16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Stupice (Tomato Fest). Days: 52

Green Zebra (Territorial Seeds) DTM: 75-80 days. I donâÂÂt grow it, so I donâÂÂt know.

Yeah, I'll zap many, but I do have a few keepers: Brandywine (Pink), Rose, Brandy Boy, ParkâÂÂs Whopper, Sweat Chelsea, and a few more.

The list of those âÂÂzappedâ is MUCH longer. ALL the bush tomatoes, most of the cherries and of course, most of the earlies that I grow this year.

I also want to try some new varieties next year.

I donâÂÂt know why - while TECHNICALLY being on time - most of my tomatoes are late and VERY late ??? And why many of my LATE tomatoes are⦠EARLIER ???

Today, Monday Septemebr 1, finally, FINALLY I picked up the FIRST Stupice tomato. (DTM 52 days.)

1.6 oz. good taste, but late, VERY late.

I already picked up most of my other tomatoes that have waaaaay longer DTMs.

So let me see:, am I going to plant Stupice next year ?

Errrrâ¦. Hmmm⦠lemme think⦠errrâ¦

NO, Stupice will NOT be in my garden next year.

very nice guys and gals! Unfortunately, my harvest has slowed way down due to tremendous blossom drop in July from 100+ degree weather. Harvest should pick up soon!

Ajsmama: didn't realize you were in CT as well! Southern myself.. I'm going to try to get to a market next year.. Do you have much success?

Lots of people north of the mason dixie line are having delays with early varieties this year. Here in Oregon I contribute much of it to very cool nights even though day temps have been warm to hot.
Even my early varieties are starting to ripen pretty good except for my Bush Beafsteak Det plant. It is rated as 62 days to maturity and not a single tomato is even beginning to ripen. It has several tomatoes on the plant but they are all green. Oh I transplanted it 90 days ago and have harvested several Brandywine and other long season varieties a few weeks ago.

Gregory,

You are right on the money about night lows.
Here in North Seattle area(Sammamish) our night lows RARELY stayed above 58F. Even when day highs were like 87F, the temps doped to under 60F. This is because of our very clear skies and low humidity. Now we are in double jeopardy. The day temperatures are going down as well.
My plants are loaded but ripening is getting VERY SLOW.

I don't think of CP as really sweet, I do like CP, BK, BW for bigger tomatoes. I like a tomato to taste like tomato - with some acid.

But I tried Sungold for the first time this year, that is really sweet and yummy! So is Black Cherry. My dad swears by Super Sweet 100 but I am going to have him try Sungold. He probably won't try BC.

I have Galinas yellow cherry that just started ripening and they taste very bland to me. I think Green Doctors are just ripe today, I have to try some. Ester Hess is very bland too, and Dr. Carolyn isn't doing anything (sorry, not you Carolyn, I mean the tomatoes aren't ripening!).

To my taste sweetness is not as critical as texture, juiciness and overall tomato flavor. I don't like a hard solid kind of dry texture. I basically want the kind of quality tomato that you cant buy in the grocery store.

Yeah I know, I usually like to transplant them a couple of times and bury their stem a bit deeper each time so that they grow more roots.

However these white spots started appearing on a couple of my plants a few days ago and I don't really know what is causing it.

Well. First thing first.

1- I would prune those lower leaves, anyway.
2- Repot, burying down more (another 5" or so)
3- spray with fungicide. I like Neem Oil spray: It is Fungicide and pesticide both in one. It is also organic.
Tomato plants , compared to other garden veggies, have very little pest problems. And once they get bigger I would not worry about pests but watch for bacterial diseases, both soil and air borne. Those are number one tomato killers.

Sue, please remember I offered you Estler ML seeds, you sent me your address and I have it written down,

So don't worry about Estler seeds.

I also offered same to Edie, since she's an Estler relative but did not hear back from her.

I won't be sending out your seeds until Fall since right now I'm so far behind on lots of computer stuff keeping touch with my seed production folks, getting more info about someof the ones being grown out this summer,and on and on it goes, and then I have medical appts to catch up on and I can no longer drive my own car, so that's messy right now as well,

The faster I go the behinder I get as is oft said and we must not forget my obsession with tennis either, the TV kind. LOL

Carolyn

I do remember your offer Carolyn, and I greatly appreciate it. I didn't know you were planning to wait until fall, but thank you for letting me know. I know how busy you are so if you didn't get to it I would understand. By the way, do you have a favorite brand of chocolate, lol?

My post will be shorter than yours. LOL

Another person who also contributed to Bob Ambrosesnewsletter was a coordinator of all theNJ expetion servies, a Ph. D withtraining, perhapshisnameis SteveMiller, andIknow that healsomoved tothe USDA station inGeneva, NY, asIjustposted about in another thread lessthan 5 minutesago.

SoIdon'tthinkMinnieZ waswithoutknopwledge of hybrids, and theonlywayyouhaveof determining ifyojuhave ahybridis tosave F2 seeds, plantoutalotofplants andseeifyouget genetic segregation,andIthink, yes, Ithink that was done, or WayneHiltonwouldnothave dealtwithMinnie onthat.

Also, whenMinniewashere at GW, andIwaspresent shewouldn'thavesaid that oneparent had beenlost for TT tosayto rogueoutplants/

IfyouknewWayneHilton,whichyoudidn't, it wouldn't have surprised you to seeproblemsarose whenhe subcontracted out for commercialproduction of her F1 hybrid.

You wrote:

(New breeding has probably advanced BZ (OP) well beyond the F1 from what we are seeing, and they still do not consider it stable (Unless the F* from Monsieur Boudyo has reached that point for a single specific trait).)

Your theory, not mine,

(I may have different thinking, since I also believe if the mutation is fixed and a consistent tomato producing multiple fruits is bred, that the new stable cultivar should be the beginning of as new subspecies at minimum recognized as different as broccoli is from cauliflower.)

Your idea,not mine,

(Perhaps when my great heirloom book arrives in the Male (smile), I’ll have a better understanding of hybrids ;-), but these are my thoughts as all-wet as they might be.)

Perhaps when the book written by Male arrives in the mail you'll quickly find out that NO hybrids are included in the book,(smile)

Carolyn,missing some excellent tennis right now and no time to edit so you can seperate the fused words yourself. LOL

Perhaps when the book written by Male arrives in the mail you'll quickly find out that NO hybrids are included in the book,(smile)

YES, that was the punch line of my joke which is why I smiled first! I get a few in there every once in a while ;-)

The rest of the fused stuff, are all plausible assumptions and tend to demonstrate more people were involved ... well, except one opinion, I prefer tomatoes over tennis anytime and anyplace LOL

It is a richer background on the subject. I take it that no pre-fiasco BZ F1 is still available for anyone new, and viable, and that Ms. Zaccaria for whatever reason sold, disposed, destroyed or held back every seed she saved from her breeding efforts for the lost parent of her singularly amazing claim to fame. Hmmmm.

That's probably something you've discussed at some point, but after being the Champion of NJ and investing so much into it, regardless of what others did, that she would at least not have had some seed to re-establish the parent line doesn't add up. But I guess life changes and crap happens, priorities change, people sign papers, and that loss might be as unbelievable as it is true.

PC off to tend some tomatoes

But that does not mean that one cannot grow heirlooms in greenhouse.

I'm assuming you mean with good yields. If I were in the OP's situation, this is how I would think about it, but upfront this is pure opinion.

If I ask commercial heirloom growers they are going to say you have to pollinate them if the air is still. If I were to ask mass producer greenhouse growers, they would say, we can't afford not to pollinate if the air is still.

So either way you are going to be told to pollinate since they can't afford to let a crop go un-pollinated. That would leave me with asking a plant scientist and using my own rusty wiles.

So I ask the scientist and after distilling her complete explanation, I walk away with the impression that in still air I need a tomato that does exceptionally well self-pollinating in still air. There was then a long explanation and controversy as usual where no one agrees much, but the gist of it was, for pollen to concentrate around the stigma, you need:

a short-style tomato.

Then I look up my favorite heirlooms and find most of them are long style tomatoes and cross pollinate more easily than the crop of commercial varieties, and need more effort to pollination.

Crap, I think. Well, at least this explains a big stereotypical difference between heirlooms and high-yielding commercial varieties. That's right, "high-yielding". Generally when a tomato is a high yielder, it pollinates easier in controlled conditions - and this frequently relates to the length of the style.

So, all I need to do is go look for any high yielding tomato. Trouble is most are not the heirlooms I want. So at that point I would just get a good quite large beefsteak, my favorite, and make it my business to go in the greenhouse and hand pollinate a few flowers whenever I could knowing the ones I got would be big ones so my per flower pollination efforts would be amortized. Yeah, I'd go with Mortgage Lifter. If I wanted to go with an intermediate tomato, Stupice has had mixed reviews (who better than seysonn) but seems to give a large yield.

Then, reality would set in, and I would realize I kept missing flowers because I was late for work, etc., and I would decide to grow cherry tomatoes which I understand generally have short styles; many prolific cultivars to choose from; and just leave them be to do whatever they could. Some of the sweet ones might be great, but honestly I really prefer heirlooms and still would want something a little bigger.

Other options: You can significantly boost your production by putting a fan in your greenhouse if it is a hobby size one and you don’t mind some air inside. Put it on a repeat timer for just 10 minutes max around 11 am. Another option: walk through your greenhouse with a stick and tap the plants a couple of times and you will boost your yields.

In the end I would set up a trial with the heirloom (yeah!) variety "Santorini". Flavor, multipurpose, history, downright gorgeous, short-style and larger than your typical cherry.

Since I am sure every point I've made can be argued either way, I hadn't suggested a variety, but this follow-up post would be the "old college try" And Santorini is an awesome place!
PC

Here is a link that might be useful: Santorini (The real deal)

A Canadian Coop manager gave a presentation where he stated that Trust is the most offen grown greenhouse tomato. However over my many years of growing various varieties I've had more success with cheaper seed price varieties like Big Beef, Country Taste and First Prize. Pollination is not that big of an issue if you use string line for support since just regular clipping of growing plants seems to provide enough plant movement for fruit set.

Although I grow well over 200 varieties, mostly heirloom, in my greenhouses if there was one defining criteria which I were to look for in a GH variety it would be Leaf Mold resistance. I didn't do anything special this spring and had ripe fruits by late May. I sell lots of heirloom tomatoes and sell them early so the lower yield is justified by higher price but I need heirlooms to look like heirlooms so I grow few Mortgage Lifter or other "Red look-alike" heirloom varieties. A few heritage varieties like Mr. Ugly, Conestoga or BrandyMaster will yield better and still offer heirloom-like qualities.

Steve, it's larger, more fruit per vine, and reasonably disease resistant. It doesn't mind the heat of mid-summer. San Marzano's all seem to shut down when the real heat and humidity of July and August get cranked up. And, it puts on more "sauce material" (i.e. the meat of the fruit) per plant.

It would take three San Marzano plants with a bumper crop on each plant to produce what I get from 2 Ukrainka plants in an average year.

I should note that I have grown every San Marzano type that I could get seed for. The "Redorte" variation seemed to have the better flavor here in my climate and soil. And remember, I'm in zone 6a.

Ted

This post was edited by containerted on Sat, Aug 30, 14 at 9:40

Thanks for sharing! On my list for next year. I too do not have reliable results from San Marzano varieties. This year Petrovich was great plum for me and Lagidnyi, which great container size plant,very productive. Lagidnyi was more juicy, petrovich really dry,much drier than Tania shows,but mine were in container,so we will see for next year.

Have you seen "Stink Bugs" around ?
They make tiny holes to suck juice. Those holes then become an entry way for the bacteria to get in. Rotting is the result of bacterial/microbial activities.

Oh man, yes........I have tons of stink bugs all over the garden. This year has been incredibly worse than usual. I guess I had to trade them off for not having any squash bugs this year.
We' re not allowed to have everything we want, right? ;)

Doesn't sound like there's a question, but it sounds like a job well done and I'll ask:

Are you saying the 10 younger plants that are now bearing showed signs of the Early Blight on the lower leaves when you took the cutting from high up, or did you notice if the "mother" plants were disease free at the time you took the cuttings?

Not positive but am pretty sure the mother plants had blight started down low when I pulled the suckers. I might grow the late ones under lights next yr but I really think the that the disease here in the Ohio River Valley is almost unavoidable after July 1 because its in the air. I could be wrong I guess. But anyway the three plants set large tomatoes before the blight appeared and the fruit kept growing. Two of the plants didn't set additional fruit after the blight was halfway up but the pink one is still setting little fruit. Pretty sure I will pick 15 nice tomatoes from these containers and they are of avg size for those cultivars. And then maybe some smaller ones too. There are 26 tomatoes still on and I have picked two 24 oz bi color from the yellow/red plant. Mr Stripey I think.

I get lots of seeds from Tatiana website as well as Doublehelixfarms and Heritage.
Tatiana's site is good reference point as she does careful research.
If you have any specific ones in mind I can cross reference them with russian tomato forum.
Great majority of former USSR tomatoes will be fit for short summers and varied weather, since distribution was often done across entire USSR, the requirements for breeding was to be good for many areas. Newer varieties could be anything as zones vary across Russia.
For me growing main bulk of former USSR varieties is a norm as summer here in Chicago refects varied weather patterns. I need tomatoes that have good early friut set in cold weather and rather on early side. Nothing else will do good here. Some finds that Tania has are just excellent!

Why did I read the first 10 pages of that Amazon link, wellI was intrigued with all the wrong info given for many of the varieties and at page 10 it segued to buy your Russian Dressing here,so I left.

I would never never suggest that anyone buy tomato seeds at Amazon,nor for most offers at e-bay, with few exceptions.

Black Cherry is russian in origin?I think not, and Vince Sapp who bred it is in tomato heaven right now must be looking down and being greatly amused.

Rare this and rare that? I suppose to some, yes, but whatever.

Carolyn,now I'm really going back to tennis, I think.LOL

Ted, that Pink Flamingo one is a difficult one. The person who was doing seed production for me sent me pictures, they didn't correspond to what it should be, I sent the pictures to Tania. and even she had trouble figuring out what it could be.

And I can see why, see her link below and note that several different fruit shapes are possible.

I just checked my recent seed offer and I don't see it there for the past 3 years, so apparently I never offered seeds for it.

I'd have to do some searching to find the last list she sent me to see what I did get. But I think that might be two years ago now.

Carolyn, always interested in Russian varieties, hint, hint, re any trades, and got lots of new Russian ones from Reinhard Kraft in Germany that are being gown out for seeds this summer for my next seed offer, if all goes well. And some other Russian ones as well, and Tania is all excited about the two new ones I have from the Republic of Georgia.Aha, lots of new ones from Andrey in Belarus as well, most not grown out b'c my seed producers had no more room. Sigh. Why my interst in Russian ones? Probably b'c I'm of Swedish heritage and we Swedes were the first to settle parts of Russia. I hear a mens Russian chorus and dissolve into a pool of protoplasm which is why Andrey sent me some CD's as well as some icon cards.( smile)

Here is a link that might be useful: Pink Flamingo

Yes, Pink Flamingo was either unstable or mix as shapes reported were different, but majority of people reported excellent taste so it is on my list for next year.
Am looking forward to Ukrainka as Prue was less than stellar performance this year and I need another paste.
This year I've grown Malinovoye Chudo and Syzranka which is probably Syzranskiy Rozovyi. Syzranka is late one for me, otherwise is really good. Like Malinovoye Chudo too which translates Raspberry delight.
Oh goody for new tomatoes!!!!