16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
I think, if you have to deal withshort season, winter sowing is not the answer. We start seeds inside under light 6 to 8 weeks prior to plant out to get a head start. TOMATO SEEDS need a minimum of 60 -70f soil temperature to sprout on time. That would be fine if you have a warm and long growing season. I have done it in GA. But here in PNW it would take til late June to see some thing coming up. By then I am getting ready to pick red ripe tomatoes.
JUST MY OPINION>
Seysonn
You have a point, Seysonn. I've already sown 4 tomato containers with winter sowing. I only need 10-12 tomato plants and I plan to purchase organic tomato starts at my favorite nursery. So I guess it depends on how effective the winter sowing is and when I have a transplant size tomato to put out. I will definitely be using nursery grown larger transplants for at least four of my tomatoes. And this year will be the deciding factor, about whether to purchase tomato starts or start from seed.
I had thought I might start seed under lights this winter. I've done it successfully before, but I wasn't able to do it this year. So, I'm trying it every which way but under lights this year. [g] I'm also going to put one Sungold, one Purple Cherokee and Black Prince in full sun and one each in 6 hrs of sun and see what kind of difference it makes. I think I will also buy a Sungold tomato start from the nursery and plant that out back in the 6 hrs of sun and compare how that does to the winter sown Sungold tomato start in 6 hrs of sun in the back.
Whatever the case, I think unstabilized tomatoes (peppers, etc.) are largely an unexplored frontier. I mean, with one set of seeds, you could get different kinds of tomatoes every year (and different kinds the same year, even). As long as they're bred to produce a desirable variation every time, that's totally awesome.
Nitrogen soil tests are not particularly useful because nitrogen changes forms so rapidly. Total nitrogen tells you very little about the availability of nitrogen during the upcoming growing season. Nitrate-nitrogen tells you what is immediately available, but that can change rapidly.
That being said, if you had lots of flowers, the plant was not just growing vegetatively. The flowers either did not get pollinated, or aborted before they developed. Many tomato varieties are fairly heat sensitive, and do not produce fruit in hot weather. Cherry tomato varieties are very heat tolerant and will set and develop fruit even in very hot weather. I would try different varieties and not worry about changing your plant nutrition.
NOT FRUITING can be due to more than onen factor:
A) plant is not flowering:
--- Too much nitrogen, not enough P
In this case you can tell that the foliage is lush dark green.
B) plant is flowering, but NOT fruiting.
--- High or very low temperatures.
--- Too much nutrients, forcing the plant to stay in vegetative state. So the flowers are aborted.
Pollinators are not needed for tomatoes. So that is not a problem.
Seysonn
It was a pretty good producer, the fruits were tasty and even with their growth and size habit of the fruits. More resistant to cracking than the bigger tomatoes I grew, but about on par with the Juane Flamme. It was great for canning, and particularly good for dehydrating. Plants were sturdy and stayed on the smaller/more manageable side- still for sure needed caging. I would grow it again.
I read up on tomato spotted wilt virus. What I have going on doesn't look exactly like the pictures I saw, but there are some similarities. I didn't really see any info on what this means for the plant or how to treat it. Is the plant a goner? Should I just take it out?
I'm no expert on this, but i think this is the virus that affected mine a few months ago. anyway mine deteriorated quite quickly and then the plant next to it started to show the same symptoms so yanked both of them quick smart as i believe the virus is transmitted via thrips. The others survived.
thebutcher - We will both have an opinion on Jersey Boy - by the end of the season - I spent the big bucks at Burpee necessary to try this new variety. I can't tell you a thing about it except for what I have read at this point. My starts of Jersey Boy are already up and I hope it will be a great one!
Eva Purple Ball's oddity is in the name as there's really nothing purple about it. Its more of a dark pink/red. I like to think the person who named it was color blind. There's a very similar variety called Redfield Beauty, but I have yet to grow it. I'll add that Eva Purple Ball holds up very well in intense summer heat. 2013 and 2012 were the 4th and 5th hottest summers on record here and Eva kept producing while many other varieties withered and halted production.
How about this one ?
Read all about it !
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Indigo Rose, the world’s first tomato variety with purple anthocyanins, was released commercially this year by the vegetable breeding program at Oregon State University.
“The purple color is extraordinary,” said Jim Myers, who heads the vegetable breeding program. “It has a good balance of sugars and acids and tastes just like a tomato.” (Anthocyanins are essentially tasteless.)
The new tomato is released as an open pollinated variety, and as such, seed saved from self-pollinated plants will grow true and not produce hybrids. “It’s also important to know that these tomatoes are not GMO,” Myers said. “Genetic engineering techniques are never used to develop these lines.
Seysonn, I have two purple striped red tomato plants, bred from the same stock as the ones you depicted. I was wary of growing these beforehand because I thought it was a step backward in breeding for flavor, and now after putting my mouth where my keyboard was by eating many purple striped tomatoes, I think they are the worst tasting tomato I've ever grown. I like them as much as the First Lady likes beets (and just to be clear, I love beets and broccoli). The use of the blue tomatoes I've found best is cooked with broccoli, onions, okra and hot and sweet peppers in a delicious gumbo. With all that going on the bitter aftertaste goes away...
PC (maybe not perfectly PC tonight)