16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

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.

I rarely use fertilizer in my soil garden. I have nutrient poor sandy soil, but amend it with a lot of compost made mostly from grass and leaves from my property. I occasionally add epsom salts for magnesium and sulphur for pH reduction but that's about it. Once my new beds mature after a couple of years and the worms move in, I just mulch deeply with chipped branches, grass and leaves and it breaks down quickly. I rarely have to add anything after that.

thanks Capoman!
I'm all for the worms. what do you think of composted cow manure or how about the lobster compost?
dale

Just go back from Wal-Mart and they had it in stock. If your local Wal-Mart doesn't, you might ask if they can order for the next delivery since their supplier definitely stocks them in their stores.

I will check around some more. have not checked out W-Mart yet. Thanks every one. My usual store does not have everything stocked yet so maybe they are still coming. Thanks for the links Carolyn!

Hearts are another totally different class from paste and plums. Never grown it but description are often misleading as they are very subjective. About all you can do is read several descriptions and see what the majority is. :)

From the link below I'd call it heart.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Teton de Venus images

I've grown Teton de Venus and it is a heart and a fairly good one at that. Not known as a paste variety but does have dense flesh with few seeds, please see below.

The fruits of ANY variety can vary in size , for the same variety, from year to year and there are lots of variables as well, such as where grown, the weather that season, how the plants are grown, amendments added and on and on.

Five folks list Teton de Venus in the 2012 SSE YEarbook, for members only, and two of them state the size of the fruits they got:

NY, 24 oz
OH, 10-14 oz
TN, just says large meaty heart
VT, good paste tomato
WI, good tasting paste tomato

And I bet the ones who said good paste tomato are ones that have already switched from conventional paste varieties to using hearts and beefsteaks for sauce, etc.

Just noting that sometimes a paste variety has plum in the title but is also a long one as well, the best example Iknow of is Sarnowski Polish Plum and there are others.

Most of my tomato friends switched long ago from using paste varieties to using dense fleshed beefsteak varieties as well as hearts, of which most are dense fleshed with few seeds, and that's b/c most paste varieties are not all that tasty and b'c many of them are susceptible to both BER ( blossom end rot) as well as Early Blight ( A. solani)

Carolyn

That would be P20 from OSU. This is the first year Indigo Rose was available to the public. I'm not sure if it's actually P20 (I would guess it is, but I know very little about breeding tomatoes!).
I'm growing it & while no fruit of course yet, it's a very very vigorous plant!

Indigo Rose is a single plant selection from the highly diverse population that was bred by OSU and known as P20. There was an earlier escape from the breeding program that was known as OSU Blue. In my experience, OSU Blue has less anthocyanin than P20 and P20 has less than Indigo Rose.

DarJones

Your setup is similar to mine. Raised beds in a compact area.
Why not give my PVC cage a shot? You could pound the
uprights in the box for stability. My cages don't fall
down because they're driven into the ground about a foot.

I limit my plants to 4 main leaders and tie one to each
upright of my cage.

Here's a couple of shots of my garden.

And down below is a link to a page telling you how to and stuff
like that about the cages.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tom's PVC Tomato cage page

Right now I'm debating between the Florida Weave idea and DIY round cages from fencing material with larger openings than my gaden fence. Obviously the latter will cost more.

The boxes are going nowhere...I used nail stakes to level the beds. You can't see them in the photos unless you look very carefully at the last pic which is more recent.

If you are lucky: No germination.
If you are unlucky, bad tasting tomatoes.

******

Now td, that wasn't very nice.

In your opinion Yellow Pear doesn't taste good but in the opinion of others it does/

If I were to list what I call my spitters there would be folks who just LOVE some of those on my spitter list.

Taste is personal and perceptual and there's even a human genetic issue involved, so not every person tastes a tomato variety the same way.

And I say good on that b'c if we all tasted tomatoes the same way it would be just darn boring. ( smile)

Carolyn

I can't imagine yellow pear would be around after all these years if everyone hated it.
I seem to remember when I was a child, I thought they were really good.