16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Now that this thread is dusted off and brought up , I like to make few comment.
I have been enthusiastically in the game of planting EARLY varieties in 2014. I grew all three, MATINA, STUPICE, BLOODY BUTCHER among few other. Now that the season has come and gone , I can voice an opinion on them:
MATINA has been the winner of the 3 in my garden. (a) taste , (b)productivity and (c) size. A WINNER
STUPICE did very poorly. Not a consistent fruiting habit. Most fruits were like cherry tomatoes. Even those small tomatoes took relatively long to ripen. A LOOSER.
BLOODY BUTCHER was the first to produce ripe tomato but it fruited so sparingly. Although not as bad as Stupice, but not as good as Matina. So I wont grow it again.
So my next year's earlies will be: Matina and Siletz. YMMV
BTW: I also grew Early Treat, Silvery Fir Tree. I will NOT grow them again.
Hey seysonn, I am surprised about BB. I had recommended to you as an early variety. I didn't grow it this year but last year it was a work horse. I had tons of tomatoes from it. Oh well that's gardening. I was debating about Stupice for 2015 but I think I'm scratching off my list. Lots of varying reports about it and there's so many others out there.
I'm in zone 6/5 and still going. but I'm more interested in my winter crops. Always grow something all year.
I can keep my lettuce going till December.
I have been enjoying the sauce I made earlier in the year. Came out great.
Raspberries are producing like mad too. Still getting about 30 a day.It peaks at 80 a day, so it is down.
Check this out for growing all year
Here is a link that might be useful: Fruitnut's greenhouse
I admit that right now I don't miss my ragged, yellowed tomato plants. Everything looks good, feels good and boy have I ever learned not to plant different tomatoes in one giant deep tub-they crossed or whatever and some reliable favorites came out bitter and inedible. Others came out sweet and that's a huge no-no in my world !
I saved seeds earlier in the year, so not saving anymore except a few late peppers. I use both oxiclean and fermenting. I usually use oxiclean when time is limited. Both methods work fine for me.
I still have many tomatoes to process. It's been a great year!
In zone 8 GA, there is no chance. I know this, I have lived in ATL area for a number of years.Even your FFD delay till the end of November, You will have less than 50 days.
here is your data:
Last Frost Date (2014): 3/23
First Frost Date (2014): 10/30
Average Growing Season: >232 days
Well it's been about a week since I harvested all my tomatoes. I went through all of them today and almost all of them have turned a lighter green if not yellow or even red. Hopefully this means most of them will ripen eventually. I am now starting to collect seeds for next year. I was wondering if the seeds from green tomatoes that ripen indoors will produce good plants or should I try to only get seeds from vine ripened tomatoes?
You can save seeds, but it depends how green, usually a 70%+ mature tomato works and less doesn't. Just ripen like you are doing and then cut through the tomato you want to use for seed with a sharp knife. If the seeds get cut rather than slip out of the way, probably not good. But if the seeds are brown and have gel around them, most will be good.
I did this with one tomato and got a good plant from the seed, but next time I will put about 4 in each starter plug and take the best of the group, instead of just one which I normally do. You might want to pre-germinate them in a plastic bag on a paper towel and then the instant some good looking ones show germination, transfer the seed to the plug or whatever you use.
Lindalana (pre-soak) and especially Daniel (pre-germinate)both do similar methods as they have posted. I personally don't because the first time I experimented with it, I let the roots grow 2-3 days and many of them did worse upon transfer. Just a suggestion.
PC
socalgal, if you live in a dry climate it ios probably much harder, but here in Florida it is certainly possible to do especially in times of high humidity ... if you can be creative to support it and protect it from the Sun.
Not something that will all take, but there are usually failures even in recovery 'chambers'. That has more to do IMO with matching the correct stem size. A side graft technique, for example on a low side shoot would be much more successful for this sort of thing, which removes the scion's roots in two stages. I would use the same procedure like when my stem broke earlier this year and only about 20% was left connected. I connected it as best I could and wire wrapped a split tube around the break and it mended just fine, although adventitious roots also grew out of the wound.
Maybe I'll try it now just to see since I have some seedlings I need to toss that were extras for my fall season. But finally we have a lower humidity week so I wait for the rain to come back and do it then.
PC
Bart, if you bought the seeds for GZ they should be small in the 2-3 oz range.
But as noted below seeds were sold by Tomato Growers Supply for what they called Big Zebra, as noted in the link below, with pictures.
From the link you can see that both TGS and Diane's Flowers are offering seeds for 2014 when you click on seed availability.
Carolyn
Here is a link that might be useful: Big Zebra
This post was edited by carolyn137 on Wed, Oct 8, 14 at 13:48
Thanks all.
From looking at some of the google images, I see most shots are the round, "ping pong ball" shaped ones that I got this year, but there were a few shots of the more squat shaped ones too.
I hope it was because of the weather this year!!!!
I have grew one years ago, just for the heck of it. I made my own pot by drilling a hole at the bottom of a 5g bucket. I planted a cheery type in it. There are many technical problems: I did get no more than a handful of tomatoes off of it.
The fact is NO PLANT will grow upside down in the nature. Cascading is not the same as upside down. Actually planting some cherry tomatoes in a good size hanging basket can be more decorative than upside down. Pick a small indeterminant cherry.
i've done it a couple of times, some success but yes there are problems as alluded to above. Wouldn't do i again unless there was a space issue.
One problem is when watering the water runs out the bottom and all over the plant making it all yuk.....so if you are going to do it, i would suggest growing it out the side of the container rather than the bottom.
This is really an interesting subject fort me since I have these cutting too. I didn't see ddsack's post when I wrote mine, so I just wanted to say that's the sort of thing I was talking about with chartreuse color, thin leaves, and leggy plants. I admire his plants for fun inside and think it really depends on what you want to do, but I wouldn't use (3? of 4?) of his plants in my garden any more than the 15 leggy ones here, and probably all would go take well up there like he says. Plus, I don't have a nice sliding sunlight bay window or door higher than ground level, facing sun any part of the year where I could even dream of putting big pots in cold weather, let alone 18 plants which is what I need for planting.
If you are dealing with a short season, a thick stemmed plant will always out produce a leggy plant IMO. The key is just to time it right, which is sort of seysonn's point. By putting a bulb with a reflector above a plant, it stays stout and develops heavy, robust "fronds". But again it depends on priorities. I would pinch off inside flowers, too, if the goal was an early plant for the garden, so they plant used all of it's energy to get stout huge solar collectors and my hope would be this would return big time tomatoes. It is not a fair comparison to start seeds or even cuttings late and compare that with a leggy transplant much its senior.
Though conditions vary. If I try to harden off a chartreuse leggy transplant, it will not take off here, but rather be attacked by leaf miners and other bad stuff on its tender thin leaves and never amount to much after that. I would have to pinch off the main growing stem which ddsack could also do; Then the plant would have no choice but to stop getting long looking for limited light and to grow thicker and lusher and maybe be a good transplant so everyone who experiments a little can work out what best suits their climate, soil, and pests for their goals. The hard part is identifying goals, because once I see a flower bud it is very hard to remove it, so goals change along the way ;-)
There are indoor varieties bred for that, so if I planned now, I would want it all and plant appropriate indoor varieties for that and start my seeds earlier using light (since I don't have a good window;-)
Is your variety something special that you don't have seeds for or maybe not know what variety it is? That was my reason for taking most of these cuttings - I got a private heirloom plant in spring and wanted to get it in time for the fall season. I planted seeds when they became available. Initially the cuttings massacred the seeds for speed, but the limitations on light and size inside ... and fall came and I used only the ones I raised from seed. The best clone barely was as good as the average seed due to my specific growing conditions (lack of light), and there is always the possibility that the cuttings will more quickly fall to disease than plants grown from seeds, on the back end of the season, so bigger isn't always better and I think ddsack addressed that in his post too and agree with him.
PC
On the surface of it, six months of biding time before spring is a really long time, but you'll never know unless you try. Maybe if they get too leggy you could take cuttings from the cuttings! Sounds like a 'speriment to me. Dopers do this all the time...
Carolyn, it is interesting thought about soil being frozen to kill pathogens... but OTOH, the ever nasty C diff lives in the gut peacefully until opportunity arises...
so if there is some small nasties that do overwinter in the soil but good guys prevail I will still come ahead?
&&&&&&
Being a retired infectious disease/immune response person, I don't think I'd go as far as saying that Clostridium difficile lives peacefully in the gut since not everyone has that bacterium as local flora. But as you know, certain antibiotics can cause it to multiply if it is there, and that's not a good situation.See the link at the bottom.
What I'm thinking of as to critters and letting the soil freeze deeply are cutworms, which mainly pupate in the soil, and any imported Fusarium, etc.diseases that are killed where the soil freezes deeply.
Has Fusarium and other fungal systemic diseases appeared here in my zone 5 area? Yes, but mainly from plants bought in southern areas. But once here, also are the moths that lay the eggs.
Yes, you'll come out ahead if you know which critters are in your soil that are potential problems and know which ones are killed by freezing and which are not. ( smile)
Carolyn
Here is a link that might be useful: C.diff
This is an old thread (2006).
I also posted a comment in 2011, mentioning that my SINGLE tomatillo plant did fine previous year but my 3 plant are not fruiting, as of the end of June.
Once again, there are posts written by the gardeners who mention their sole tomatillo plant is doing fine. This puts the "self incompatibility theory" in doubt.
I have experimented single plant , 3 times in the past plus this season. YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE MORE THAN ONE PLANT unless you want more fruits.
Read my thread titled "Tomatillo, Facts and Myth" if you like.
After looking at my roots some more and thinking about it a bit longer I now realize that the plants that had only fibrous root were those made from cuttings from plants whose original stalks were eaten by wireworms, about 6 plants in all. Also I believe the number of lateral roots is related to the length of the taproot and how much damage was done during potting up. (Carolyn alluded to this.) Because of this, I plan on starting my plants in bigger containers next year so that I may not even have to pot up at all.
Here are my conclusions about root structure:
The taproot is the primary root of the tomato plant. All other roots are secondary roots except for the adventitious roots which form directly from the stem. The taproot may reach a depth of 23 inches in the first three weeks of plant growth in the garden and can go even deeper depending on soil conditions. Taproots immediately begin to branch and can give off as many as 10 lateral branches per inch. Repotting and transplanting a tomato plant damages the taproot and this results in the overall root beginning to take on a fibrous appearance due to the many small fine roots arising from the remaining tap root. Collectively these are referred to as the fibrous root system. The larger roots growing out laterally from the tap root, the lateral branches, are often referred to as feeder roots when growing laterally while those growing downward are sometimes referred to as water roots though they carry dissolved nutrients as well as water back to the plant.. These laterals grow out horizontally and then down and can reach 2 feet or more in length. The adventitious root system refers to those roots originating from buried stem. All roots are covered with root hairs which are microscopic extensions of the root and through which water and dissolved accompanying nutrients are absorbed.
Thoughts? Marv
"The job of the farmer is to take care of the roots as much as possible. The part above ground will then take care of itself."
he often said "there is a lot you can do for the roots but you can do very little for what is above ground."
quote from an old organic farmer who grew the biggest tomatoes I ever saw.
If this farmer ever met lubadub he would have said "You are the best"