16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Hi, one of my three "must haves" is Matt's Wild Cherry. Absolutely delicious. Small and skin cracks but no matter. I couldn't stop eating them and everyone I gave them out to liked them too. Increase my plants by 300% to get more going. Heavy producer, big plant, and long growing season. Try one next time! Peace
Sweet 100 is a favorite cherry of mine (zone 6). The first year or two with tomatoes I grew a red cherry about the size of a golf ball. It was not quite as sweet as Sweet 100, but it had more taste. Can't recall the name, I grew it from mail-order seed.
Dr. C has a very nice yellow cherry. A number of people I've given it to say it is a low acid fruit.
I transferred a couple of volunteers from my Sungold onslaught of last year just this past week. Tthey seem to be thriving. Bloomed some flowers as well since the transplant. You should definitely do it. Sungolds are hybrids so these will be a real mystery tomato.
Enjoy..............elliot
If you have room, go ahead and transplant. I always have dozens of volunteer toms, not from my compost piles, but just in the garden area. I do not compost weeds or tomato plants.
I often use them to fill in area where a spring tom plant got early blight or something similar.
"I am watering thoroughly-20 minutes in each spot and will do the same tomorrow."
That may be the root of your problem (pun intended)!
When you water shallowly, you train your tomatoes to look near the surface for their water. As a consequence, the plants are much more susceptible to fluctuations in water levels and to heat. If you water deeply, they will send their roots 3-4 feet below the surface and as far in all directions. Lower soil levels, once watered adequately, don't dry out as fast as the surface and the roots will be in a zone that is temperature buffered. Both of those factors will help your tomatoes tolerate extreme heat better.
As a general rule, tomatoes need an inch of water every week. An inch of rain is exactly that, water that is one inch deep. One inch of rainfall equals 5.6 US (4.7 Imperial) gallons of water per square yard. Cool weather or soil with lots of clay will need less, hot weather or sandy soil will need more.
Dig down with your finger about 4", is the growing medium wet, dry, or just right? If it is wet, don't water, if dry then water. If it is just right, check again the next day. Water deeply once or twice a week. Watering daily encourages shallow roots which means the plant is affected more by variations in soil moisture. In my garden during the heat of the summer, I water deeply every 4-5 days, early spring I may only water every 8-9 days and when the weather is moderatly warm (70-80 degrees F), about once a week.
Mulching heavily (to a depth of 6 - 8 inches) with compost, straw, hay, rotted leaves, grass clippings, even shredded paper or sheets of paper or cardboard helps maintain a consistent moisture level.
Betsy
LynnMarie,
Air temps are what they are, but direct sun exposure can be reduced with shade cloth.
Another is placement. If your plants are up against, or near a wall made of concrete
they can get too hot from residual heat. Even against vinyl siding exposed all day can heat the area too much at night.
And if you grow your own seedlings, my recommendation for you is to look at Skyfire Seeds of Kanapolis, KS.
Other than that - Aniaj has some great suggestions.
Celebrity and Big Beef are both more forgiving hybrids, but Atkinson heirloom is more tolerant to your heat than the varieties you mentioned.
Most tomatoes are of the common species which we normally use and are completely cross fertile. So ability to cross breed is not generally something you need to worry about. However, there are a few other, closely related species of tomatoes and these might not cross breed as easily. Most of those related species tend to be very small cherries, even "Currant" cherries, so you are unlikely to be dealing with them if you have anything like a standard cherry tomato.
When you cross a cherry with a large tomato, you generally get something in between, but it will probably be closer in size to the cherry tomato. This is because the cherry tomato is closer to the ancestral type, and frequently will have more dominant genes. However, you will get a wide range of progeny on grow outs of future generations, ranging from cherry sized right up to close to the size of the original large tomato parent.
Yes, I will enjoy it for sure. It helps to know that it looks like a Roma to you, too. That's what I was thinking although I thought they grew in bunches. Thanks for your response.
Perhaps switching tags was someone's idea of a joke! I'm still happy with it.
Well, speaking for myself, not everyone is willing or able to wrestle with making their own CRW cages. Not everyone has a place to store them. I have both the TTC and Burpee. The Burpee is definitely sturdier than the cheap round ones I can buy locally. But they are not even in the same league as the TTC. I am currently using the Burpee for my grow bags and for peppers and such in the garden and the TTC for the garden tomatoes. Both are convenient because they easily fold flat. I would use the Burpee for determinates, but not for large indeterminates unless I had to. Basically it comes down to how much you want to invest.
I made my own extenders after I realized my burpee cages weren't cutting it on their own. For each cage I used four stakes, zip ties, and jute twine. Not the neatest solution but it works well.
Here is a link that might be useful: DIY cage extenders
Thanks :)
I love the cinderblocks for raised beds. They were easy to put together and have worked great. I used the holes for various herbs, some onions, and flowers.
Kathy, the tomato bed is ~2' by 5'.
Here's another cinderblock bed, this one's being used for eggplants and peppers.
And this one I built in the alley on a little strip we had in front of the hedge. It used to be all weeds there, so I put it to good use for root veggies.
oh yeah I should add that the Bell Peppers are about 5 feet from the East facing wall of the house with some overhead sun shielding, so they get the morning sun, but not the directly over head sun that happens between 230-430 pm. I did this since we are having so many 90s to triple digit days so far this summer here in Sacramento, and more in the forecast this coming week
Agree with tomatovator above - Bacterial Spot. But to be sure tell us about any symptoms on the plant itself - any dark spots or black specks on the leaves, holes in leaves with a gray-brown ring around them, any discolored places on the stems?
Another possible is Alternaria Canker but with it the plants themselves would have many symptoms too.
Dave
No specs or holes in the leaves, no problems with the stem that I can see. I bought some liquid copper spray and will give that a try this evening.
If it is bacterial speck, are the tomatoes that currently are affected by it -like the one in the picture- beyond saving (should I just cut them off and toss them), or will they be good to go after the spray treatment?
Last year around here we had several solid weeks of 100+ temperatures in July and August (very unusual). I didn't get any tomatoes during that time because it was too hot for the pollen to set, but the few that I got in the fall were all like what you describe - miniature versions of their normal selves. They may have even been smaller; they weren't much bigger than my Sungolds that kept producing though the heat.
This was Cherokee Purple and a hybrid - I think Beefmaster - and not BK, but it was definitely environmental (and really weird).
I am in central Indiana and 4 out of my 5 BKs that I picked have been pretty large (bigger than I expected) - bigger than baseballs. 1 was a bit smaller.
These 5 so far have come from 2 different plants. I have a third that I planted later that is bearing fruit but none ripe yet. So, we shall see how those turn out.
This post was edited by mambooman on Mon, Jul 15, 13 at 15:22
>It looks like a bumper crop this year.Sure does, dog_wood. Funny how bad last year was, but how incredible this year is! This will probably be the best tomato year of my gardening career. :)
Dave, I amended the soil with composted manure before planting the bed, and added plenty of compost, a bit of bone meal, and even some crushed egg shells at the bottom of each planting hole, so I'm pretty sure it's not a nutrient issue. Watering with a drip line, and it never seems over soggy out in the garden, so I think that's good to go too.
I appreciate the replies. :)
Just an idea--as I was replacing a shower curtain, i realized the huge shower curtain rings (plastic) would be great for hooking around tomato stems...! Will use some on my fall tomatoes. PS-- you can buy 12 for $1 at the dollar stores!!!
This post was edited by plantloverla on Tue, Jul 16, 13 at 13:10
Nylon Tie Wraps work wonders for me. It comes in different lengths, can be daisy chained to increase length and also be used to secure cages to containers.
I use a lot of velco at the communication site I work at for securing fiber optic and Cat 5 cable. What I have found is the quality differs between the type we use and what you would buy in an garden center. Especially the type sold for clothing which is inferior to the electronic grade.