16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Spray the plants with the hose and sometimes horn worms move a bit so you can see them in the day time.

Thanks everyone for all the help. Do far, no more damage but I am sure I now know what damage to look for now. The birds in the garden yesterday at noon may have solved me hunting failure as at midnight last night with a flashlight resulted in nothing and there is no more damage this morning. Will keep a close eye out. Thanks again.

I'm worried about trying to separate them in that moss mix they are planted in so maybe I'll put them in a 30 gal barrel.

Please do not. They will separate with minimal if any damage and will quickly recover. Each of those plants needs their own container and they need to be quite large containers. Both Mr. Stripey and Better Boy are huge indeterminate varieties easily reaching 6-8' in height and 4' wide. You don't mention the name of the 3rd plant?

While a 5 gallon bucket is the minimum they will tolerate they will not thrive in one. A 30 gallon barrel might be a a bit big for 1 plant but not by much and it will thrive in that size. With 3 plants in it they will all be stressed and it will be impossible to feed, water correctly, and support all of them in the same container.

Dave

Hi Dave,
The Mr Stripey is in his own 4" pot and comfy at the moment. But the 3 all together in one pot are all Better Boy. I will attempt to separate them this weekend then :( Was hoping the barrel was a good idea. Thank you for correcting me

Personally, I would drop the Siletz. Out of all the tomatoes I have grown (100+ varieties over the years) that one is at or near the very bottom of my list of what I like. (But right now I would almost kill for one since I am at least 3 weeks away from starting my seeds!)

Bets

I came across a picture of this tomato (German Head) while surfing seed websites. I was stunned ! This is the closest thing I have seen to the tomato I have looked for for so long. Said to be a pink, the picture I saw looked orange to me.

There wasn't much of a write up about this German Head so I did a Google and made my way here where so many are saying they are GOING to try them but no follow ups on how they turned pout. (On site search turned up nothing)

So I'm asking..LOL How did they turn out ? Details about taste IE sweet sour, strong bland etc would be very nice.
Thanks in advance !

You can always contact the grower for info. Far as I know that isn't Walmart. :) Bonnie's Plants is the grower for most Walmarts but the plant you bought should have a grower tag.

Dave

Thank you Dr. Carolyn & Dave for the quick response!
The tag that was in the plant is one by Walmart & while I rather doubt they grow their own, there isn't a grower listed. It also says it's a determinate, but who knows?
I guess I could call the store but I think I'll just go ahead & save some seed anyway. It's rather sad that they're selling it as a dwarf as it seems that's NOT the case.
It's definitely a tumbling variety.

Price is $2.44 online (see link below) but I bought 10 of them 2 weeks ago locally for 17.90 plus tax.

Then there are these stakes for $1.98 that also come in packs of 25. They are just to anchor the cage so don't need to heavy duty steel and they don't need to be all that tall either.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Lowes fence post

We got some of those vinyl-coated steel stakes last year just to slip non-metallic conduit over for deer fence - they break too easily in our rocky soil and with the wind.

But the U post is a possibility - I was just looking at taller T-posts, for some reason I though U posts were more expensive.

Digdirt is on the right track. Larger tomato plants may look great, but you are sacrificing production for a few early fruits. Here is why.

Tomatoes have a juvenile growth phase and a reproductive phase. When you keep the plant in a pot long enough to reach the point of producing flowers, that plant will never revert to the juvenile phase and grow as big as it should. The correct size transplant is 4" to 10" tall with 6" to 8" the ideal size. The best age is from 5 to 10 weeks with most plants at the ideal size in about 8 weeks. Some longer season varieties may take 10 weeks and if you have to, there are tricks to maintain them at ideal size up to 12 weeks. Any larger or if grown any longer in small container and you risk triggering the reproductive phase which always results in lower fruit production. The objective is to set out a shall but healthy transplant and let it grow in the juvenile phase as long as possible. This results in a huge healthy plant before the first flower is produced.

The tomato growers mantra should be "Small But Healthy".

DarJones

Thanks for the explanation - I don't think any of the ones I started March 24 last year had flowers by the time I planted them, but certainly some of my cousin's did (he gave me a few different varieties and by mid-June they were in 2-5 gal pots). I don't know if he plants them this huge every year, but he's been gardening for years and they always seem to have huge yields - but he fertilizes and sprays heavily.

Just 1 more question - is that measuring from the soil line up to the growing tip (which both keep changing as you pot up), or from the bottom of the pot up? I measured, and the 4 he gave me yesterday (potted all the way to the bottom of 2-gal pot, I just put maybe an inch of soil in the pot, placed the plant in, and filled around the sides and up the stem) measure 18-20". Mine in the 4.5" pots measure 4-6" with only 3" above the soil (but 3" of stem/root below the soil), but I expect they'll grow another couple of inches in the next 2-3 weeks til I transplant. They do look healthy. But a little smaller than last year, and smaller than I used to buy (unless I wanted a lot of 1 variety and bought a 6-pack).

Most of my peppers are even smaller (the Burpee hybrids seem to be bigger than the ones from Fedco seed or ones I started from traded/saved seeds) but they were tiny last year and grew into huge plants (some 3'x3') by the end of the season - again, didn't plant til mid-June so was harvesting peppers in October. I hope to be earlier this year.

Forgot to say that this year I'm also growing Jaunne Famme too.

You may want to try...
Thessaloniki.
Eva Purple Ball.

excellent write up Thisisme!!! I'm in central TX and I may have to try-out a Juliet so I can have tomatoes during July and August.

Most likely something store bought. I think im leaning more towards one of the soap solutions but theres alot of choices so now I just got to narrow it down to one. Is it possible to have both mites n aphids together because theyre differnt sizes and dont look the same to me besides that theyre both red.. ill try to get a pic of them.

Hi Jay and fellow tomato lovers -

Jay, went to your jaysjellies website and as a layman backyard tomato grower, I sure am impressed with your operation.

Pls. do continue to keep us updated as to your 2012 tomato crops.

Will and the Fur Crew in So. Cal.

Thanks mewhee and others,

I will try to share pictures throughout the season. As I get busier, it is hard, but I do need something to do in the hot afternoon!

Jay

Tigrovy, aka Tiger-like, has long been listed in the SSE YEarbooks. In any one YEarbook, for SSE members only, there are lots of listings for Tiger this and Tiger that, all pretty much the same.

Tigrovy, aka Tiger-like, was not lisited in the 2012 Yearbook as it has been in the past, but the following are:

Tiger
Tigerella
Tigerette
Tigerette Red
Tigerly

..... and in recent Yearbooks Tiger Paw and several others.

Carolyn

Thank you both for the info! I decided to start a couple seeds even though it's already May. We have a long season here so even if I just get a few it will be fun to see how they turn out. :)

Update - those same plants are now 4 feet tall and loaded with green tomatoes. I put them in the ground under a polly tunnel in mid-March and they perked right up immediately. Thank you for all of the advice.

I am glad you plants are doing OK. I just saw this post and wondered if you had holes in those containers so they could drain.

Dot's Delight and Dorothy's Delight are two different varieties. The former is pink and PL and the latter is red and I don't know the leaf form but probably RL since there are not that many red fruited PL varieties.

Al's Gardens introduced Dorothey's Delight in 2009 and named it per the story they told at their website.

Dot's Delight was known way before that per the info I had posted above.

Dot posted here for many years and was in the process of setting up a website where we could put links to seed sources b'c there was no way that that could be done here at the time. But she never got around to it and then stopped posting here.

Many of us who posted here at the time knew her well and I asked Craig L and a few others and no one could come up with her last name, nor the original variety that changed from RL to PL.

Below I've linked to Tania's page for Dot's Delight and you'll see Neil, from IL, and his report.

Neil is still listing it in the 2012 Yearbook, for members only, not the public SSE catalog.

I hope that clarifies the situation; two different varieties.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dot's Delight

Thank you Carolyn, I hope you don't get tired of people saying your knowledge is enviable. I've learned a lot from you by lurking on the forum.

It is RL and the closest picture to the fruit I've found is Anna Russian (which I have not grown, only seen images online) The foliage is slightly droopy, kind of like opalka, but less so.

Interesting stuff. I have always found my plants like rainwater far better then my hard well water. I thought it was mostly because of the excess minerals in the well water, but makes me wonder if this is also a factor? I wonder how well stored rainwater can can hold these sources of nitrogen?

I have a big side yd garden but I growin containers also....mostly tomatoes, Ichiban and Bell Peppers. I have caught rainwater enough to fill barrels holding approx 150 gal. I have the mosquito stuff in there as well. I use the rain water for the container plants only with manure stirred in occasionally and am having good success.