16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Ellen, I did get your e-mail and will et back to ou when can.
Right now I have several people to get back to, so am behind on e-mails. Then theree's other stuff to deal with here at home like water spouting all over the place in the basement, and with my walker I can't get down there, so I'm glad the Orkin man saw it when he was down there placing mouse traps( smile)
That's just one situation of many that's happening and it makes life interesting.LOL
Thanks in advance for understanding,
Carolyn
My tomatoes are worn out. The ones producing are making smaller tomatoes. Bugs and rain and drought and heat have taken a toll. The only thing still going like mad is Matt's Wild Cherry - foliage is pretty little tomatoes are bright red. I predict I will have millions of them next year.
Here is a link that might be useful: investigate and plug in your city
Carolyn - do you mean the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange or School of Earth, Society and the Environment ? Thanks for this info - and thanks too for the info from fcivish - all extremely helpful. I have heard of sweat bees and have seen the tiny things....I'm positive this mess I have is hornets (although I still haven't had time to study the difference between those and wasps - maybe the same animal?) - I haven't seen a bumblebee since I left Illinois - used to have a lot of those there. Never been stung by one and I don't even know if they sting - I have so much to learn. So thanks again.
Westy
I mean Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Jeff McCormak was the person who started it but sold it a few years ago. I know Jeff very well and if you were to look at the tomato and pepper offerings I think you'd see that quite a few were from me.
I've linked to the article below so you don't have to go looking for it. There's a wealth of information in that article for anyone interested
Carolyn,
Here is a link that might be useful: SESE article
By ignoring him, you won't do much to prevent hornworm problems this. year. But it is already pretty late this year. However, by ignoring him, two things happen. First, since he is parasitized, he will NOT produce offspring to infect your tomatoes next year. Second, you will be producing MORE parasitic wasps in your area for NEXT year, and each parasitic wasp will be available to lay eggs and parasitize a lot MORE hornworms in the future. Hopefully catching all the hornworms early and preventing future cycles of hornworm infestation.
I had ten plants this summer and had the best luck yet with CP and Indian Stripe....several were one pound or a little bigger. I have a clay 40x40 but grew these in a 8x12 spot of looser soil with bagged manure, topsoil and granular 6-12-12. My neigbor loved them and his daughter who is a missioary saved some seed to take back to Africa. These are coming to the top of my favorites list in a hurry. First clusters sometimes had six tomatoes in one spot. They did blight early but so did all the other 60 plants in the big garden. Too much rain I suppose.
I'm really limited on space in my garden...
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Welcome to the club. You are not alone.
-- try to plann some DWARFS(mabe in pots),
-- Try to plant some determinants.
-- Try to plant in tighter space BUT be ready to do some systematic pruning.
If you do the above combination , you probably can grow TWICE as many plants as regular/standard/conventional inDETERMINANT plants in any given space.
I plant (in average ) one plant in 3 sqr-ft. 4 sqr-ft per inDET plant is just fine. But as I said you have to control them. Right now I have one of ecah : Early Girl, Black Krim and Brandywine in a a 12 sqr-ft bed. And believe me they are HUGE.
Seysonn, my real estate is limited not as much as yours, I do like your strategy though! I have few dwarf and super early det.- not that I like det. but they have their use- and indet. for earilness. I find that I am super happy to have cherry early on but as season progresses I want to have that good heart or beefy slicer far more and cherries are just not the thing anymore. Going to be first time trying real dwarfs that could be grown in 4ôèpot too...
Well it is awfully late in the tomato growing season in your zone to expect much blooming. Any fruit wouldn't have time to develop and ripen anyway.
But if this has been an issue all season long then the most likely cause is excessive nitrogen fertilizers. Excess N causes big beautiful healthy looking plants with lots of branches and leaves but few blooms and even fewer fruit.
So the first question would be what have you been feeding them and how often?
Dave
Thanks for the info so are you saying to make solid rows of a variety?? Or can I do 25 ft of BK and 25ft CP?? My rows will be running east to west . So I should plant the CP and BK furthest south due to the fact the sun is predominantly south of my garden the majority of the year and never really gets to be directly over head. Like puting short people in the front and tall in the back when you take a picture the sun being the camera.. Anyhow for seed saving purposes I have two plots could I split them up to help with cross pollination issues or if I want to save seed I should keep clusters of blooms protected from insects?? My plots are as follows the big one is 20x50ft and the small is 25x30ft they are split by my back lawn about 20X20 thanks for any info regarding my questions
Or can I do 25 ft of BK and 25ft CP?? Like puting short people in the front and tall in the back when you take a picture the sun being the camera.
Sure you can. Just don't intermix the plants. Like a photo? Exactly.
Crossing isn't insects so much as wind so note your prevailing wind direction. But even with plants planted right next to each other the crossing is minimal.
Your BK, Brandy Pink, and CP is likely the only ones you'd want to save seeds from anyway. Mr. Stripey and Brandy red have several sub-strains that may or may not breed true and there is no telling which one Burpee is selling.
Dave
Harvest time !
As of now I have picked 3 BK maters. This has been a long wait since I planted it in late May. That is over 90 days. But it was worth it. I will plant one next season too.
I pick mine real early, ie at color break and let it ripen on the counter. The green shoulders will get smaller if you let it stand longer. But it is just as tasty (except the woody part around the stem)
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Edition: 9/15/13
today I picked few more. Not fully ripe thou. they are catching ups fast now.
This post was edited by seysonn on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 5:07
My season is at least a month behind. I have not had one Brandywine, although I have certainly tasted them in the past, and I have yet to get to taste the large green fruit on my Linnies Oxheart or Fish Lake Oxheart plants. I have never tried those, this is my first year growing them. I have my first small Wes ripening on the counter, none tasted this year but I have in past years. I have had tomatoes from Sophies Choice, KB, Orange Minsk, Estlers Mortgage Lifter and Cherokee Purple Heart this year.
Linnie's Oxheart was reported by Victory Seeds as being 97 days from plant out to maturity. That would be the latest that I have ever planted.
This post was edited by sue_ct on Tue, Oct 1, 13 at 22:37
I found it a little surprising as well. All we hear about is how cold the weather is for tomatoes but never that its too warm.
I've grow tomatoes before but outside in the garden. They didn't get much love and if I got a good crop it is a nice surprise. Growing them in a greenhouse for the first time this year was... educational. :) By the end of the summer my husband was saying "hot is good!" and I was saying "NO, it needs to be cooler!"
Something else you might be interested to know is that high temperatures also affect pollination. So you know those warms summers where we all expect to get tons of tomatoes and then they set fruit late??? Its because its TOO warm. lol Apparently the "viability" of tomato pollen greatly depreciates if not turning sterile in temperatures of 90F (32C). Go figure!!!
Tomatoes thrive best in a given range of temperature. It partially depend on the cultivars too. It is a know FACT that most tomatoes shut down at extreme heat (over 90F).
I thin the optimum temp range is 70F to 85F.
Tomato plants are pretty cold hardy. I have experimented them to endure lows down to 38F. So the mature plant will be the same.
But the question of ripening the fruits is another issue. In my guesstimation, Both growth and ripening will be dramatically slowed down and the fruits will be more on the dry side.
Initially is was said that fermentation removed the gel capsules on the seeds, and it does, and also with the help of enzymes from the fungi in the fungal mat that you let form frees the seed from tomato tissue,, and it does, and it was also said that it inactivated any seed borne viruses, and that is wrong since all viruses to date have been found to be in the endosperm of the seed and fermentation can only address pathogens on the seed coat.
And it does, in terms of eliminating most of the tomato foliage pathogens as well as some systemic ones. And this we know from the work of Dr. Helene Dillard which I've posted here several times.
I will only use fermentation to process seeds, not any of the oxidative methods b'c there's no data to confirm what the oxidative methods can do although many have searched for such data.
There are a couple of good places to go to about how to do fermentation correctly. One is at Tania's T-base site and another is at Victory Seeds,
Carolyn
Advantage of fermentation Method:
In the conventional method you cannot separate the good , viable seeds from the worthless one. Because of the gel around it.
But when fermented, the seeds are freed from the gel. So when you process the product of fermentation in a tall cup/glass( by adding water and stirring) the viable seeds would sink to the bottom. So by pouring about half of the water, the particles and the bad seeds are discarded. You keep doing this several times and end up with a bunch of heavy viable seeds at the bottom of the cup.
The advantage is that there is a leas chance that any of those seeds will no germinate.
I think I might have to be on safe side and do cover bags for next year as I grow many varieties at my community garden and we are surrounded by gazillions of other gardeners tomato plants so no saying what is going on. Regarding Garden Peach, I did get different plant from my friendôs saved seed which produced non fuzzy golf ball sized bicolor, nice and tart in taste. I saved those seeds too. T&M Black Russian seed packet produced at least 3 different varieties of the plant, one of them does resemble original picture.
Garden Peach has several subset species being sold under that name by several different vendors. Different sizes, different variations in coloring, although they are all "yellowish" bicolors, and less or more 'fuzz'. It is a good example of the contamination of a variety mentioned above.. Add traders to the mix and the variety purity % falls even more.
And when growing in a community garden - so different from the average home garden - where intensive cropping and cross-wind layouts are common, bagging would be the best bet.
T&M Black Russian seed packet produced at least 3 different varieties of the plant, one of them does resemble original picture.
But do keep in mind that vendors have problems with cross-packet seed contamination. In other words it isn't necessarily cross-pollinated seed but different seeds accidentally included in the same packet. Needless to say some vendors have better controls than others.
Dave