16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes

Many factors affect taste and the number one is personal preference.. The weather , sun and soil are are important REAL factors.
Fruits, in general, grown in sunny, less humid, less rainy, ideal temperatures taste better. Just an example : the grapes produce best wine in places like France, Italy, Spain and some parts of California. The same grape won't produce the same wine when grown in NY state.
Genetics is yet another determining factor.

The other thing is (in my opinion) that being early , mid or late has nothing to do with tomato's taste.

I'm growing the Stupice this year for the 1st time. I chose it because it was an early one. LOL with the weather we've been having this season it was about 2 weeks late. It is still producing for me even though temps here have now dropped into the low 50's each night. Mine is in a large container and is now 5'+ in height. It is still producing and as to the taste I do enjoy it. Taste is subjective as we know!

Could it be deer? That's my problem. Sometimes they will pick them off the vine without leaving any teeth marks. Check if you have some that are partially eaten.
John A

No deer. I am in a city. I have a lot of rugrats running around, though.

These are a roma-sized tomato, called Juliet. They really want to fall of the vine. If I so much as brush past a cluster off tomatoes while reaching for a ripe one, they will fall off the vine.

Bill - lots of previous discussions here about ground cherries and tomatillos both. Many grow them. Personally I never cared for ground cherries so don't grow them but tomatillos are easy, or at least as easy as growing tomatoes.

But I sure wouldn't write off growing tomatoes either as many Floridians do it successfully and many of the rest of us really envy your two seasons for growing. Nematodes can be treated or you can just use containers. Same goes for diseases. And given all the thousands of tomato varieties available perhaps you need to investigate using different varieties with very different maturity dates than what you have been using.

Have you checked with all the tomato growers over on the Florida Gardening forum here for tips?

Dave

Thanks for the reply, Dave. I do grow regular tomatoes--usually successfully. I probably always will grow tomatoes. I've gotten tons of advice from the people over on the Florida forum. I've been hanging out over there more than a decade now. I ask about tomatillos and Physalis Peruviana not to find a substitute for tomatoes (there is none), but to get a better idea of how they will do here and how much work will be involved.

loved the Speckled Romans last year but Fedco doesn't have them any more

so plant the seeds you saved from last year from the tomatoes that you loved.

I am already fermenting 3 varieties to save seeds for the next season.

Early varieties, as Bmoser has mentioned, tend to be smaller., about 1.5 oz avrge.

In the top 10 earlies are:
--- BLOODY BUTCHER, STUPICE, MATINA, KIMBERLY, MOROWSKI (?) DIV.
I am growing the first 3 of them. They are indet, PL and prolific. Matina is nice round red, very juicy (salad type). Stupice and BB are lobed and meaty (sauce type). Siletz has almost no seeds (good slicer on sandwich) .

I have found another one which has fairly bigger fruits, in 4 to 6 oz range. It is called SILETZ. I was neck to neck with Bloody Butcher in my garden

It depends on how near/ far the ant hill was from the plant.
Also the roots grow around the plant, 360 degree. So hot water may have killed some of the roots but not all of them.

It would be too late for cold watering to do any help after the fact.The damage is nor reversible, IMO.

Thanks everyone! We tied up all of the vines, so that they were at least off the ground, and today the plant seems to be doing much better - even starting to sprout little suckers again :). I was worried, because the anthill was only inches from the base, but some of the roots must still be ok.

For the last couple of years I have had critters eating my tomatoes but it was always just a chunks out of ripe tomatoes. This year I have also had green tomatoes be the target. It seems like everyday I find one or 2 half eaten tomatoes on the vine or in the grass. The other day was the first time I actually saw one of the tomato thieves in my yard and it was a woodchuck walking Away with one of my nice big green tomatoes. The next day neighbor tried to catch the tomato thief with a trap baited with a green tomato. This is what he saw later that day. (Note the trap is sprung) What do you think that woodchuck was trying to say to my neighbor?

Haha! I would suspect that with the awful year we've been having here (SE Wisconsin) that they are eating the green ones because there aren't any red ones yet. I also suspect that it's a variety of thieves (But woodchucks??) because not only are the tomatoes taken in the late evenings, but hanging cherry tomatoes are taken throughout the day, as well as hanging ground cherries. One thing common to many is that they eat the insides, but leave the skin AND THE SEEDS! Vey picky eaters.

I bought a small heater and put the temperature around 80â F.

Some varieties took 3 days for seeds to sprout, while other varieties took 7 days. Even in the same variety, some took 3 days while others 4-5 days.

I was very happy to discover this method, because it allowed me - after choosing the nicest seeds - to select the best sprouted seeds. Than, selecting the best seedlings, I came up with some really nice plants.

This post was edited by Daniel_NY on Tue, Aug 19, 14 at 17:20

Thanks Lindalana for sharing the specifics of your techniques; I had started some exotic ones last night and when I read what you said, I actually put a heat lamp/heating pad on them as they were well insulated under a humidity dome and tucked in with a thermometer, and I took it up to 92 degrees F before removing the heat (room temp is close to 79 F here all the time). The temperature settled back within a few minutes; so maybe that will do for the lukewarm water, it was only one variety and probably my slowest one and the seeds had just (finally!) arrived.

Daniel thanks too and for the great pictures. I was going to try something similar and it is reassuring it is working nicely for you and probably solves a uniformity problem if you need that. There are three reasons why I held off doing that, disease, expensive or having few seeds, and bumblefingers me stressing small sprouts upon a transfer.

Here's the thing with me. Molds are a great problem here. Not necessarily initially, but later as the seedling develops. I used to add a small amount of fertilizer to my seedlings but now I do everything germination related in pure (distilled) water under sterile conditions including no paper, filters, etc. Holding off on the small nutrient content doesn't allow anything undesirable to get much of a start and the fertilizer can always be added diluted later. But I think I'll try next a few minutes soak in a very weak soluble fertilizer like Lindalana mentioned and then sowing the seeds into distilled water as normal (for me), though it will be inorganic.

If that doesn't cut down on the scattered germination times, I'll think about pre-germination but once I get a plant going the problem is usually slowing its growth, not selecting for vigor, at this latitude, though for fall it might make more sense. I'm just frugal with the seeds as I usually only get about 20 and preselect only the well-formed ones. I started by double sowing, and that has the same problem, too much seed waste and leaves decaying material.

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Tue, Aug 19, 14 at 10:49

Of course I chose for myself. If I go back I wouldn't buy from that vendor. It must be that he waters way too much. And picked way too early. I don't expect them to pick during the night before market but this was ridiculous. I did get a huge and beautiful lemon verbena for only $4 from an herb stall.

No offence, Dave...I have nothing against farmers markets...this was just an experience I had at my local one.

I was wondering how it's doing. It'll be fun to see what you get.

One thing is for sure - it can't taste any worse than Green Zebra!

My opinion is that, if you really like it, the name does not matter. Save seeds and continue growing it. Chances are that one day you will identify it.

CASE IN POINT:
Last Fall I bought a heirloom tomato from store. I put a picture of it on this forum. But nobody could ID it, (mostly because my picture was not of good quality). But I saved seeds from it. A week ago I finally positively identified it (Ananas Noire). It is now one of my favorite black/brow tomatoes. Even if had I not identified it, I was going to keep growing it next season no matter what.

On Aug 17th the orginal poster said it was a plant bought at the supermarket.

I had thought fruits at first, but indeed I would go back to the Supermarket since plants that are bought have a label and a source.such as Bonnie plants or Chef Jeff's,to name two common ones around. Also the possibility of local suppliers

Someone there should have an invoice listing what specific varieties were delivered as plants.

I'm not anti-orphan but there are many who list varieties s in the SSE Yearbooks, trade seeds, make seed offers, etc, who must know the names of the varieties they work with.

If just for home use it really doesn't matter, unless, as the original poster asked what could the variety be? ( Smile)

Carolyn

How does GZ Cherry taste to me? Sweet with no tang, no fuity taste at all. Very different from Tom's Green Zebra.

AS to Maglia ROse and Blush, I found that they both needed to be fully ripe to get the best taste.

Tom, If it were me, and it is, I wouldn't automatically assume that anything you might have sent to Kees Sahin was reused, renamed, etc. I once had a list of what you sent the first time, but you never sent the followup varieties.

There are many seed companies in the NEtherlands as you know and there are also many associated places where they raise fruits that are sent all over Europe for commercial sale, such as the small box of mixed cherries that Manfred found in a local store in Germany.

The only exception I can think of would be the origin of Green Sausage, which I first saw being offered by a Swedish Company, which could possibly have been from your Chile Verde or similar.

Kees died quite a few years ago now, as you know, Elisabeth still runs the company, but the only ones I know of that they bred were Snowberry, Bloody Butcher and now I've forgotten the few others which I could find if I went to their website.

Green Doctors was a spontaeous mutation from the variety Dr. Carolyn, and I like it and its clear skinned mutation called Green Doctors Frosted. NEither one tastes like your Verde Claro or Green Grape.

And now I'm thinking of the time we spent together at the Hortus Nursery in Pasadena for their Tomatomania when you drove down from Bakersfield where you were living at the time and brought with you two plants of Green Grape b'c at the time, for some reason that still escapes me, Green Grape had morphed into a det from the original indet, and you'd seen that yourself when you were in the Netherlands.

We all know that taste is both personal and perceptual and that other factors play a huge role such as how plants are grown, what amendments are used and how much, what the soil is like and what the weather is like in any one season, which is why I encourage folks to grow what appeals to them and find out for themselves how any variety does for them as they grow tomatoes.

Carolyn, who also remembers offering you seeds of several varieties at a different message site a few years ago, but you never replied, and I tried twice, but if you want some Green Zebra Cherry seeds you can send me an e-mail at cmale@aol.com and include your address and I'd be glad to send them to you. Right now I don't think I have any fresh seeds of either Green Doctors or Green Doctors Frosted,I may, I'd have to check, but they can be easily found where you normally post or go to Tania's superb tomato data base and look at the several sources and I know Adam Gleckler has both at his site as does Jeff Casey at his site, Casey's Heirloom Tomatoes of Ardrie ( sp?) in Canada. The frosted version was found by three folks at about the same time, Jeff Casey, Neil Lockhart and I believe it was Lee Goodwin, but I may be wrong on...

I can only comment on the Green Zebra Cherry that I having growing now. It is very prolific and the fruit are sweet and juicy. The one thing I have noticed with mine is that if left on the vine a bit too long they start to split, it is either because I have overwatered or that they have a fairly thin skin. This plant is growing in Southern California.