A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 TOMATO

Oh John, I have tried every method and the complete gauntlet you could imagine with warding off that stuff..
HONEST, go thru the ARCHIVES and theres' so many things I've gone thru, mulches, styles of watering, raised beds, varieties, different places..

I can work with it, I plant enough varieties,
I can't stop, I'd have 50 kinds if I had the room..
but when I plant many, I get many from the early crops.. and *enough to share too* and then because of the shorter growing season, just about when the plant is totally gone or eaten up by disease, it's time to close up shop here anyways...

The one thing with that one variety, it was a bit slower to produce, and the tomatoes were HUGGGGEE!

And oooooooooohhh do those tomatoes look soooooo good, I could dive right into that page and devour them...My mouth is watering already, and I'm wishing for FALL TIME AND HARVEST, RIGHT NOW!
I'll have to look at those kinds a little closer..
Thanks for the info!!!

And it was Wally~World I got those VFN seeds from.

Weezie...I'm a little reluctant to do a lot of hybrids, 'cause these days I don't know what might be a genetically modified type, and I don't want pig genes in my 'maters, lol. But anything that has all those vfn, f2, on and on suffixes are going to be VERY tough. You probably know what those things stand for, right? (probably better than me.)

JohnCT...my climate here is vastly different than yours, but I believe I'll try the Beefmaster. You've sold me. I think one I grew last year was a Beefsteak, or Big Beef, and it was fabulous...huge, round, no cracks, tasted GREAT!
It's funny how some tomato plants you buy have all this great stuff on the label, but are short on taste.
My favorite remains the Red Brandywine, but they always have some green areas on them, whereas the Beefsteaks are uniformly ripe.
I've been starting most of my own plants, and find that tomato seeds still have about 100% germination after 2 to 3 years. I grew one last year called Kelloggs Breakfast. If you like yellow, low acid tomatoes, it's a nice big one with a unique flavor. Not the same as the acidy reds, though!

Yes, and no, only what I've read..
**Realllllly wished I did know alot more..
like all that scientific stuff.. someday**

The VFN stand for something to the effect of
Verticillium Wilt, Fusarium and Nematode resistance.
*so, if you have those problems in your garden,
you can grow that type of plant and know that it is resistant to that stuff... so they say*
It catches up with the plant, but not as fast...***

They were terribly hard to pick off the vine...
I think they'd still be hangin' there if I hadn't of picked them off... whewwwwww!

I LOVE Beefsteaks and Beefmasters...
Soooooooo yummy, and HUGE!!!

Did you know that it's not technically that it's low in acid,
it's the sugar content in the tomato...
When there's more sugar, the acid is then considered lowered,
but it's the sugar/sweetness you taste..
Did that make sense????
*where's the gremalin with the twisted tongue*

That's funny. Some of mine were easy to pick, others, I'd break the vines picking. I don't remember which varieties did what, but I wound up using scissors eventually.

I used my pruners!!!
Heyyyy, I'd go to bed with those things
if my poor husband would let me....

I have an apron I wear, from the time I get, to
the time I go to bed...
Pruners, clippers, snippers, kleenex's, twist~ties, 2 or 3 trowels, rubber gloves, ohh, geesh the things' packed to the nine's!!!

We should do a thread on tools. I like Corona hand pruners, and I have a pair of Corona snips that are a cross between regular handsnips and scissors. They're great, but since they lost their edge, I can't get them as sharp as they once were.
I'l like to get a pair of those cool Japanes style garden scissors for dead-heading!

Kellogg's Breakfast! What a great tomato peppereater. Definitely an orange though. One of the best oranges also. There are so many great varieties of OP tomatoes out there. And the best part is you only need to buy seeds once and just save them whenever you need them. A few other great large ones are Tidwell German, Coustralee and one with a great story behind it, Mortgage Lifter.

I've had a lot of catastrophic losses over the years...extreme drought, alternately, extremely wet summers, one year a grasshopper plague that was so bad they stripped some of the trees of their leaves, so you can imagine what they did to my garden...Pests to numerous to mention. Last year was the first time I had so many tomatoes that I actually got tired of them, after eating 2 or 3 pounds a day for 3 months!
One variety I grew once was Black From Tula...what a pretty thing, and what flavor! I only got to harvest 2 of those before the plants were destroyed by grasshoppers! I love the heirlooms, and all the exotic names.
Ror one reason or another, my Mortgage Lifters didn't fare well, and I don't remember if I got to taste those. I've already got my seeds for those for this year, though!

Dave, could you not make a make~shift tent/covering/cage like stuff from Bird netting??
Could that not keep out them pesky things??

Weezie, it was one of those once in a century types of infestation. They called it a "plague of Biblical proportions." They would have found their way into pretty much everything. They ate all of the plants I had that are said to repel grasshoppers. They ate all of my plants, period. I had five varieties of sweetcorn, so I'd have sweetcorn all summer with ton's to give away. I had 2 good meals from the earliest variety.
I had 20 varieties of tomatoes, all started from seed. I got maybe 3 pounds.
I had someone tell me that they had eaten the nylon window screens off of their house.
I bought some Nosema (a.k.a Grasshopper Spore) from the only local nursery that even knew what I was talking about, and used it, and then discovered it was out of date by 8 years, and that stuff only keeps a few months REFRIGERATED!
I finally found some online (after much searching) at HYDROGARDENS, got some and treated about 2 acres. I also bought Guineas to free range. A month later the plague was over at our place, but there was nothing left of the garden. They'd eaten most of the leaves off of my cherry trees, even.
And that is just the story of one year here in good ole Oklahoma.
Remember, we're the Dustbowl state, and tornado alley...
It's always something!
But we can grow magnolias, crepe myrtles, and KILLER tomatoes here...and evidently camellias, too...
And it was 75 degrees here on Wednesday (23 today!)
We take the good with the bad!

This is so true! I have grown Mortage Lifters, very interesting story about how they got thier name, I use to try a different variety every year, but it just seems like to much trouble to grow a bunch of different kinds. I am trying some black plum tomatoes I got in a trade, but will plant them in a different area then my main tomato crop.

Ciao all, what a great thread, thanks for starting it (and I can't remember at the moment who it was).

Weezie's correct, all tomatoes have roughly the same pH..it's to do with the level of sugars inside the fruit that influences overall flavour. Some tomatoes when ripe are on the tangy side, some are full-bodied like a good Italian red wine, some are very mild (a number of whites and yellows come to mind). One person's favourite might not taste the same for you due to different climate, rain/sun, and also taste-buds are highly variable from person to person.

John in CT listed a number of excellent OP (open-pollinated) varieties and he's right, too..you grow these instead of hybrids and you're not only able to save seed and have them grow true from year to year, you're also potentially preserving someone's priceless family heirloom from disappearing off the face of the planet..and that's a good thing as a very famous housekeeping ex-con once said.

Comfrey, Black Plum is an excellent variety, in my opinion and I'd call it a semi-determinate because at least in my zone 5/6 garden, it wasn't the largest plant in the tomato bed, far from it. I think it topped out around 5' tall or so, much shorter than say my monster Aunt Ruby's German Green which reached over 8' tall by season's end. These tomatoes are excellent dried..plump them up with a bit of boiling water, then drain and cover with extra virgin olive oil and they'll last you all winter long in the fridge (if you don't scarf them all). We had them on pizza last night..YUM.

Njoynit, PM me with your mailing address if you'd like some Brandywine seeds, darlin. I've got plenty.

Oh, one more thing before I forget...some varieties of tomatoes retain green "shoulders" even when completely ripe. Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Black Plum come to mind as examples of this. It's just cosmetic. The more you gain experience in growing tomatoes that don't look like the perfect red cardboard globes you get at the grocery store, you'll be at peace with some funny-looking, exquisite-tasting heirlooms..Weezie?

Buona fortuna a tutti,
Julianna

Julianna...you still have to keep OP's widely seperated, and maybe take other precautions as well, to keep the strain pure?
I'd love to get some Aunt Ruby's and black plum if you've got excess seed!

Alrighty Julianna,
You may end up talking me into growing them...
hehehe...

What kinds of the heirlooms are there that are
like the size or consistancy of a Celebrity and like a Beefsteak??

weezie, whatever you do, don't go HERE!
http://www.totallytomato.com/
Actually, I think you posted a link for khaadu to there...
the first time I got their catalogue, I ordered MUCH more stuff than I should have!
I do that everywhere, though.

Tomato Siberian looked like a nice tomato...
Good sized..

Anyone had that kind???

I grew Siberian once expecting it to be the earliest to ripen. It wasn't...but then my climate is vastly different than yours. I didn't have a great year that year...I think that was the year of the grasshopper infestation. Let me look and see if I still have some seeds...they'd be a few years old...if I do, I'll send you a few so you can try a plant or two...

My luck with tomatoes has been spotty since I've lived in the country, in part because the soil is poor and I've been working hard to build it. I can recommend things based on my success, but my failures don't reflect on the varieties...for instance, I had a low opinion of Kellogg's Breakfast when I first grew them, they were small and not that tasty, but last year they were huge, tasty and productive. I'll go look for those Siberia....

I have tried both Bigboy and Betterboy without much luck.

The Betterboy's last year were ugly, all of them. I cut them up and froze them.

I started some Rutgers this year in peatpots. I am going to try some different brands this year.

I think most of my problem is the soil, it sets up like concrete. After many passes with the tiller I am finally able to get the tiller all the way down. I have a strip about 6' wide that is much harder then the the rest of the soil, this is right over a old gas line, so maybe it was packed down a bit. The line east and west.

Also I have a LOT of trash in the ground, mostly on the west end of the spot. I have picked up many handfuls of glass, metal, and plastic. I keep a plastic bucket out there just to put the trash in.

I found Rutger's seeds at Wally~World, twice, I've eaten them, ther'e not bad...
Not a Celebrity or Beefsteak.. but not bad..

You soil sounds like the old, in ground garden I used to have on my side of the property..
**I switched to raised beds on my mom's side**
but that garden was filled with crapp~ola...
Doorknobs, coal, glass, buckets, etc.. I couldn't believe the stuff.. I think it was an old dump before, get me the willies, and was lucky to change to the raised beds..

I do alot of reading, and some of the big gardener's on tv, books, etc.. are saying not to till the soil, as it wrecks the soil...*turns it like concrete* that you should take something like a "broad fork" and aerate the soil...
When tilling, it breaks down all the worm tunnels, air pockets and such..
To encorporate soils or composts, should mix it in lightly with a trowel or something..

I didn't rototill for the first time this year,
can't say I saw a huge difference, but didn't seem to harden as bad.. I will do the same again this year, I think...

I think it mostly compacts the soil at the depth the times bottom out at. Use a fork, spade etc. and stab around so it breaks up the "hardpan" caused by the tiller. Another problem with tilling is that it disrupts the "strata," the minute variations of bacterial, fungal and other colonies that are very happy where they are. That's why you should just loosen soil with a spade or fork before planting...it takes a little while before all those beneficials get busy again if they're tilled.

One more thing, Weezie...I think the Rutger's is an all purpose tomato...good for cooking, canning drying or eating fresh, if I remember right...so they wouldn't be as good for slicing as a beefsteak type or others, but versatile...I may grow some just to see.

Yeah, I grew them, twice now...
Not a bad tomato.. easy to pick and the size wasn't bad at all...
I basically eat fresh or make salsa..
**I'm not into canning and stuff, just love a raw tomato**
I love Beefsteaks, but as I am the only one eating them *tomatoes* it's hard to eat a big huge one like that, all by myself.. *well, in the begining it's not hard, but when you're all tomatoe'd just about out, that's a big tomato to eat by myself, especially in warm weather and I do not like a cold, refrigorated tomato..

I just caught Pat's post...zoomed right by it before. If the area over the old gasline is that hard, it's because they backfilled with clay, I'm thinking. You probably have a little more clay than me...or a LOT more. We have pretty much all sand here...
My tomatoes do well mostly in variations of the lasagna bed...I thought I had invented that type of gardening the first time I did it! I did that 7 years ago as an experiment! And didn't hear that term until last year, or the description.
In my experience, the only way to know if a varitety is good or not is to try it in different soils in different years...if it's good once, it's good. If not, it's not condemned. Raised beds are the way to go, when you've got the time.
The best ammendment I've come across around here that's available commercially is mushroom compost!