16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
If there is a meaning in the name, when I hear "PINEAPPLE" tomato, this is what I think of. There are some bi colors that are also carry the name "pineapple". This is just part of the mish mash of naming convention in tomato world. CONFUSING!
The three close friends that made the original movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) had no experience growing tomatoes.
The project was started because they considered the tomato the most innocuous thing present in the household. One guy disliked tomatoes and did not eat them at the time ... but now eats a lot of Caprese salads with tomatoes, another made nothing with them, and the third, the director, John DeBello had no recipes for them, but knows every tomato joke under the Sun because he likes 2nd grade level humor:
I donâÂÂt have any tomato recipes. But at this point, IâÂÂve heard every tomato joke every told. The intellectual level of tomato jokes is usually about second grade. HereâÂÂs one of the oldest, though, along with the chicken crossing the road: WhatâÂÂd one tomato say to the other tomato?
Ketchup.
All were military, and one had a friend or relative that called something used in target practice "the killer tomato". About the only link these three had to agriculture was that they had a liberal arts education, worked in sports, and the link ... they went to UC Davis (probably has the largest genetic resources of tomato in any one place in the world, but they probably had no clue about it) and made their prototype short of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes for a class on films, when trying to think of the stupidest title possible.
PC
Here is a link that might be useful: Oral History
Good luck lucille, my climate is the same as Galveston's, and my sun intensity the same as Houston. We will both be hoping together for something to show for fall. Houston's winters are 2-4 degrees F cooler, meaning frost in early December, so if you already have mature plants you are in great shape.
I started from seed 5 weeks ago and my fingers are crossed with you that we have no early freezes, our frost date being around Dec 24. Hope to be counting tomatoes along with you!
PC
I'd lean toward the stray seed theory as well.
If you like, go ahead and save seed and regrow next year.
Also, unless you have bees buzzing around your tomato plants, your chance of cross pollination is 0, no matter how close adjacent plants are.
Good luck!
Lee
I let them ripen on the plant to a day or two before eating. I use some fertilizers that I like to think the fruit will consume somewhat in the 24-48 hours, after being picked, so I don't eat them right off the vine until I go more organic.
My neighbors notice the ripe tomatoes more than the green ones and they say, "Oh! you have nice tomatoes." It's important PR here. If there is no color, no one notices as much, and then they think the plants are too messy for their chemical lawn culture neighborhood.
But the effect of seeing ripe tomatoes on the plant makes everyone feel happy, and think "yummy", including too many creatures that get to eat too, always, it seems on the early morning of the day I'm going to harvest them, and I always harvest arounf 8:30 AM ;-( But the neighbor thing is important.
I know you likely have this figured out, but I had a similar experience this year when we turned from 20,20,20 to 9-15-30 we send that through drip irrigation. Each plant only sees about a quart of water each week.
I have to purge lines and always end up with a gallon of concentrated solution. In this case I filled the 5 gal bucket with water to dilute it and poured it over the last 4 plants in the row. They recovered within the week. My point? In my case I wasn't giving enough nutrients or water.
I had the same problem. Tried some fung oil and this may have helped a little. We kept getting a lot of raining humid days this year. I trimmed off all effected areas and disposed of them. This helped for a while, but has finally taken over even into my cherry tomatoes and zucchini... Any thoughts to prevent this next year???
I don't have a hipboard/ribbon on yet, that will be in the spring. I'll have to run ropes from baseboard to baseboard until then. Yes, I read in manual to use short (relatively speaking) pieces so if 1 breaks you don't lose it all.
My groundposts have 7/32 holes in them - PO (nursery) had nails stuck through and hoops sitting on top. They took the plastic off over the winter and I guess weren't worried about wind - the hoops must have been bent by rain collecting in loose plastic?
I don't know what kind of drill bit and how much torque you need to drill through galvanized steel hoop (sorry, I don't know how thick)? DH breaks drill bits going through wood, I can't imagine asking him to drill out 44 hoops (going through both sides of both ends of 22 hoops). I was thinking just putting a tek screw into each hole, so 2 going into 1 end/groundpost, from opposite directions?
I won't be leaving this up during the winter either. if we get strong winds (this summer kept having warnings but never saw any), the tunnel has about 1/2 mile to the south to go before it hits my uncle's house. I'm hoping it wouldn't clear the knob of ledge with the apple trees right at that end of it though, or the CRW fence around the main garden on the other side of the knob, or the blackberry hill the other side of that, or the stone wall and trees on the property line, or my uncle's pond ;-)
I don't think wind from the south would lift it with the knob there, but we have a rise to the north and a lot of trees before you get to my house (about 500ft as the crow flies NW). Trees to the east and my pond to the west with more trees behind it.
Yea if you take off the plastic in the winter that should save you from the snow issue.. Suprisingly with just an average sharp metal bit and an 18v hammer drill you could get right through the steel.. Although if you tek screwed each side I'm sure you'll get away with it (perhaps someone with more experience like Bmoser could confirm this).
It sounds like you have some decent wind breaks too, so I wouldn't be too worried.. Nice property huh?! That's great..
@lindalana - started my batch of tea finally, she's foaming up nicely and smelling wonderful! Lol can't wait to see how it finishes.. I will be honest in saying that I was a little impatient .. Although the compost has cooled to outdoor temps there are still some solid pieces of organic material that haven't decomposed so I had to pick through those.. That's what I get for adding material towards the end of the active phase .. Should've left it alone lol .. Now I'm either gonna to have to remove those pieces, or heat the pile back up..
Daniel wrote
Well, seysonn, we'll talk about pruning vs. no pruning in a new thread that I'll start soon.
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That is interesting. I have been in this game for years. I have my opinions and never insisted that I am right. But this thread is not about pruning although it might have crossed over.
Topping end of season is altogether a different thing, as I have tried to explain in my opening post.
Look forward to your thread.
seysonn
Yay, and Christmas came early- Sen Say will be coming my way as well as Orange Minsk Heart and Daniel Burson with Margaret Curtain...
SuncityLinda, my friend just reported that Sarah Black was one of the most productive for her out of about 100 LOL
Indian stripe was real gem of tomato this year for me. Now we will see what Daniel Burson is going to do.
Thanks Carolyn & Marv, I'll take a rain check on those seeds Marv unless Carolyn wants them LOL ⦠till I can figure out how to successfully grow big tomatoes in my climate, since it sounds like the crème de la crème of BZ breeding material. It is more of a sour grapes sort of thing, probably. The breeding pressure is for the single huge tomato which I'm not that keen about for the following reasons. Other traits have been compromised, that in a vigorous, stabilized OP line should be there. I think the BZ crowd is committing a terrible error by successively omitting excluding traits just to get the one. Could be wrong about it but there is no real target from what I see other than size ⦠seems logical that other traits are going to the wayside and that is not how a real head breeder would define a program. They are probably going the wrong way and need to incorporate new traits into it by reaching out to tap other genetic resources not present.
So in creating the monster among giants, the latest BZ doesn't appeal to me as much since it is too resource intensive to carry a plant for just one tomato in North Florida. I will be growing MegaMarv in the spring, not for Guinness, but just because you gave me some info on it and I value the personal connection. Here's the problem, to grow a giant I need to carry it through the summer, which is a lot of work for 75 days. Late March is transplant date and June gets too hot at night and requires vigor in a plant to do this. I'd like to see a southern bred, southern edition of Big Zac OP rather than protected culture more temperate climate ones currently coming out. TimmâÂÂs is quite vigorous, and that is pretty much the best compromise I can get. The newer one you have is probably some excellent breeding stock to backcross to F6 and then make the selections ⦠rather than continue selecting to an evolutionary dead end ⦠there is something great to be said about vigor IMO.
But you know what ⦠There was this guy that âÂÂinventedâ every single determinate tomato ⦠a stoneâÂÂs throw from where I grew up, a generation or two earlier, by just saving the seeds from one weird plant he caught with his eagle eye. The man was a natural and the stuff of legend. I bet when people saw that straggly plant that died at the end of its cycle there were similar comments from the peanut gallery. The proof will be revealed in time and all critics will disappear into the woodwork when a vigorous line comes out that is easy to grow for the masses. JMO
Dominick, since the tomato is not the cherry you were expecting, it very well may not be the color you were expecting either. It's possible it may turn out to be a yellow or "white" tomato instead of a red. I don't know what zone you are in, but if the nights (or days) are starting to really chill down, you may want to pick them and continue to ripen them in the house in warmer conditions. If they continue to stay yellow instead of pink or red, you can determine ripeness by a gentle squeeze which will feel soft and giving, not hard as a rock. I know I have missed peak ripeness for paler yellow and green when ripe tomatoes many times, because they just did not look ripe -- until I noticed they were starting to split.
Daniel, also to question whether to skip on watering during August, this was from market grower in one of the warmer zones, so yeah, it is doable for sure. Good mulch and good soil practices will give your tomatoes long roots. If your tomatoes roots grow only 8-10 inches down then there will be need to think why and what can be changed. Those ones will for sure need frequent watering. I know I tried to dig one tomato in June and it was job and a half for me.
Both pots are too small to grow tomatoes in. This 10-Gallon Smart Pot would be a better choice.
Also, I would be more worried about the limp stem of the tomato in the bigger pot.
> And since you and grubby made such a big deal above about where my photos were fromâ¦
I didnâÂÂt make a big deal; I simply explained that your 4 photos were NOT uploaded from your computer, as some were thinking from your confusing first post.
And yes, your post WAS confusing, because out of 6 people who posted here, 4 were confused; they though itâÂÂs possible to upload more than one picture from computer - which is not possible. They though there is aâÂÂtrick.âÂÂ
Michael wrote: > I'll have to try your preview trick Dave, thanks for that!
seysonn wrote: > I have tried doing that trick. But won't work.
grubby_me wrote: > Yep, the preview and add trick is totally fake.
And I wrote: > There is NO trick⦠[ I knew that AFTER I tried too the trick. ]
> But since photos play only a minor secondary role on a discussion forum anywayâ¦
Well, some would like to post pictures in a sequence, and being able to upload more than one picture from the computer, is useful / faster for some.
> ...minor secondary role... ?
Sometimes a picture IS necessary to help somebody who asks a question. See posts when people who want to help, request pictures.
This post was edited by Daniel_NY on Thu, Sep 18, 14 at 20:33
GW is waaaay behind the times when it comes to being a user friendly forum... It is the only forum I belong to that you have to use a picture hosting site to upload photos.
All my other forums keep track on the discussions that I have contributed to and I can click on an icon to bring all of those up front. In other words, I don't have to scroll through every thread and try to remember which ones I am active in. Having to preview your post first is a waste of time since they just recently got an edit function.
After posting a reply, I almost always have to refresh my page... and on and on it goes.
And count me as another person who thought Digdirt's post was misleading.