16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Linked a number of previous discussions about this below. As you will see there are several different approchaes folks use.

As I have posted in some of those discussions I dump all my containers out onto a large tarp and spread it out to dry well in the sun - that alone takes care of some of the resident bacteria. Then remove all the root clumps and other debris, mix in approx. 1/3 new quality container mix with it and also add a good dose of Osmocote or other slow release fertilizer and refill the containers.

dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Reusing container soil discussions

thanks!

We might be missing the obvious here - are you sure that your seeds / plants are F1 Sungolds?
Also there are many varieties that look like, but taste nothing like Sungolds.
I've always found SG to be the most reliable tomato variety i've ever grown. IME they always tasted good no matter what.

My seeds came from TGS so yes, I believe they are. The first plant in the fall was fine as long as I didn't overwater.

Last one for now ~ Black Pear 9-22-2012

"Flamed" you? Hardly.

You posted a question about your container mix (pea stone then a mix of compost, peat moss, garden soil, and bone meal) and to that you wanted to ag. gypsum to cure your BER.

What I said was that your container mix was already so far off the common norms for ideal container growing - especially in such a small container - that based on the information you have provided and this late in the season (it was Aug. 5th) it is going to be really difficult to get any usable tomatoes out of your set-up no matter what you do now. Better luck next year.

I then went on to link you to the BER FAQ abd suggest some research into what are considered acceptable container mixes and why such things as you listed were not recommended.

You never replied or provided any additional information.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: your original post.

Thanks, Carolyn. We never get a break in the weather here until September is over and I can recall years where it was that hot well into October and some even into November. One year it was hot and humid through mid-November and then by early December we were dropping into the high 30's. It was crazy!

I may have to grow cherries in the fall here and save my heirlooms for spring, but last year it started getting hot and humid here end of March so I would need to start seed in mid-October I think.

Brandywine are okay, but they split & rot faster then an tomato I have grown.

I planted sun gold last year in the fall and it was excellent as long as I didn't overwater. Then I tried it in the spring and the fruit was sour. Don't know what the problem was maybe the seed was not true? They tasted terrible very unlike the ones in the fall.

I just started some Stump of the World. I hear a lot about these. I also started some Stick.

Carolyn - thank you for your thoughtful response. You are likely right that I don't have true Sungold volunteers, though one of them is exactly same size and flavor as originals.

I'm still puzzled about my weird 'cross,' partly because there is no one near me that grows tomatoes and all of last year's non-Sungold tomatoes were red. So maybe I just have a much larger F2 version of 'Sungold' since I have no idea what the farmer at the Farmer's market used to create his F1 Sungolds last year. I always plant starts from the market, so there's no odd seed issue at hand either.

Interesting... but they are all quite tasty. :-)

If the farmer at the farmer's Market had labels saying Sungold F1, then he would have used F1 seed for the plants he sold.

But there are four open pollinated (OP)versions of sungold, meaning non-hybrid, and one of them is genetically unstable and it's been found out that the last one, Big Sungold Select, is not stable and can give various colored fruits on individual plants ( all the same color on one plant). The one before Big Sungold Select is called just Big Sungold and it is stable but the fruits are bigger than the traditional fruits seen with F1 Sungold .

So unless you know if you bought plants that were from Sungold F1 seed or Big Sungold Select, there's no telling what you might have.

The F1 seeds being hybrid, are much more expensive than the OP versions.

Carolyn

To me they look like the Amish Paste tomatoes that I grew this year. My Amish Paste tomatoes had that little "bump" on the end and they got huge.

There are lots of varieties that look like that at the green stage, so no way to ID it, but I bet what you have is a seed that was dropped there by a bird b'c that does happen, especially since you didn't plant it yourself. ( smile)

I don't know what you used in your strawberry box as a growing medium, but it too could have had some tomato seeds in it depending on what you used.

But my vote goes to bird transmission. ( smile)

Carolyn

I've got 5 plants of Super Marmande in my garden (T&M seeds), they look a lot like the ones on the picture posted. They are only lightly ribbed and smaller than they should be (probably due to unfavorable growing conditions throughout the season), showing the same green shoulders and discoloration patterns like those.

Here is a link that might be useful: Random googled pic of marmande

Marmande may may make some smaller tomatoes especially in less than ideal conditions, but they would not all be uniformly sized small globe shapes tomatoes as the original poster's pic shows. In general, Marmande makes small flatter beefsteak shaped tomatoes.
Green shoulders are very common with heirloom tomatoes and can not be used to positively id a variety.
Remy

Here is a link that might be useful: google pics of Marmande

I think I've got it on the border of Hartford/Litchfield counties. The Glacier tomatoes are about finished anyway, will pull them this weekend, but I see stem lesions on the Bloody Butchers next to them. Do the spots scrape off with a fingernail, or do they go deeper into the tissue? Not seeing sporulation. Might not be LB since I can scrape the discoloration off pretty easily, but the garden is looking pretty bad after 2" of rain on Sat and a couple of nights below 45.

The only plants really hanging in there are the Sudduth BWs, and since there aren't that many left of any size, harvest will pretty much be over next week. BKs are about done for (lots of dying leaves though no stem lesions), Speckled Romans are falling off the plants (though plants don't look too bad, these are supposed to be Ind. but I wonder since there don't seem to be any new fruit forming), cherry tom stems look really bad (exactly like the picture on usablight website) and aren't scraping off as easily so I'll probably be pulling everything but BB this weekend.

My second planting in another area is looking good, but I really should have suckered and strung them up (vertical string) better, lots of green tomatoes of all varieties, again maybe no time for BWs to ripen but might get some Bloody Butchers and Black Krims over the next month if the weather cooperates.

And the few potato plants still alive look great!

Been awful lately for fungal diseases though - I pulled almost all my pumpkins last weekend b/c of downy mildew (the cukes went long ago), the zukes are on their last legs so will be pulling those as well this w/e, but my second planting of yellow straightneck and my gourds are getting it, I don't even know if I'll get anything off of them.

Time to just pull all the annuals I guess and start putting the perennials (berries) to bed for the winter...

I started pulling all my plants this weekend - found fruit lesions on Bloody Butchers. Stems on cherries are almost all dark brown/purple (not small splotches) but I'm confused - split one open and no brown inside, looks healthy green/whitevascular tissue. Still pulling them today, but isn't LB a vascular disease?

Also some suckers and leaf clusters are dying (brown, dessicated), but I have some leaf clusters and fruit clusters that look healthy and green, even have flowers! Is this just because I'm catching it early (regardless of how bad the stems look)? I thought the dry leaves were just from the dry (pre-Isaac) weather, so many green leaves and fruit still on the plants last week I didn't notice the stems of the cherries when I picked them earlier in the week.

A good example of another gardener-created problem and if I recall correctly this issue was pointed out to you as a potential problem when you first posted this "experiment".

Since it isn't a fertilizer anyway logic would indicate that you should correct the real problem - getting rid of the cat food - instead of killing something.

Dave

Now is when your common sense should kick in. You proved to yourself that your bright idea (as you put it) doesn't work the way you'd hoped. Time to try something else. And have some compassion. You did put out food so someone hungry came along and tried to get at it. Cause and effect is evident.

Thank you Dcarch and thank you for inviting me to the Cooking Forum. I usually cook meals for everyday or parties based on what I am harvesting...so next time that I have something interesting to post, I promise I will post there like I regularly post in the Florida forum.

A simple tomato salad, I have to learn how to make it prettier since it is already tasty.:)

Silvia

Fabulous! My mouth is watering and I'm not even hungry.

I know this post is really old. but did anyone figure this out?

My cherokee purple are doing the exact same thing! I'm stumped!

Let the plant soil dry between watering. I think you are keeping the roots wet for too long.

Jol, I'm going to answer you and Rita at the same time.

jol, first, why not romas? Because they don't have great tastes, with few exceptions, and as with other paste varieties they are more susceptible to BER and Early BLight, as you already mentioned.

There are many many threads here about BER so I'll be brief. There are many conditions that can induce BER , all of them stresses, from using too much N or growing in too rich soil which cause rapid growth which is a stress, to uneven moisture conditions, etc., but the major stresses that cause Ca++ to not get to the blossom end are weather conditions and no one can control the weather.

So variety X might have BER in one season and not the next time it's grown.

The same situation obtains with non-paste varieties but more often with paste varieties.

Rita and I post at another site and when she said that her new one had no BER I pointed out and shared with her that for sure this season b/c she's only grown it for this past season, but who knows for the next season, so you can't say that this paste OR non-paste variety is BER prone or not until you've grown that same variety several times over several different seasons.

Paste varieties do have a different physiology in terms of water and nutrient transport within the plant and that's what some tomato physiologists think causes them to be so susceptible to BER.

I'll let you look at some of the many threads here at GW about BER by doing a search but will say that it's NOT lack of Ca++ in the soil as used to be thought. Addition of Ca++ to the soil can only help if a soil test shows that the soil has NO Ca++, which is rare indeed and Ca++ from the soil isn't taken up if the soil is too acidic, which can easily be fixed by altering the pH of the soil, and even that situation is relatively rare.

Summary? it's just my opinion that the best sauces are made from the fruits of the best tasting varieties, and preferably beefsteak and heart varieties that have very dense flesh with few seeds. All one needs to do is to cook them down a bit longer than using only paste varieties until the desired consistency is reached. Or consider using half pastes and half non-pastes for sauce, and a few of the former to consider might include Heidi, Mama Leone, Martino's Roma, Opalka, Sarnowski Polish Plum, Kenosha Paste, to name just a very few that have worked out well for quite a few folks.

You can look them up at Tania's wonderful website which features pages for over 3,000 varieties and for most of them there are comments from others, the traits of the variety,histories where known and if you scroll down on a page seed sources if known.

When at the MAIN page for the link below scroll down to where you see the link for searching by the alphabetical method which works wonderfully if the name of a variety is known.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Tania's Tomato Data Base

I grew Amish Paste tomatoes this year. They were great! Large, meaty, tasteful fruit. I also grew Whopper tomatoes. I thought they would be juicy, but they too were a very meaty, tasty fruit. They also lived up to their name -- these babies were real whoppers! I plan on growing both varieties next year.