Tomato Tuesday - 2020

Last fall I brought in a container of Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. I had them in front of the master bedroom south-facing slider, under full-spectrum LED plant lights, but our winter was too dark, the plant was too big, and I didn't have enough lights.

On January 23, I chopped it down, but it still had some nice green branches, so I saved them for cuttings.

I always take cuttings about 6-8" long, root them in water, then plant them in potting mix. This time, I had too many other projects going on, so these big cuttings wound up in a big jug, waiting their turn.

6 weeks later:

The cuttings are happily growing, budding, and starting to bloom. Sorry, the buds and blossom don't show up, but you can see how happy the cuttings are.


This morning, I checked the water and discovered roots! Lots of them! So, now what do I do? It's way too soon to put these guys outside. Should I pot them up, knowing they'll have to get re-potted again or just leave them alone for another month?


The reason I'm hesitating is because I took a small cutting from the same plant in December, and had a really hard time keeping it alive. It's now in real dirt and finally starting to come around, but it's not nearly as big and healthy as the ones I started from seed on New Year's day.


These 3 are beefsteak, brandywine, & purple cherokee, started in Jiffy Pellets and up-potted to 3" peat pots.


Ya know, I may have answered one of my own questions while posting this. I only got 3 little mediocre cherry tomatoes all winter, plus a single lousy brandywine. It wasn't worth the effort. I have plans for a bigger, better lighting setup, but if that doesn't work out, I don't think I'll bother growing tomatoes inside, again, except to get an early start on seeds.

I thinkI would be tempted to wait on up-potting the rootlings...depends how fast the roots are growing?  Otherwise I’d put them in peat pots.

Scorpio Rising wrote:I thinkI would be tempted to wait on up-potting the rootlings...depends how fast the roots are growing?  Otherwise I’d put them in peat pots.

I agree about waiting, but they're already way too big for peat pots. I might just buy those 5 gal. grow bags and use a couple of them. I've never even tried to root anything this big before. I'm in uncharted territory.

The Snow Fairies (the 4 on the right) are almost through fruiting, at least for now.  The heirlooms are starting to blush and I will be busy canning and freezing this summer.  I had a mystery tomato last year, from a seed in the package of Snow Fairy seeds.  I saved its seeds and they grew true this year.  I named it Ox.

4 Sungold = 0.5 oz.
4 Snow Fairies (2 to 2 1/2") 7.8 oz.
4 Mystery tomatoes = 3 lbs 6.4 oz.

Nice !  All I have here in Ohio are very small green fruits.  Looking forward to having tomatoes again !

All of the Red Brandywine Tomatoes this year are mutants.  Don't know what happened to them, but they are really odd.  The Yellow Brandywine are doing great, though.

A nice size Red Brandywine Tomato today, 1 pound, 13.1 ounces.

Nice one!

A bunch of my big maters had BER.  Water was uneven....

My heirlooms seem to be putting out a lot of mutants as the season progresses. They taste delicious but there is quite of bit of waste.

Due to the Covid 19 lockdown here in the UK tomato plants were scarce ,   seeds were like gold dust none of the shops had any left.   So I took two greengrocer shop brought  toms , one a cherry style tomato the other the commercial Money Maker  ................ imported from Spain  .

I made up two used washed out grape punnet's with 50/50 sieved sharp sand , a bit of my MM bed to fill the tubs with an inch & a half of it .  Then carefully with a sharp knife cut three thin slices off the cherry tomatoes and one off the bigger Money Maker tom.  Made sure that each slice had plenty of uncut seeds in . 

Laid the cherry slices in one tub and the Money Maker's in the other .   Covered them in 1/4" if sieved sand & bed soil .  Labeled them there & then .. I've messed up labeling things afore today .    
Took a big soda bottle  poked a red hot darning needle in the top several times to make a gentle watering can style rose device and filled the bottle with clean rain water , used it to sprinkle the coverings till they were sopping wet . Popped them in a warm room but not in direct sunlight made sur tey didn't dry our or get over watered ,  a week later I had hundreds of tomato seedlings growing .  


When they were about an inch tall with the second ( true leaf set ) well grown ,  I pricked them out and potted them up in old pot noodle tubs that I'd burnt three drainage holes in each pot's base . Again used a well mixed up  amount of :- sharp sand & a bit of my ANSFG bed material , plenty of  sterile chopped coir and a couple of pounds of well composted farm manures as the growing medium .( made about 10 gallons all told ) 

 Gave each tub a 1/4 cup of liquid tomato feed that I made up specially for the occasion.
 135  pots later of cherry & Maker toms later the greenhouse looked a bit full , I set up the overhead water misting spray jets  for 5 min once every 24 hrs , 
Three week later I started sell the excess plants now 8 inches or so tall to the locals @ 4 four £ 1.50 ... it certainly paid for the materials several times over .

 I put 38 plants in tubs in the glasshouse and the veg & flower beds , all are thriving .
 We must have around 40 pound of toms coming on well in the glasshouse and 15 pounds inthe offing of cherry toms in the outside beds . 
 

I don't think I'll ever be buying tomato plants or seeds again.  With a bit of luck I'll be harvesting the biggest Money Maker when it is tennis ball sized and several of the sweetest bunch of the cherry toms  for seeds .  Might have to use a disposable face mask to make a hammock for the big money maker  just in case it drops off the vine of its own accord . Job for the morning ASAP .

So, here I am again throwing lots of tomatoes away...here’s why

1.  Radial crack—rain—no rain—rain—no rain forever...me watering, not a good pattern.  Hot hot hot.  So, my Cherokee Purples have circumferential lines of raw exposed flesh.  Unless I’m on it (and I’m not) they rot/get invaded....

2.  Weirdly shaped Brandywines with big huge cores and bizarre shapes?????  So some of it’s good, some if it’s not, some of it’s green, I could keep going.  Never had this until last year and this year.  Is it weather???

3.  I hate picking the hugely invasive Sungold.  My problem.  I didn’t prune properly.

___________________________________________________

Need advice on varieties that offer uniform and delicious slicing options, or what am I doing wrong????—OK, don’t answer that.  Job is very demanding on my time.  I am solo.  And mad about the waste.

Sounds like a typical day in the garden, SR! We have had one of the hottest and driest summers ever, and the gardens would not have survived without the drip irrigation system. Then, last night we had a thunderstorm with 40 mph winds that tore up all of the lettuce. Fortunately, all of the Texas Tomato Cages stood up to the storm, and there was no damage to the tomatoes. Some bell peppers got knocked off the plants, and had be retrieved this morning.

Our Red Brandywine tomatoes all look like mutants this year, but the Yellow Brandywine tomatoes all have been perfect. Why? Beats me! The Golden Jubilee are always the last to start ripening, and we are just now seeing yellow tomatoes forming on them. The one Rutgers Tomato is planted on the arbor and has gone over the top of it - picking a dozen or more tomatoes from it every day. Canned more Rutgers tomatoes then we will need or can use.  The single Sungold tomato is at peak production right now, and we are picking nearly a gallon of them per day - having a hard time finding enough neighbors to eat all of them! Ha!

I am somewhat validated to hear you are having the same issue with the Brandywines, OG.  

I have never grown a yellow other than yellow pear (tiny) which was good.  Are the yellow Brandywines sweet?  I have grown Rutgers, and Mortgage Lifter but it’s been a while.  What is Rutgers like taste-wise?  

My gardens are too far away from my house to put in a drip irrigation system, plus I would have to have help to install...like paid help!  

Just looking for some advice on varieties!

The Yellow Brandywine is very sweet, and very meaty - it has very few seeds. It is a low acid tomato, so no tartness at all.   I can't eat the red tomatoes due to an allergy, but can eat as many of the low-acid ones. I love the Yellow Brandywine and the Golden Jubilee, but I think the Brandywine is sweeter.  And, they are gorgeous, too!



The Rutgers is an old standby tomato that is heavily grown for canning - back in the mid-1950's through the early 60's my father grew them for Campbell's Soup Company, and of course my mother canned many of them for our own use.  They have the good old fashioned tomato taste with a blend of the acid tartness and sweetness. One of our neighbors loves them for making bruschetta, and she gets a lot of them from us along with the basil.

How far away from the house are your gardens?  My furthermost beds are 160' away from the nearest water source, and I just dug a shallow trench and ran a 3/4" PVC pipe out there to install the drip irrigation. The timer valve and pressure regulator is on the faucet, so the pipe only has pressurized water when the timer is on.

I might have to try the yellow Brandywines, OG.  

My beds are about 1/2 acre away from my spigot (not sure how many feet?)

Ohio Gardener,
 A few years back I did real well with a yellow tomato the following year it was a bust. I really liked the low acid flavor.
 A suggestion for your irrigation. Hook the 160 ft PVC to the hose bib pressure line. Install a 4X4 post and hose bib at the far end, install a battery operated solenoid valve for your drip system. Your far beds will have automatic drip and you will have water when needed. Might as well put the work involved with that long 160 ft trench to good use.
 Craig

Thanks, TC! The drip irrigation is working great in the distant beds. As part of the setup, each 1/4" dripline is connected to the 1/2" feed line by a Micro Valve so that I can control how much water goes to each line. It has worked very well for this "driest summer on record" for us.


If you aren't familiar with the 1/4" micro valve, this is what they look like.

The last two tomatoes of the 2020 season. These are Golden Jubilee tomatoes, which were picked green this fall just before the first frost and kept wrapped in newspaper. They will top off our salads this evening, and then we won't have any more fresh tomatoes until next summer.

Sadness...even the ones not plucked ripe aren’t quite the same—better than store bought!  

The Snow Fairy tomato plants have nice green tomatoes, even with 3 nights of frost. They live up to their name! I should probably harvest them for ripening inside and remove the plants before we get real freezes.