16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Daniel, what is the variety of your bulgy-shaped tomatoes? I had some of a similar shape and colour (crimson/dark pinky-red) with amazing flavour. The best I have tasted.

I'm sorry tete-a-tete, but I don't know the variety. This year I planted 35 varieties.

It was pretty difficult in that "jungle" to see what varieties were the tomatoes I picked up. Many vines were 15+ ft. long.

Next year I'll have a CLEAR system, to know EXACTLY what variety is EACH tomato in my garden.

Daniel, thanks for the suggestion. But this is an old thread about "planting plans" and I will just let it ride.
OTOH, I thing the two ( what to grow and what NOT to grow) go hand in hand , as part of the plan, to me at least

BeesNeeds , ... That is very interesting : Growing just one color.
I like colorful basket of tomatoes; Red, Pink ; Brown, Bi Color, Brown, Yellow/Orange, Green, ... But always Red/Pinks are dominant. Well, we all have different preferences.

This post was edited by seysonn on Sun, Nov 23, 14 at 12:14

HOW MANY VARIETIES YOU GREW/MENTIONED ?:

A rough count in this thread alone shows that in 2014 close to ONE HUNDRED varieties mentioned/grown.

Maybe another hundred was not mentioned ( just GW members). But I have read that there are 20k tomato varieties in the world today. Let us say that there are just 2k. So we are just growing one out of 10 of them. I have come to believe that smart gardeners like YOU screen and pick the best to grow. So , instead of going to the commercial seeds catalog I would pick my tomato plans based on the recommendations and reviews right in this GW forum. AND that is what exactly I have been doing. I bet growers like Bonnie listen to you as well and grow/sell what is REALLY good stuff.
Thank you all

Seysonn

Actually those are good ideas from grubby's input, especially about gaming the last frost. But you'd have to get lucky because your last frost date ranges to April 20, and the way this year is going winter isn't giving any breaks.in the southeast, but mabe the southwest will have better luck and maybe you can get a few weeks.

Since it is the first time he's growing I was trying to keep it simple. You won't believe all you can learn by going through it one time with the surest thing and then if you get into it you can build on that with experience under your belt and do some of the stuff other forum participants do to increase their luck. Now I'm bucking the recommendation again with plants when the season should be over (as of two nights ago, hard freeze, 9a). It kind of gets tedious instead of fun at times, and there is really no substitute for getting a productive plant that allows a beginner latitude to make a few mistakes but still get his bushel full to show for the effort.

Best gardening
PC

In addition you will be dealing with wind, quite a lot of it in your high dessert location. Get your tomato plants set out as early as humanly possible. You can purchase or make frost caps or purchase specialty product to protect young plants. Your best bet will likely be smaller tomatoes, including cherries and salad size.

Hi JennieBoyer. I am not a fan of fried green tomatoes and don't think tomatoes should be cooked BUT I found a nice recipe for green tomato soup. I believe it's from Epicurious. You can also make chutney (I've never made it but I've heard its good).

Here is a link that might be useful: Green Tomato Soup

There are only so many uses for green tomatoes and I believe that unless you like the end product you are better to not waste time preparing large quantities of it. I decided this morning to compost over 10 bu. of larger green tomatoes which I had picked prior to the freeze and the last farmers' markets I attended. Eventually they all rot if just held in storage and even those that turn color lack the flavor of a vine ripened tomato. I still have a few bu. of colored tomatoes but what I envision is a weekly sorting routine to toss the decaying fruits and in the end we will have eaten a dozen or less tomatoes.

My vote and my quest is for the vine ripened tomatoes next May. I believe the overwhelming majority of my tomato customers feel the same.

I grew a different one, Indigo Blue Berries. Tough study plants and
the flavor is good when they turn red where the sun doesn't hit, not orange, red. They were a longer DTM than Black Cherry and Esterina (a hybrid) while I was dying to try them. They were the most prolific and were still producing into fall. I had six of them this year. Next I want to put one in an upside down thing, easier to see under them.

Mary E.

From another tomato discussion board we can't link to here - "Taste is not really mild but more mellow yet a fairly complex, well balanced taste."

I find them to have little to no acidic bite yet not overly sweet. An underlying smoky flavor I find in many of the black/blue varieties. But as we often say here, taste is totally subjective so YOMV,

Dave

edited to note correct spelling for searches is Helsing Junction Blues.

This post was edited by digdirt on Mon, Nov 24, 14 at 13:21

What a nice greenhouse. Enjoy. (I have nothing to offer on how to grow in one, though). Children's hospital is lucky to have someone as dedicated as you raising funds for them.

Caryl

I'm in SE MA as well and I think with your set up you can definitely get them in that house fine. I mean with hoop houses I've made I'm setting them in the ground April 1st or so. I have to take internal precautions like covering them with fabric like weed guard but they live. You've got an engineered structure with heat. I think your plants will do fine. Light is a factor as others have said. Those Bonnie types you see are grown in Alabama I think. Their greenhouses are warm but they also probably have hot lamps above them. Don't for get fans and rotating the plants to make them strong. Don't know if this would be too expensive or impracticable but you really want nice looking plants use fabric pots. By impracticable I mean transplanting or the cost and weight of a final destination(I'd go with 30 gallons if I was planting at home). It's amazing the way the plants just get all bushy and healthy thanks to the self pruning going on below. Another consideration is to maybe sell the fabric pots with the tomatoes and even have a sample on hand to demonstrate(meaning you start a plant now and transplant it into a decent size fabric pot(10-20 gallons)for the wow factor).

Hi corpus,

Good move pulling it. Clearly the plant has a disease indistinguishable in symptoms and appearance from TSWV, so it really doesn't matter what it was from a practical point of view.

Think about this one not as the plant you had, since, in fact you never had it; it wasn't going to be a good producer no matter what and it would only have infecrted other plants via sapsucking insects sooner or later (And I hope this didn't happen).

jean, he'll have to call the Ozzie Ghostbusters at this point since unless I'm mistaken, the plant was pulled if you read the thread. Also, pictures are no way to confirm anything ... they are only indicative and vary since environments and genetics make life fun. What is important here is following the progression of symptoms which were in lock step with TSWV to be messing around, so the stunted plant was pulled.

corpus, just a suggestion, but if your plants are taking off, the season is still young. You can just root a roughly 15 cm side shoot (sometimes referred to as a "sucker" in the USA) and easily catch up with the season since you don't have a spare. I do that all the time (but never have places to put the plants ... right now there are three sprawling in a noodly like web (angel hair?) over my thick carpet, under a weak fluorescent light as I slowly realize it won't be happening for them).

Take the side shoot cutting from your favorite plant/variety you've got already in the garden and you may even come out ahead ;-)

Thanks for the feedback, and if you happened to take any pictures of the more advanced stage before you pulled the plant, you can always post them ;-)

PC

Here is a link that might be useful: Rooting Tomato Side Shoots

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 4:33

Thanks Jean, yes, there was some doubt and I decided to err (if I was erring at all) on the side of caution.

PC, thanks for your advice! I'll try that. We call them "laterals" here. I didn't take any more pictures. The plant was perhaps half the height of the best others and wilting - I didn't hold out much hope for it.

Thanks again!

Fermentation leads to the seeds becoming much cleaner and they won't stick together afterwards, when dry. This makes them easier to sow.

Thanks PC for the summary. Saves us having to go watch the video. Blender? Wonder how many seeds get damaged or destroyed in the process? No fermentation? No disinfection? No thanks.

Only 24-48 hours drying and on plastic coated surface is not nearly long enough to prevent molding during storage.

Dave

Thanks.... will be sure to pay attention next time. first time trying in a container. Didn't think they would grow, was experimenting. House not upside down, neither is my plant. There is only one plant in the container.

If you click on any upside down picture, it opens up in another separate window where it is right side up.

Remember we all use different brands of computers or hand-held devides with various operating systems to access the internet, and with constantly changing technology they can 't all intermesh as perfectly as we would like.

Tomatoes can take one-off temps of 28 degrees and often bounce back with little ill effect. However, sustained temps below 45 degrees are devastating to them. Tomato plant biochemistry relies on rubisco which is part of the translocation biopath that moves nutrients and energy from the leaves, through the stem, and into the roots. Temps below 45 degrees pretty much shut down the entire translocation biopath though the most intense effect is around 35 degrees. So putting it in perspective, there are no surprises here. Tomatoes can take brief periods down to 28 degrees, but can't handle sustained cold temps.

All common tomato varieties die dead dead dead below 28 degrees. There is a small amount of variation, I have a few lines that can take temps lower than 28 but absolutely cannot take frost forming on the leaves. I got several lines of tomato and grew them in 2013 to evaluate cold tolerance. This included numerous Russian lines as well as several wild species from TGRC. The short story is that all of them die when frost forms on the leaves. The longer story is that a few of them are able to continue growing at temps between 32 and 45 which is deadly for ordinary tomatoes.

The best result of the 2013 growout was finding a S. Habrochaites line that is nearly immune to disease in my garden. There was also a S. Pimpinellifolium that is significantly better than any of my current lines for septoria tolerance. I grew F2 plants from crosses with these plants this year and plan to grow F3's next year in a search for better disease tolerance in a decent quality domestic tomato.

I went out last night, as temps were dipping to the mid 20's and I wanted to get the last butternut, and there were MORE TOMATOES out on that plant. The last of the few blooms it had with temps around 50 went on to become tomatoes, and looked really nice despite a dead plant with frost forming on them before my eyes, a few were even blushing!

How much heat does the ballast unit put out on that 400 watt unit?

Well Gregory123,

I took your advice and bit the bullet on the 400 watt light... It's way more than I was planning on or could afford.... but at least it's something I can use years into the future... and 'handles' this part of my veggie garden...

I just need to save up some moola for a couple 4' T5 grow light for each of the other two windows now...

Hopefully, this does the trick...

I am trying to decide if I am motivated to grow greens during the winter in our heated box - inside the GH. It works great - not too expensive - but does require removing the lid on hot sunny days (in the GH) and of course - watering. We can grow in this box all through the winter months. It is 30" wide X 96" long. We bury the cables about 4" under the soil and plug them into a thermostat that I set at about 50 degrees F.
The box contains the heat well during the night and the GH is warm enough (sometimes too warm) during the day that if I take off the lid - the plants do well !

AACK!!! Hudson, you're killing me!!! Now I have a bad case of the "I wants"!!!!
Edie

Thanks PupillaCharites

The larger/stronger tomato plants have bounced back. A few smaller plants and weaker cucumber plants on the outer edges of my setup have died.
I did a reservoir change on my Ebb & Flo reservoir tank, last night, and skipped the Flora Kleene process. This setup has around 10 tomato plants topping off around 7 ft tall. I have changed this tank before with no adverse affects.
Looks like I have a 30 dollars a gallon of FloraKleene for sale... LOL.

Thanks again for the replies,
Ban

Hi Ban, I hear you on the Flora Kleene stuff ... just like all of those whiz bang products, they are worth hanging on to and some time you may get some tough salt buildup in the hydroton or whatever you have in the EnF and it may come in handy...you never know (the astronomical cost $30 is another subject)

I used to take care of that problem, which was not frequent but is more common in desert climates, by just running water through the media pHed as low as ok for the plants. When you finish the growing cycle, you can just put all the media into a large tub, and just soak it good, dump the water and soak it at a pH of 4 or so, dump, and soak rinse. That's how I'd recycle it swirling it around with my hands to get the old organic matter out, and that saves a lot of money on buying the media. When I let the roots completely dry out in the rig, they came out more whole and easily compared to wet roots.

For DWC it was never an issue. I still have some strawberries running that I planted in two tubs nearly 14 months ago. They are outside and whenever it rains the hydroton gets rinsed, but if they were inside, I would just run a gallon of $0.88 Walmart distilled water through the pot,s like I said in the first post. You could use RO or Rain too. That's better than tap or well because it sucks the residues into solution more, and having it pH'ed around 4.8 for tomatoes is fine. It takes extremely little pH down to pH distilled water if it isn't already at low pH. The acid side pH dissolves the carbonates and phosphates which build up and leave a white residue.

Your tomatoes sound great! Must be a pretty tough set-up to deal with plants that big. Here's a picture of strawberry roots damaged by chlorine in tap water after a res change:

(chlorinated water damage from res change of strawberries)

Tomato is less sensitive to chlorine than strawberry but if there is very little organic matter in the solution, they can get punched too if chlorine is not dissipated. Like your situation, I lost some of the plants at the edges, where the bubbler was not very efficient.

Good luck. I'm so caught up in tomatoes I've neglected the strawberries, no res change since June 3!

PC

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Thu, Nov 13, 14 at 11:34

Hi Silvia, maybe they're kind words but you make it easy, over a Sungold Caprese salad LOL. The thread got so big, I'm reading it in pieces so forgive me if I say something you've covered. To tell the truth, I just keep coming back to look at the pictures ;-)

When/how are you going to pull your plants this year? Do you take them to the end, or as you say force a break to lessen carrying any disease (and I say enjoying Christmas).

I think we're going to have an early frost this year since that's the way it's been going. It'll definitely get us up here, but hopefully you'll be insulated around 3 hours to the south. Three hours, hmmm. If things work out I might just crash your April party!

I'm actually going to try the mix with spinosad and neem, because you suggested it... The spinosad alone is worthless but I've never used neem, and need to look more into it, since it gets such good reviews. I have a highly refined horticultural oil called Sunspray that I've used for mites successfully which may be an ok swap, so I'll read up on the difference to be sure.

I started keeping single vines, and you're right about that. At this point, I am letting the plants put out everything they can. It's not because I am happy with that, only because every single flower counts here and pruning and waiting as the Sun falls further won't get a few last clusters in. So it used to single but now they are an intertwined mess with lots of yellow ;-) October was a great month in general as it always is, but the party will be over as quickly as it started. September was a total rainout which delayed everything and why transplant date was Oct 3.

Hi labs ! Yes a sort of summer fabric would be just what the doctor ordered. Sounds like a project for next year spring/summer. But for extending the season, the plants now couldn't take the hit in loss of light. Sometimes I think I should just get a grow room inside the house with silver wallpaper and a huge electric bill :-(

Cheers!
PC

EDIT... about Citrus, nope that's not our source here but I bet it is a big deal around Indian River... we're too far north except for an ocassional pet tree in the yard for fun. There are two trees within 500 feet and later I'm going to sneak a look at them both just for fun. Better not to ask, since it might not go over well, if I say can I inspect your lemon and orange tree for leafminers I have on my tomatoes ;-))))

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Wed, Nov 12, 14 at 11:58

Hi PC, looking forward to you crashing the party in April.:)

I don't have an exact time to pull the plants out but I still have them in January, I use the tomatoes for the parties at my house around Christmas, the big tomatoes are just ripening now...

January tomatoes from past seasons, with snap peas

With phyllo dough and feta cheese

Silvia