16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

I'll be starting mine in late March for a mid to late May planting.

Rodney

Thank you for all your help.
Nancy from ky

Taste is very good. For a tomato that gets to 40 oz in my garden I would say very prolific. Some of the bottom clusters had three tomatoes all over a pound. I broadcast lots of 6-12-12 when I tilled and then again about 4 weeks later.

Thanks bigpins

Now I have seeds both for Bear Claw and Brandy Boy. I will plant them both this year. Other than Ananas Noire and Cherokee Purple, I have no REAL BeefSteakd favorite so far. I hope that Bear Claw and Brandy Boy settle the case for me this season.

Seysonn.

I trialed several of the imposters back about 10 years ago. Nothing came close to Sun Gold. They were so bad, I'm only again hoping to do another trial this year with Ambrosia Gold and an F4 of Sun Gold that someone claims was extremely close in the F3.

tormato,

How variable was F3 compared to F1 Sungold?

Thanks for the replies all. The red must be brandymaster. It did have brandy in it and it was a red hybrid. I'm gonna go back and pick up a few more packs of Brandyboy to keep and share, since from comments it doesn't seem like it's a sure thing they may be offering it locally next year.

Thanks Carolyn, I know there any a few OP red brandywine strains out there. I do have seed for red, RL; not sure if it's the landis strain though. I love the taste of the basic pink brandywine, but the last 3 years of growing 2 plants, average I get about 1-3 ripe fruit per plant in my zone before frost, so I'm looking to branch out and try some of the brandywine hybrids this year, also have seed for OTV, excited about that 1 too.

My hubby did make me a hoop house over 1 of my raised beds, so I will also try to transplant out earlier in that bed also. My growing season is short for the late tomatoes.

When I was checking the racks, I was JUST looking for Brandy Boy, nothing else. And as soon as found it, I grabbed one pack and left.

Here is what I've got.

Seysonn

I was asking the same question last year on this forum, since I was planning on canning tomatoes whole. As per recommendation, I grew F1 hybrid Mountain Magic. What a perfect canning tomato it turned out to be!
It has multiple advantages over other tomatoes I grew for that prupose, some are:
1.Production is great and plenty of fruits ripen in waves, so when it is time to can them - you can pick up a lot of red matters from a plant.
2. Firm flesh and thick skin - not so great qualities for fresh eating, but priceless for whole canning - the skin won't crack even when tomato is processed/canned.
3. Uniform, red "cookie-cutter" perfect, bite-sized round fruit: larger than cherry, but small enough to fit whole in your mouth.

Also, MM is very disease resistant - it was the last tomato I pulled out in fall.

Juliet F1 tomato is also good for this purpose, but not as good, because the fruit size is smaller than MM. I use Juliet to fill the gaps in the jars between MM tomatoes.

I make some spaghetti type sauce (general pasta use). For that reason I just use whatever I have. But if I were to can whole tomatoes then I would go with plump type, San Marzano types which are smaller and have more meat than juice.

Seysonn

I am sure people over there know all about how to use cow manure as manures are what is available as fertilizer.

But in my experience you can mix cow manure with garden soil ( 40/60) and top dress with it . stay away from the stem ( ~ 10 cm)

Seysonn

I run into a lot of people who don't know the difference between wet and dry manure as applied to plants.

We here, do. Many new gardeners don't. ;)

Is 'Janet's Jacinthe Jewel' the same as the one sold at Totally Tomatoes known as 'Janet's Jewel?'Yes, I am rather certain that it is. Parenthetically, IMO, it is bad "grammar" intentionally to alter the name of a tom variety, thereby creating 2 (or more) different names for the same tomato variety.
Reggie

I saw it at Dave's, as well, listed as "Janet's Jewel," and I was confused... but that happens often.

Thanks for the info. I just want to label the seeds correctly and offer them with their proper name when the time comes.

I am skeptical of the method that commercially produce "F1" seed (mass production) . It is not obviously a "scientific" approach. So the logical scientific way would to be fast produce an stable product.

The other thing is just playing with the words. Example F1, F2 ,...Fn all are "HYBRIDS". At some Fx it might have already stabilized but the seeds company continues to sell it as "Hybrid". And the general public would not bother to save seeds from that "Fx".
It is hard to believe that, eg, Burpees is still producing and selling Big Boy F1.
Call me skeptic.

Seysonn

"I am skeptical of the method that commercially produce "F1" seed (mass production) ... Example F1, F2 ,...Fn all are "HYBRIDS".

In that sense, everything is a hybrid, because you are saying it is the result of the crossing of two parents and all presentations that develop from that cross down the line.

In the seed business, an F1 hybrid is formed by two parents that always give the same set of traits that define the hybrid seeds being sold. The set of traits expressed is called the desired phenotype.

F2, F3, ... Fn will have material from both of the original parents, so it is only a cross in that sense, but it will no longer be that dependable, uniform 50/50 combination giving solely the desired traits since F2 has scrambled the DNA after the second pollenation event on the grow out of your harvest.

Two uses for the word "hybrid".

1) Loose: A random simple cross resulting in diverse groups of F1's, better called a "cross" and not identified in industry with the label "F1" to avert confusion (even though it is), and generally results in a variety of segregating phenotypes.

2) Strict: A researched and developed cross from parents selected so that all desired traits are always expressed in F1's = uniform, called hybrid seed, labeled with "F1 hybrid", where it really means "true bred phenotypical F1 hybrid"

PC

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Sun, Jan 18, 15 at 5:36

hi -
Yes, Sugar Drop is my variety. As Carolyn mentioned, it is from the Ambrosia Gold line, and we still were getting some reversion to the dominant red a couple of years ago. All the lines appear to be stable now at F5 and F6.
We raise and sell produce to local markets and restaurants, and Sugar Drop has replaced the original Sungold in our fields because it's ready early, holds well, and the brix levels are higher than Sungold throughout the season.
Anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence. It's always good to hear how something you've released is doing out there under different conditions.
Lee

Is the Sugar Drop (two words) yellow in color and the Sugardrop (one word) red in color?

The last time I went out on Krome there were still tomato patches and stands. I didn't venture farther than that.

This post was edited by garf on Sat, Jan 17, 15 at 22:36

Liz Burt also did well for me one year. Everglades is always a good bet here. I think if I could beat the spider mites, I would do well.

Oh no, hopefully they are not that bad. Are micro Toms ant better? I wanted to try Red Robins, but still no seeds. Maybe in the next week or two.

An update on my Red Robins.

I moved them to Solo cups a few day's after Christmas.

They took off, I think they like the new potting soil (MG) a lot better! I have been moving the lights up every other day.

I need to move them into bigger pots now, they are 6" tall and the stems are very thick.

I will have to change my light setup, I have run out of room, I'm on my last chain link.

Hopefully I can do that Saturday.

Last night I was looking through the Tomatofest website and came across Mandarin Cross. Gary Ibsen says that he has de-hybridized it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tomatofest

THe name Madarin Cross does not mean it's an F1 hybrid, and it was stable when Takii released it in 1964 as you can see from my link to Tania's website.

Perhaps Gary just assumed it was a hybrid b'c Cross was part of the name. Had it been a hybrid and folks grew it and saved seeds and planted out they no doubt would have seen genetic segregation and the appearence of other shapes, colors. etc.

As for his dehybridizing a variety that was OP and stable since 1964, well, what can I say. Yes, I know Gary, actually since about 1990. And I have no idea what he ended up with as the result of doing what he did, Looks the same to me as what others show for the original OP.

Carolyn

Thanks for the extra info.
Were the plants that had BER more root bound / in the smaller pots?

Im working on the theory that something prevented the buffering of the soil from rebounding from a ph change. Once things root bind in a container it is very easy for them to be exposed to pockets of soil that have no buffering agents distributed in them, and worse still, may have a pocket of low ph materials.

I had a tomato plant that had BER on one stalk of the plant... at the end of the season I tracked its root into a unbroken up clump of peat... opps

TwinHerder,
wow, tracking it down to the roots! Sounds like some sort of CSI tomato investigation you had going on!!
Actually no, the BER didn't just occur in the smaller pots. In fact I think the first one to show any BER was on of the Early Girls in the 5 gal.pot. Only a few tomatoes on that plant had the BER and I was thinking it might have been do to drying out too much between waterings. Wish I had a drip system.
Harry

"G should spend some time learning about tomatoes and build a more useful website."

LOL! These sorts of semi-spammed postings of reputedly up to snuff websites can be fun in an evil way.

Are root knot nematodes or other soil dwelling nematodes a significant problem in the UK? (Agree posting here should cover it, but just curious)

PC

Grubby Me, I've visited discussion sites where people say things like that very seriously. I don't even blink twice anymore... ;)

I reuse duds. Nuke 'em. The un-reused ones show their little beady heads a year later when it's clean up time.

I TOLD you they'd take something as dead simple and reliable as a peat pellet and make it complicated. There is NOTHING wrong with them, just mismatches with media, season, climate, and techniques. So many otherwise intelligent people who have a favorite method seems to think that anyone who doesn't do it the same way is an idiot. Go figure.

Whatever works...

There are a few ways to cross the river...some use a canoe, and some use an ocean liner. haha. thanks to all!