Tomato Tuesday 2015

I have an orange-colored Atkinson tomato that feels soft and ripe. I can't find info on the ripe color for this plant. Thanks

I would trust your fingers saying it is soft and ripe. Color descriptions are often faulty. Baker's seed describes it as red globe but the picture looks more orange to me. ANd then there is possibility of the seed not being true.

Thanks. The seeds were from Baker's.

Hey all.  I just wanted to show you the latest on my tomatoes.  They are coming along.

These are a Sungold and a Kumato that I planted for my daughter in her new strawberry patch:



Unfortunately, I'm dreadfully slow at getting my beds ready, but here are what most of my tomatoes look like.  I can't remember the exact variety of these... the labels finally faded.  This year I'm planting one tomato per box instead of two.  I planted a dwarf marigold as a partner for each, and I also stuck in a Garland Daisy (related to chrysanthemum) :

Lookin' good Windmere.  My transplants are all in so now its the waiting game to see them grow and produce.
I hope to save seeds from Red Zebra, Li'l Pink, Romeo Roma, and maybe a few more if I like their fruits; Mountain Gold, Chadwick Cherry and Beaver Lodge Slicer.

Quiltbea, you have a good variety of plants this year.  Be careful about the Mountain Gold.  I believe it's one of those hybrids that does not yield seeds true to the parents.

Windmere....For some reason I thought Mountain Gold was an OP variety.  I'll have to check that out further.  I don't save hybrid seeds ever.  You just never can be sure what you will be getting in another generation.

I got my info online from the neseeds catalog site:

	(8-12 oz.) Yellow-fruited, superior in disease resistance. Released in 1991, developed by Dr. Randy Gardner at the North Carolina State Mountain Horticultural Crops Research Station. This is not a hybrid. 80 days.

	GENERAL GROWING INFORMATION 7-14 days. 70-75°F. Sow early indoors in cool climates. Sow 3-5 weeks before predicted last frost. Transplant outside 6-8 weeks from sowing.

Wow, thanks for that info quiltbea!  I honestly thought that all the "Mountain" varieties were hybrids.  

My leggy 'maters which had to be buried all but the top 3-4" seem to be doing very well.  They are all growing nicely and are about 7-8" tall now, and getting very sturdy.  The upcoming heat and sun season will cause them to take off, and before I realize it they will be topping their trellises and hopefully by mid-July I will have an idea which varieties survived my tray topple!  Everything seems to be doing well, with me being my garden's worst enemy so far.

Windmere - I was out cutting diseased leaves off my tomatoes this last weekend.  The Mountain Merit did not have a single leaf with any yellow/brown spots.  I haven't tasted them yet, we shall see if they are worth planting again after the taste test.

yolos wrote:Windmere - I was out cutting diseased leaves off my tomatoes this last weekend.  The Mountain Merit did not have a single leaf with any yellow/brown spots.  I haven't tasted them yet, we shall see if they are worth planting again after the taste test.

Coincidence:  My wife and I were looking at my daughter's Sungold and I was HORRIFIED to see one solitary leaf with a black spot in the center of the leaf.  I immediately picked it off, threw it away inside and washed my hands twice.  The wet weather you and I have been experiencing in our area is concerning me.

I did not plant Mountain Merit this year, but I did plant Mountain Magic (since we mainly like cherry/roma size tomatoes).  I'm holding my breath so to speak...

Windmere wrote:Quiltbea, you have a good variety of plants this year.  Be careful about the Mountain Gold.  I believe it's one of those hybrids that does not yield seeds true to the parents.

I was curious if some one had taken a hybrid and done the work to stabilize it to an OP. If so I should of found the hybrid available as well as the OP version. So far not finding it. What I did find is that others in the Mountain series are hybrids.

I think I read that it takes about 7 seasons of careful selecting and growing out to stabilize most hybrid tomatoes to an OP. This project has been done with Big Beef at least.

Yeah GG! I did that with my broccoli. And peppers. It is nice that eventually tomatoes can be figured out which is which.

I got baby tomaters! and baby peppers!
I have been watching the flowers I buzzed last week to see if they took. It was not until today that I could be sure I was not tricking myself. Yup, baby green bumps!

I picked the first poblano peppers too. I bought the poblano pepper plants this year and they had a head start on the rest of my home started peppers. Yesterday I watered them to over flowing and the plants floating up out of the mix. I had laid a single layer of newspaper over the holes to keep the mix in at planting time. I think I must of used a glossy advertizement on the one pepper pot. The other was fine, I probably used plain newsprint in that one. Live and learn. I picked the peppers and now to see how the replanted plants recover from their swimming experience.

Turan wrote:

Windmere wrote:Quiltbea, you have a good variety of plants this year.  Be careful about the Mountain Gold.  I believe it's one of those hybrids that does not yield seeds true to the parents.

I was curious if some one had taken a hybrid and done the work to stabilize it to an OP.  If so I should of found the hybrid available as well as the OP version.  So far not finding it.  What I did find is that others in the Mountain series are hybrids.  

I think I read that it takes about 7 seasons of careful selecting and growing out to stabilize most hybrid tomatoes to an OP.  This project has been done with Big Beef at least.

Turan, I visited the website quiltbea mentioned:

http://www.neseed.com/Tomato-Seeds-Mountain-Gold-p/33350.htm

I have never heard of neseed, but I explored a bit and found many things of interest.  I REALLY don't need to be buying any more seeds, so I need to come up with a good reason to justify a purchase (which is generally not hard for me to do   )

By the way, thanks quiltbea for leading me to this website.  I love it!

Thanks Windmere.

I am always curious about the lines between hybrid and when it becomes OP. One of those things I plan to pursue but never quite do is taking a hybrid and seeing how long till it is OP. Sanderson's ID Roma I suspect is one of these. Buying seed is too easy

If I save any Mountain Gold seed, I'll be curious to see if it breeds true to type next season.  This will be a fun one.

Above:  The tiny varieties in my covered bed are doing great.  I was surprised to find 2 of the varieties had blossoms already.

This one above is Lizzano with some of the tiniest blossoms.  This was from seed I got from you Windmere.  I transplanted 2 in this bed with the other tiny ones because its supposed to be a very compact plant.  Lookin' good so far.


I expected this one, Totem, because it was an early one for me last year.

Among the indeterminates, only this one, a Better Boy, shows blossoms.


Thus far, I am quite happy with the results here in Maine were we don't put ours in as early as many of the others in New England.

My tomatoes are a little behind my Kansas neighbors.  For the last couple of years, I've been pinching/snipping off the first couple of clusters of blossoms that come on each tomato plant.  The theory is, I've been told, if you do this, it will give the plant a better chance to establish supporting foliage and in the end yield more tomatoes.

After seeing my neighbors' plants (which are plants I started for them, by the way), I have decided this doesn't really do anything but put you another week or two behind everyone else.  Their plants look almost exactly the same, except theirs have fruit that started earlier, and is farther along now.  I probably won't continue this practice next year.

That said, I'm finally starting to get some fruit setting, and so far it looks very promising...

This is one of my super sauce tomato plants, showing its first fruit.  It's only an inch in length - or was, when I shot this the other day - it's supposed to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 2lbs.  Yeah, I know, I'll believe it when I see it, but so far it is out-pacing everything else.



Here are some Oregon Spring newbies... this is my search for an early season tomato to replace Early Girls, which have never done that well for us.  So far, they look very promising...

Kate - since you have neighbors with plants you started, you have a perfect control to see what your tomato plants produce by the end of the season compared to theirs.  You may still end up with better end-season production with your plants because they have not put out as much energy for production when smaller.  Tortoise & Hare!  Having the first tomato is not necessarily the best in the long run!  Watch and let us know!  Personally, my tomato plants are still only about 9" tall, but if they produce like usual, I could easily have more than 150 lbs of sauce toms from my 7 little plants.

Kate, I haven't done a rigorous study to show it, but anecdotally, I think you may be right that plucking the first blossoms doesn't contribute much of anything to overall yield or plant size. I was really into doing that, and plants in two different gardens I was sharing which were left to blossom naturally turned out just as big and productive as mine.

That's not a big enough sample size for me to believe it's safe to argue conclusively one way or another, but even if there is an effect, it hasn't appeared to me to be a pronounced one.

My season pushes me to accept anything as early as possible because I might not get the later rewards. But I have a sneaky suspicion that snipping early flowers off tomatoes and peppers and strawberries for later greater rewards is all just a myth.

It will be interesting to see a side by side experiment.

The greenhouse. The tallest variety (Black Icicle) is just now hitting the roof and Cuore di Bue is not far behind. The shortest with the most branches is Purple Cherokee. They all have fruit set. The red orange behind the greenhouse are the oriental poppies in bloom.



A cluster of Black Icicle tomatoes coming along.

Turan, The first fruiting flower is mine! With my luck, it may be the only one I get.

sanderson wrote:Turan,  The first fruiting flower is mine!  With my luck, it may be the only one I get.

+1
My feeling exactly.
I almost feel it would be ungrateful to snip off that first flower. But maybe that is taking ti too far.

My brandywines are looking fine, but the flowers are drying and dropping off. A perennial problem where I live -- the nights can be too cold for fruit to set, and the days can be too hot ... and often both those things occur on the same day! Sometimes I have to wait until August, even late August, to get tomatoes even though the plants have been in the ground since mid-May.

Too bad ... brandywines can makes some big, awesome looking flowers.

Marc, I awoke at 4 this morning worrying about your Brandywines. I know you are gardening at a neighbor's place and that must limit what all you can do and I do not know what kind of trellising you have for the plants. Can you set up a shade cloth for them? Lay a bit of soaker hose along the top line of the trellis and water it very slowly so it drips down the shade cloth and thus makes a swamp cooler effect around the plants? People with greenhouses do something similar or have an over head mister. Even just watering the cloth in the heat of the day a few times should help. And then make sure to help pollinate the plants early in the morning before it gets too hot. The pollen should be viable after nights in the 50s.