16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

I don't know either. Will have to see Alice about that one.

I had the perfect pair to go with that... Of fused cherry tomatoes. Someone thought they were so funny he ate them while making funny faces, so no picture.

Siberian
New BiG Dwarf
Bush Beefsteak
Manitoba

I have been looking at Tatiana base as well as tomatofest early lists. While early and tasty are oxymoron to a degree I am looking for something like Gary list above, on scale from 1 to 10. Matina, Kimberley and Jaune Flamme seems to get better reviews so they go on the list, am growing Peacevine this year,
Any word on following
Bursztyn
Kootenai
Kotlas
Sibirskiy Skorospeliy
Sugary Pounder
Tambovskiy Urozhayniy

So F1 hybrid is just 1st generation of a cross pollination. Is it possible that it might look like just one of its parents, instead of being different and new?
Therefore, OP seems to be a much better choice because what you see is what you'll get . NO surprises there.

$$$$$$

We just got through discussing fhow F1 hybrids are made in a very recent thread here, but I can't find it right now.

The earliest hybrids were the result of crossing just two parents , ones such as Big Boy, Better Boy, Ramapo, etc.

More modern hybrids are NOT the resul tof crossing just two parents. There are two breeding lines and up to a total of 8 parental inputs, and then the last OP in each line is crossed to form the F1..

If you cross two varieties that look the same , as in two round reds, the F1 will be a round red and may look like one of theparents, the phenotype,but since the F1 is the result of putting together the genes of both it will have traits from both, the genotype..

IN the thread I could n't find I gave a link to a search here at GW on the development of hybrid varieties.

Carolyn

Thank you everyone for your comments, it is much appreciated. I've learned a lot from this thread.

Joeroot, the Booty is quite tasty, and yes, very red. Took one out with us yesterday, out to eat, to have on our burgers.

I'm having to pick them as soon as they "blush" as the birds are liking them too. And a few chipmunks and other small 4 legged critters! But I've been able to harvest enough to have canned 7 quarts and made 10 quarts of spaghetti sauce.

Posted by ncrealestateguy (My Page) on Sat, Jul 27, 13 at 21:55

3-4 hours of sunlight will not grow tomato plants of any vigor... sorry.
********************************************

I am growing them with 3 - 4 hours direct sun .
here is picture

This post was edited by seysonn on Sat, Aug 3, 13 at 8:24

The question is: In what did you plant them? It looks like the plants were planted in a crab grass lawn. Was the planting bed improved?

The leaves need sun and the roots need good soil and drainage.

I haven't tasted my Brandywine yet. We are having company for dinner Saturday and will likely use it in a salad.

I saw heirlooms in a local store this morning selling at $5.00 per pound!

I also live in central Indiana and didnt plant out until the first week of May. Typical plant outs for my area are somewhere around May 15 through end of month. We had one frost in my area after my plant out. One of my Brandywines has put out several blooms....all but one of which dropped. I think there may now be another tomato on that plant. My other BW are doing just fine and the taste is great and have produced many tomatoes.

I used 5 gal buckets as frost protection on mine during that cold night.

robertz6: how long do the mothballs last in the rain?

Locally, it's recommended that we sprinkle them on areas of yard that overlap streambanks, to repel copperhead snakes from the yard.

I have a suggestion on the topic:
Either put the squirrel in the cage or cage the tomato, or cage them both lol.

This post was edited by seysonn on Sat, Aug 3, 13 at 1:24

Debby, there are many eggplant varieties and they come in ALL kinds of shapes so that doesn't help much.

Does pasta type to you mean a paste variety used for sauce? A long red one with perhaps a knob at the blossom end?

If red, there are hundreds of long red ones, but I don't know of any with ruffles at the stem end.

I don't really think anyone will be able to ID it for you even if you show a picture since so many look alike.

Lastly, there are more problems with traded seeds in terms of crossed seeds and wrong varieties than one would ever find at commercial places, which is one reason I don't trade seeds. I used to do a wrong varieties thread here at GW, so I know that to be true. And I read at several message sites and in general it is still true , but does depend on which specific site (s) you do your trading,.

Carolyn

What you are asking is impossible to do even with seeing the tomato and the plant first hand. Much less from a photo or just a vague description.

There are literally hundreds of possibilities.

Just eat and enjoy if they are any good but do not try to apply a name to them and please do not trade any of the seeds. The trading pool is already far too contaminated with wrongly labeled seeds.

Dave

You can also disinfect them even further as many of us seed savers do by using a 1:10 chlorine bleach brief soak or spray on the seeds before drying for storage.

Dave

On the subject of saving tomato seeds, a question or two. Do folks prefer large seeds to smaller; and does lighter or darker color matter?

I usually just take seeds from my one or two best heirloom cherry tomato plants of the season.

I have two heirlooms ( Black Krim and Brandywine), both are doing very poorly. Maybe it is my climate to blame. Everything else (all hybrids) are doing ok. The next year I have to be a bit picky about the heirlooms and OPs.

Any good suggestions for cool PNW?

Well, there's this:

Here is a link that might be useful: Rutgers Tomato Tasting

Stringy malformed leaves sounds like herbicide damage. I'd be suspicious of any compost from yard wastes unless I knew the people whose yards it came from. Did the city test it for herbicides (and other chemicals)?

I agree with ajsmama, it sounds like you have some herbicide residue in your compost. The unfortunate thing about yard waste from unknown sources is that there is a very high likely hood that some of them use something like weed and feed or other herbicides to control broadleaf weeds in their lawns. Since tomatoes are "broadleaf" plants and very sensitive to herbicides, they will show typical symptoms such as mishapen and curling leaves.

If you do a Google image search for herbicide damage in tomatoes, I am pretty sure you will see pictures that resemble your tomato plants.

Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to correct the problem unless you want to go as far as repotting them in some clean commercial growing medium (not "soil" since you are growing in containers) after removing as much of the compost as possible from the roots. The drawback to that is it will probably stress the plants tremendously and set them back a lot.

Regrettably, this experience is probably going to have to go into your live and learn file.

Betsy

Never too late to transplant if you can take a large rootball with it, IMHO.

The neigbor just moved some of his large container tomatoes into the ground. Then the deer ate all these whole plants!

OK, I moved plants around and gave most of them away and they all survived. Yay. Thanks everyone! And @robertz6 - so sorry about those plants!