16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

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.

CP has been one of my best performers this year, and the first to ripen.
John A

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...

What does summer pruning of peach trees benefit the tree?

What does summer pruning of peach trees benefit the tree?

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 Black Krim was very bland tasting. Super Beefstake, grow in the same area, were delicious and had twice the number of tomatoes. Others are reporting success with Black Krim so I'm encouraged to try them one more time next year.

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

BRANDYWINE.... scrapped, scratched , terminated and zapped for ever. LOL

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 have seen a little of that before on grocery store purchased tomatoes - but I dont know what causes it. I would think they would be fine for sauce.

This is calllus tissue which represents undifferentiated and immature cells . I am not sure of the conditions that favor this in a garden environment. In the laboratory, one produce callus tissue by manipulating nutrients and phytochemicals in growth media for the purpose of micropropagation and breeding experiments.

Someone asked which variety the farmers had at the farmers market. I asked today and the answer was Carolina Golden. They taste delicious, but I will not be growing them because they are a determinate variety and I have a string preference for indeterminates. The Carolina Golden is also a hybrid, and I usually prefer heirlooms even though I do grow hybrids from time to time. :)

Off the top of my head here's some faves in the Orange/Gold/Yellow group.

Aunt Gertie's Gold

Orange Minsk and also the heart version

Earl of Edgecombe

Jaune Flammee

Kellogg's Breakfast and its PL version KBX

Lillian's Yellow Heirloom,clear epidermis so ripens up yellow.

Yellow Brandywine (PLatfoot strain)

All are large fruited indeterminates.

Hope that helps and can pick my fave three, I think,if asked, that have done wonderfully for me in my zone 5 having been grown several times each.

Carolyn

Thirsty dirt

I agree with the fact that a foliar spray of epsom salts can and will help with the absorption of Calcium. Will a foliar spray of epsom salts lower your PH not likely. You would have to apply pounds of epsom salts to the soil to get enough sulfur to lower the PH. So if you mix 1 tablespoon of epsom salts with a gallon of water and spray this on your plant how is this going to lower your PH. Remember when you foliar spray a plant you mist it on the tops and bottoms of the leaves to the point of drip. I think a product that contains both a chelated calcium and chelated magnesium would be a better choice than epsom salts.
Tim

It seems that whether its a calcium or potassium deficiency, it always seems to be made worse by inconsistent water and temperatures...

Since this first tomato with BER I've been very careful of my watering practices and have only found 2 more with BER - and ironically it was after we were gone for two days and the plants weren't watered.

After returning the a regular watering schedule we haven't seem any more with BER.... and they are all starting to ripen nicely. :)

When the season is done I'll have to test the soil and see if its low, or high, in anything.

Thanks for the help.

This is a neat video

http://www.albionplantnutrition.com/plant-nutrition/efficacy/#video

Unckle Dunkle and Growneat Corporation !!!

I have a Black Krim and am getting ripe fruits from it, right now.

The size, shape and color of those in your top picture matches better than 90% to what I got, BLACK KRIM. It is likely that it has bee mislabeling or accidental tag switch.

Thank you all so much! My black krim plant was picked over by a gardening buddy and I didn't get to see how they looked!! I must have planted one out of order :)

I really appreciate all of your feedback! Thank you!