16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Add Actinovate to your Agri-Fos/Exel LG and you will have a systemic and contact fungicide that will control a lot of fungal /bacteria types. Actinovate is a organic product to go along with your bio-friendly Agri-Fos/Exel LG which is phosphorous Acid.
Preventive spraying is the key as once the plants get infected disease is hard to eradicate.
I have never container planted tomatoes but judging from how deep and wide they grow(I just pull few off them few days ago), I can tell that their roots will not grow much deeper than a foot. and will not spread in an area more than 3 sqr-ft. So planting in a bigger container(trash can ?) may not have the pay off. Actually it may have negative effect, by growing a more than needed roots and a lot of foliage. Keep in mind that tomato is an annual and lasts just one season.
Tomato plants can grow roots that are 5 - 6 feet in length. I just finished breaking down my garden and did a study on root size. My German Johnson(indeterminate heirloom) had roots that extended well beyond a foot (depth). It also exceeded 8 ft. in height Also, a few of my plants in 5 gallon buckets had roots growing thru the holes and when measured were 2 feet+ in length. I also want to add that all of my plants were in excellent organic soil with plenty of nutrients. The roots obviously IMO weren't searching for nutrients.
I have grown san marzano redorta 3 years in a row. Great success. Great sauce tomato. I have had good success with seeds from Gray Isbin, Tomato growers supply and from seeds of Italy. You may have had some weather related problems with the cool spring and all the rain up there. Give it another try!
crazyoldgoose in Md
I grew San Marzano Redorta for the first time this year. I haven't grown others of its general type so don't have much for comparison but I like it well enough.
It was a little surprising that the fruits fall off at the slightest touch if it has even a modest blush.
"They were most definitely aphids"
Yeah probably an aphid that is immune to the toxin. I would think water wash would be too difficult to do on delicate tomato leaves. Maybe a garlic solution, or summer oil, or insecticidal soap, all of which should not bother beneficial insects.
Yeah we had a lot of rain, and fungal diseases were all over. I lost one plant of 6. But harvest has been good. Jasper f1 is an excellent cherry and didn't catch any diseases in a very bad environment this year. They taste great, super sweet. I will grow these again.
i did not read all the comments but i just wanted to say that YELLOW LOWER LEAVES, FALLING LEAVES are often associated with the potted plants of various kinds. It is just the plants mechanism to maximize its resources. In that respect , lower leaves do not make a significant contribution to the plant. So they are aborted.
Why The Leaves/Plant Yellow ?
The answer in "too much water.
Because the container plants need to be watered more often, the nutrients are leached out by watering. You add too much rain on top of that, the matter can get worse. That is why you have to feed container plant almost every time you water, BUT with a VERY WEAK solution (say 1/4 of normal recommendation)
With extremely small containers when the plant becomes rout bound, in effect one is growing hydroponically.
Some of the people growing these seeds are now calling them Bigger Zac. As the records of what came from where and growers naming their new seeds after themselves, it is becoming impossible to tell what came from where. I have been growing some of these plants and I must say they continue to look like BZ tomatowise although some of the plants themselves are smaller with smaller root systems. It is interesting. There are seeds now that seem to be stabilized with nice plants and big tomatoes and solid records of what came from where but this is looking like the exception rather than the rule. Pumpkin growers who are growing these Big Zac offshoots are not bothering to keep good records and so the future of these seeds is not all that clear to me. Very confusing and probably not of much interest to most.
John, I find it very difficult ( impossible?) to ID any variety just with a picture and especially if the seeds were acquired in a trade.
What you do show is PL foliage, which is correct, I can't estimate fruit size, they should be in the one # range, the color and shape is about right and there should be 2-3 fruits in a cluster, which I can't see either.
So your call on this one. ( smile).
For those wondering why I was asked the question:
http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Brandywine,_OTV_(Off_The_Vine)
Carolyn
I agree, Ed.
It is weird how little time folks spend on their tomatoes late in the season. Makes no sense. If anything, backyard tomato growers should be spending MORE time trying to coax extra out of their plants. After all, the stores and markets are not offering any tomatoes that taste good later in the season.
So it makes sense to grow at least some cherry toms, and to water them faithfully, at a minimum.
UPDATE:
Here at the PNW, although our first frost might be quite away, but the temperaturea have cooled down to the point that life for tomato plants have become an struggle. Our next 5 days forecasts call for HIGHs under 60F and lows 45 t0 50F.
Even with rigorous pruning since August, I have some green maters (not a whole lot tho). From this point on nothing on tomato plans is going to grow, maybe some might turn color.
So, the decision to control new growth and flowering since about mid August turned out to be the right practices and the simple math behind it proved to be correct.
Lets hear how are you doing , Up there, Over there, ..way up north ..??
We are a little warmer than you - which surprises me. Some highs in the 60's, but more often in the 70's, with lows from mid 40's to mid 50's. I think the plants are slowing down now, but September has been the big harvest month. I have been processing (par-boiling/peeling & freezing) 30-50 tomatoes a week all month. (from only 8 plants)
I am finally starting to see some late blight or a fungus of some sort on the plants, but I suspect the frost will get them before that does.
A few of the plants still have a couple of dozen tomatoes trying to ripen, a couple of them only have a few fruit left. I have been to busy to be as compulsive about continued pruning, but at this point the plants are putting out so little new growth that it isnt an issue.
The Prudens Purple has been putting out beautiful big delicious tomatoes, I am eating most of those and freezing everything else.
I feel good about the decision to keep the new growth pruned - I'll do it again next year.
Since you are just starting out and don't have the experience to accurately calculate your overhead and shipping costs yet, not to mention all the other problems that arise, have you considered the option of just exploring local distribution for the first few years? You can always get into regional or nationwide marketing in a couple of years.
If you are only doing 2000 plants then that number is easy to market locally through local distributor contracts and personal sales and results in a much higher profit margin.
Dave
What kind of tomatoes sell best?
Round and red...
...unless your customers know something about heirloom tomatoes.
If I were to recommend just one heirloom/OP tomato it would be Eva Purple Ball. It has no weird shape, or color, or size, to discourage a customer. It's just a smooth, round, mid-sized, pink tomato, with excellent flavor.
Gary
Hey all,
Posting this on behalf of Mom :)
For my fellow gardeners: Hubby and I just did our own Myth Busting. He gave me a 22" blacklight for my birthday (romantic que no?) because I read that tomato hornworms glow... didn't really believe it but
I had to give it a try. We are here to tell you IT WORKS!!!! Very very cool!
Has anyone seen the flies that lay eggs on the hornworm. I felt so sorry for the worm that I squashed it but I have been encouraging those flies every since. There are u-tube videos that show exactly what I saw. The fly looks like an ordinary big fly or did until I figured out which ones attack the hornworms.
Here is a link that might be useful: trachnid fly
JD's Early black came in earliest at 54 days, and made lots of small (4-6 oz) sweet Black/Red beefsteaks till it shut down in July. Replanted for the fall season and picked my first fall tomato on Tuesday.
Plainsman was new to me this year, I hoped to replace Sioux with a Texas tomato. Three plants made a few tomatoes each and all three died before any of them ripened. Meanwhile Sioux did great, as usual. Will try again one more time but maybe not right away.
Big Dwarf was fair sized and good tasting, but less productive than I had hoped. It will go in a better spot next year.
Cherokee Purple was good despite being uprooted in the garden by a deer, and re-planted late in a too small container to get it out of harms way. It still managed to ripen a few great tasting tomatoes before the heat shut it down.
I grew Tycoon for disease resistance and hybrid vigor and had healthy plants that made a ton of fruit that was not very good to eat at all. They went from green to nearly white as they began to slowly ripen and cook in the sun, after they finally blushed pink it took about two to three weeks for them to turn red, some sat on the counter for several more weeks, but they still never really seemed ripe.
I would still like to find a hybrid red beefsteak for disease resistance and vigor but first it needs to be one that you would want to eat. I'm thinking of trying Big Beef next year and hoping to hear some suggestions.
I am currently enjoying the process of whittling down a long list of new tomatoes to try next year.
I'm also looking for an indeterminate dwarf cherry that tastes great for a container on the deck, and as always, for tomatoes with a Texas heritage to add to my already too long list.
Mike
I'm trying to get a stable OP out of my favourite hybrid, so the majority of my plants this year were the F3 of those. My goal is a 9-ounce(ish), heart-shaped tomato with a complex flavour and enough zing to make your tongue tingly. So far I've just been selecting my best-tasting fruits, but next year I may try a purposeful cross. A few showed up that were really fleshy (like a beefsteak), had great texture, very small locules and good flavour. If I can get that quality crossed with the other, zippier fruits, that'd be great (but I won't sacrifice flavour for the trait). I got a lot of plants/fruits that are on target, so I'm really pleased so far. I also had two friends call me up specifically to gush about the tomatoes (I had given them my extra starts in the spring). That's never happened before! :) As an added bonus, practically all the fruit were able to ripen on the plants outdoors before mid-September - a benefit for our very short season. I've only got a couple of dozen in the house yet ripening up in boxes (we had to get them out of the garden because I was rotating the garlic to that spot, which needed to be planted now).
I also grew Juliet for the kids. They love them (so does hubby), but I don't because the skins are always tough and they're far too sweet.
Lemon Boy was also for the kids; again, too sweet for me. The plant absolutely exploded with so much fruit, though, that the family couldn't keep up, so I've been incorporating a few here and there in sauces. I've still got loads of green fruit on that plant yet. If a person likes sweet yellows, that's certainly a nice one!
San Marzano did well, but I wasn't able to keep up with tying the indeterminates this year. I will grow these again, just to evaluate them when they're properly cared for. They did not to badly considering they were pretty much ignored, though.
Polish Linguisa I want to try again, too. The fruit was lovely, but the plants were pretty wimpy. Perhaps they're just that way or perhaps it was because of the neglect on my part. I want to have a re-try on those.
Roma VF wasn't really worthwhile. The fruit weren't that much larger than Juliet and the flavour wasn't anything special. I'd rather grow the other pastes.
Black Krim finally produced for me this year, but I had to start it much earlier than all the others. It was nice, but had nothing of the "smokey" flavour I always see in its catalogue descriptions. I likely won't grow again.
this fall I would take a soil test and send it to the lab asking for recomendation for a vegitable garden. Also tell them how many square feet of garden you have. Follow there recomendation as what your soil needs.
You might want to contact your state extension agent for advices. Most states offer free soil test as well.
Tim
Welcome to the forum. It appears you just joined GW.
There are FAQ short articles in many forums, including this one. A second way of gathering info about a certain sub-topic would be to Search the existing hundreds of posts. There is even a forum devoted to Computer Help.
Sometimes I jump outside GW for a minute before returning. Check a spelling, or look up a short article.
Our purpose is to exchange info and help others. Sometimes we can be a bit curt when a new person asks a question that is often asked (and has a number of threads or post already going on). It is a good idea to look thru the existing posts before asking a question.
More often than not, when a new person asks a question on a subject they are not familiar with, there is not enough info supplied to answer the question. Even if you had supplied a photo of the plant and tomato, your question could probably not have been answered.
I'm in Ontario too, and most of the red tomatoes are at least starting to turn by now ... it's been a tough year for tomatoes here though, and there are lots of green ones.
When I grow green-when-ripe varieties, there seem to be 2 ways to tell if it is ripe. The first is what others mentioned here, by touch. They do feel differently, like a ripe red tomato just without the colour. Also, lots of green-when-ripe tomatoes don't end up being bright green. I find that a lot of them get a bit of a yellow-ish tinge or a creamy tinge when they are truly ripe. Not all varieties, but lots. So you can go out there are take a look at them.
Northern Ontario, depending on how north you go, canbe difficult to ripen long season red tomatoes, or hot peppers, any veggies that need a long growing season :) I know, from experience! If they are completely green, and supposed to turn red, you should start looking for recipes for green tomatoes (there are some good ones). If they are starting to turn colour but not completely red, you can try bringing them inside (before the first frost hits them) and try to finish ripening them on your windowsill.
Congrats on finding a vegetable garden in your new home! That's quite a bonus! Probably has pretty good soil in those areas too, and next year you can choose your own varieties to plant!