16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
I'm fairly close by, south of Greenville SC. I want to pull mine too, so that I can plant my winter cover crop. But as long as they still have a few small ones I can't bring myself to pulling them! LOL
I pulled them one year, because I was OD'd on them too. Then I got to wanting a fresh one from the garden! They may not be as good as they were, but beat the heck out of anything from the grocery!
Yea, I was just out pulling a number of my plants. My garden is fairly small so I have to pull one season to start another. I'm already behind on planting fall crops but am looking forward to my broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, peas, carrots, beets, swiss chard & tons of lettuce. However, our first frost isn't till mid November so I'm leaving one garden bed still going since my Aunt Ruby German Green is still producing. Figure I'll pull it in a month - that's probably how long it'll take me to plant the others & be ready anyways. But, I'm there with you! Ready to say goodbye to the tomatoes & focus on the fall crops.
Which specific tomato diseases are known to be a problem in your area or that you've experienced before?
It really would be best to know that before folks started making reccomendations.
And are you primarily looking for OP ( open pollinated) varieties or perhaps hybrids as well?
Which varieties have you grown in the past that didn't grow well or were diseased?
I guess I'm asking all these questions b'c near the coast in S Cal there could be Powdey Mildew that formns with the JUne Glooms, and other foliage diseases as well as Root Knot Nemtodes and many other systemic diseaes such as Bacterial Canker, Alternaria Canker, Fusarium and so many more.
Carolyn, just trying to get a handle on what's in your area and if OP's or hybrids are your rpeference. For some of the diseases there are no resistant varieties, only tolerannt ones, and for some the only way to prevent them is by prevention with a vigorous spray schedule, but that also means knowing of the diseases are fungal or viral or parasitic in origin.
Hi Carolyn, I do have had some powdery mildew issues in my garden, but on the tomatoes septoria leaf spot (or at least what appeared to be septoria leaf spot). I am not sure what breed of tomato it was I had this summer... nothing fancy, it was a little starter seed kit for a child... I'm a newbie gardner, but looking to cultivate my skills, and grow a proper garden now that we have a house/backyard. I just want to start with plants/seeds that are known to be disease resistant, to help combat any potential issues... many thanks!
I put up a battery operated electric fence around the garden for a couple of years and that helped somewhat. But this year I have not had one problem with squirrels because I decided to feed the birds year round as we enjoy them so much. The squirrels much prefer the seed to the tomatoes, so I haven't lost one tomato to them. Gone through a lot of seed though!
I am pretty sure that cowbirds will eat them. I saw the cowbirds picking at my birdnet that covers my tomatoes in Arizona, and so when I went out to see, I could see they were after these giant green tomato worms. I picked 4 of them off, and they were HUGE. They seem to start at the top of your tomatoe plant and work downward, and yes, I noticed that they eat the green tomatoes. The birds will eat the red ones, so I just took off my nets, picked anything with even a tinge of red color tomato, and then hopefully the birds will have at it. Are these the same as cutworms? Leafcutter bees will eat up your rose bushes too. It is hard to stay organic. Is there any organic way to get rid of these worms? For cutworms I used Bayer Grub Control and Turf Fertilizer, in my flower plants worked into the dirt outfront, and that took care of those cutworms, but I don't know if these greeen horn tomato worms are considered the same thing, since they seem to start up at the top of the plant, eating everything in sight. I would be interested in a more organic solution to getting rid of these green tomato worms.
Flora, most of the tomatoes grown in Italy these days are F1 hybrids, unfortunately, but I do believe that you could have purchased a fruit with those indented lines you mention coming from the stem outwards and it's called radial craking and would be most often found on OP ( open pollinated), not hybrid fruits.
You've been linked to Tania's data base which is a wonderful site, and perhaps to the list of tomatoes that originated in Italy, but without knowing the name of what you had, there's absolutely no way of knowing where you could buy seeds for it.
You can look at that list of Italian tomatoes and click and click on each one to see if any of them look anything like what you saw and ate, but there's no way to know where to buy seeds for the fruits you ate without having a name for it b'c there are hundreds of italian varieties that can be lookalikes.
BTW, please don't wash and then eat fruits in a public fountain anywhere b'c, ahem, they are often used for other purposes if you catch my drift.
Carolyn, who has been to Italy and many other countries where there are public fountains and doesn't want to really tell you what she observed. ( smile)
Wonder if you mean they were fluted/ruffled/ribbed or just cracked?.
Lots of ruffled varieties to choose from and you may be able to narrow it down to 10-20 choices. But the bottom line is that there is no way to ID what the specific tomato you ate was. There are 100's if not 1000's of possibilities.
Try Ceylon or Costoluto Genovese.
Dave
I am in Baraboo, Wisconsin and I am having exactly the same issue. I did a Brandywine in a container and it produced rather prolifically, but only 3 of my tomatoes ripened in August. Now September is almost over and I am looking at all the many green tomatoes still on the plant as it rains and rains and the temperature sticks in the 50's. I don't hold much hope for any more ripening before the first frost. And from my experience Brandywine do not ripen well off the vine. Disappointing season.
You can accelerate ripening on the vine by reducing watering, pinching off flowers, picking small fruit, pinching off yellowed leaves, and shifting roots. Here's a link that may help.
Here is a link that might be useful: 10 ways to ripen tomatoes on the vine
What you have is a product distributed by Melissa's in CA and although they represent them as heirloom tomatoes I can tell you that your striped one is not one that would meet the definition of an heirloom whatever definition is used.
If you really want to know if it even has a known name I suggest you contact Melissa's and see if they will ID it for you, and I say if b'c I'm not even sure they know at this point what it is.
Melissa's is a high end wholesaler of fruits and vegetables and in the past have even invented names for some varieties that already have names. ( smile)
There's almost a similar situation in Europe where a company in the Netherlands is sending pints of mixed cherries and the good fortune there is that someone I know well in Germany got a pint and was intrigued with what looked like a mini cherry Green Zebra.
He was able to trace the shipment back to the Netherlands but not the company producing them and ended ip naming this cherry Green Zebra Cherry, and I love it.
Green Zebra has never been a favoite of mine and this one that looks like it is so sweet and lucious and also produces a lot. I've been offering seeds for it for the past two years in a seed offer I do elsewhere and if you go to Tania's T-base, via Google, I think you might see some other places that are now offering it. I didn't take the time to check b/c a T-storm is almost here.
What do you think of the taste of that wee striped one?
Have I got a deal for you. LOL How about you save about 30 seeds and I'll send you back 30 seeds of Green Zebra Cherry?
I need that many seeds b'c although I've grown several thousands of tomato varieties I fell in Dec of 2004 and now have to use a walker so there are three folks who help me with seed production and one who raises all my plants for me for at home and someone else does all tha gardening here.
If this interests you please contact me at cmale@aol.com and tell me either yes or no, so I know where things are at.
Thanks ever so much.
Oh, and I'm not a general source of Green Zebra Cherry to anyone other than user name Punk Rotten, gotta love that use name. LOL
Carolyn, who can also throw in a not well known great black cherry as well, as a teaser. ( smile)
Here is a link that might be useful: Baby Heirloom Tomatoes ( Melissa's)
Hi,
I did save some seeds but I only had one of these tomatoes out of the whole package. So I did not get many. I will have to count how many I got. The package to these tomatoes had a website called martinezandsonsproduce.com . I tried to contact them but got no reply.
The package had other cherry-like tomatoes; stuff like yellow pear, chocolate cherry, grape tomato etc. There was a few small orange and yellow tomatoes but I didn't bother on trying to ID or save any seeds. I only saved this one because it was interesting.
All you need to know about making crosses is in the link below.
Perhaps you've heard of Dora, Bear Creek, Liz Birt and the very popular Purple Haze F1, etc., all hybridized by Keith.
At the site click on CULTURE then scroll down to How to make Crosses and below that the link to gene basics which you'll need to know about depending on what your goal for a cross is.
I've not done any deliberate crosses but have dehybridized a natural cross that led to the variety OTV Brandywine and also dehybridizd Ramapo F1 to an open pollinated version.
it's lots of fun to make crosses and many folks do it, but you do have to have enough room after the initial cross to form the F1 hybrid, assuming you start with both parents that are OP ( open pollinated) to plant out from the saved F2 seeds, make selections and go from there.
Hope that helps.
Carolyn, and look around at that site b;c there's lots of information and links to great articles and so much more.
Here is a link that might be useful: Keith Mueller's excellent site
Early blight, late blight, and Septoria leaf spot are common tomato diseases caused by fungi. The fungi overwinter in the soil. That's why a good preventative measure is to rotate your tomato crop each year. You can also grow disease-resistant varieties. You can read more through the link below. Good luck!
*****
As has been noted, late Blight ( P. infestans) does not overwinter except in certain areas of the US where the two mating types are present and then the sexual oospores can do so.
But having posted online since the early 80's I can share with you that there are a lot more tomato diseases/conditions that folks refer to as "blight" than the few foliage ones in that link, which I thought was quite incomplete.
There is no need to rotate your tomatoes every year, many folks simply don't have the room to do that.
For the foliage diseases prevention is the key, spraying with a good anti-fungal ASAP after the plsnts are outside. The two fungal diseases of Early Blight ( A. solani) and Septoria Leaf Spot are perhaps the two most common ones worldwide. The two bacterial ones which I don't even think were mentioned in that link, are Bacterial Speck and Spot and prevention for them is not all that effective.
Again, speaking only to the foliage diseases, all NEW ones are acquired via air and embedded in rain droplets. But any diseased plants also can shed spores and bacteria to the ground and then the next year rain and irrigation can splash back those pathogens to the lower leaves of the plant and away it goes up the plant. Mulching can help prevent splashback.
One of the best thigs to do is in the Fall to turn over the soil deeply, not just with a tiller, to bury any spores and bacteria that may have fallen to the ground so that they're buried very deeply.
But again, blight to most folks means a sick looking plant and there are lots of possibilities for that including the systemic tomato diseases, nutritional problems and the weather in any one season.
I grew my tomatoes on the same 1/2 acre field for about 16 years and never had a buildup of pathogens in the soil.
Hope that helps.
Carolyn
Yes, what you linked to is a heart so what I linked to below is a Google IMAGES search for this variety and when you run your mouse over a pictures it tells you more.And you'll also see there are various shaped fruits for this variety as well. I think it's page 3, 2nd in from the left where the various shapes are shown very well from a seed site in New Zealand.
Actually when performing a mouseover the the pic its description is NZPP. But it is not a pic of NZPP. Something like Mr Stripey.
Now IF there are there are "various shaped fruits for this variety" and the shapes are quite contrary to each other in general shape, then they are NOT the same variety... e.g, if a putative NZPP plant produces a pear-shaped fruit in one instance and another putative NZPP displays a heart-shaped berry in different "NZPP" plant, they cannot be the same cult.
Reggie
PErhaps you're looking at the wrong picture.
Page 3, top row, 2nd in from the left is the picture from NZ and there are no stripes at all.
And as I recall, I think, LOL, there are a couple of other pictures there that also show different fruit shapes and those on different pages.
You can enter NZ Pear or NZ Pink Pear and get about the same results wherever you look whether it's by conventional Google, google Images, various websites, listings in the SSE YEarbooks or wherever.
I don't think there's anything more that I can post that will help you clarify the issue to your satisfaction.
Since I do post at several other message sites the situation of having two names for the same variety is not all that rare, and it does cause problems, no doubt about it. And the situation of having more than one fruit shape on the same plant is also known as well.
Good Gardening,
Carolyn