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 11:24

Thanks, Dave!

Thanks. I pulled them up today and planted spinach, kale, and garlic. Do you compost your vines or put them in the trash?

I never compost my tomato plants (or any solanaceous plants) because I am worried about carrying over diseases from year to year, but I may be a little overcautious. If you are very good about building a compost pile that heats up enough so it destroys seeds and most diseases, and you are sure your plants didn't have any diseases that can overwinter, it's probably safe.

There was another thread on this subject a few days ago, and many experienced growers do compost their vines. See: Composting tomato plants.

Back in the 20's and 30's many of the basic traits of tomatoes was studied and here's a favorite link of mine having to do with root structures.

Scroll down until you come to TOMATO.

I think one of the most imporrtant concepts is that if you direct seed tomatoes, as some commercial farmers in warm weather areas do, same for some home growers, you get a tap root structure.

But if you sow seeds and transplant the seedlings just once you get the desired fibrous root structure shown in the pictures, which is far superior b'c the additional rootlets can take up more water and nutrients than can a taproot structure.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Root Structure

I have not pulled mine out yet but couple years back I gave someone plants that I have planted about 4 weeks earlier so I had to dig it up middle June I thought it would be easy deal... oh my... that thing was huge!