A Seed Saver's Garden

[Pulsegleaner]

Oooh! Phil's Two! Is this your first time growing it, or have you already grown it and know what it tastes like? Can't help but be a little curious, I love green when ripe tomatoes.

Second time trying, first time it's come up.

Truth be told, I'm not totally sure WHY I am trying it, beyond pure stubbornness, as we have a HORIIBLE track record with non-cherry tomatoes (we generally get one super tiny fruit, and then the plant dies).

I can certainly see HOW it winds up looking the way it does, as it seems to make flower clusters that look more like pompoms or broccoli rabe florets that the long racemes would normally associate with a tomato. A few more generations, and it will probably be another beefsteak type tomato (based on what I have seen so far, I think larger fruited tomatoes developed from the smaller ones not so much by getting bigger as by multiple flowers fusing into one. This is why larger tomatoes often have double petals, and why, the bigger the tomato variety, the more locules (seed cavities) they tend to have.

Next year, I imagine my big tomato will be Phantom du Laos, as I have decided that the only way I'll ever be able to test its ghost detecting abilities is to grow one myself (I LOVE to see one of the paranormal ghost hunter shows try and use one, They seem to want to use every other cockamamie method of paranormal detection.)

 

[ducks4you]

You know, I was aSTONISHED to hear that a panelist on Mid American Gardener suggested NOT using an auger for holes for my tomato plants.
She said that the roots need air and burying too deep takes that away.
I beg to differ!!!
OMGOsh, tomato plants, when buried, turn their little hairs into MORE roots. When I pull them up in the Fall (or Spring, YA KNOW how THAT WORKS!), I see massive roots on the plants that I stopped watering mid summer.
I Guess if you dig too deep the bottom roots might not work well, but who cares?!?!?
As long as there is moisture for the plants, it doesn't matter. The upper roots will soak in everything that they need,
How many of us, starting out, have bought clearance tomatoes, where the stem is trying so hard to root into the next cell? The first few inches of dirt start drying out first and then you have to water More to keep them going.
I can't remember many years where we didn't see Some kind of Spring or Summer drought.
Don't think I will Ever lay my tomatoes down so that the whole stem sits 4 inches below the soil.
Btw, My auger is manual, and I used to originally to dig 3 ft holes for 8 inch wide and 8 ft high wooden fenceposts.
SOMETIMES, the ground is wet enough to use a spade alone.

Anyway, that is my tomato wisdom for the day,

 

[flowerbug]

You know, I was aSTONISHED to hear that a panelist on Mid American Gardener suggested NOT using an auger for holes for my tomato plants.
She said that the roots need air and burying too deep takes that away.
I beg to differ!!!
OMGOsh, tomato plants, when buried, turn their little hairs into MORE roots. When I pull them up in the Fall (or Spring, YA KNOW how THAT WORKS!), I see massive roots on the plants that I stopped watering mid summer.
I Guess if you dig too deep the bottom roots might not work well, but who cares?!?!?

...

you got it! it has worked well for me too.

 

[heirloomgal]

Next year, I imagine my big tomato will be Phantom du Laos, as I have decided that the only way I'll ever be able to test its ghost detecting abilities is to grow one myself (I LOVE to see one of the paranormal ghost hunter shows try and use one, They seem to want to use every other cockamamie method of paranormal detection.)

I've grown that one - very, very, very white! I didn't know that it could be used to detect ghosts though. I should have tried that. What's the method? I had assumed it had ghost in the name because it was white as a ghost.

 

[heirloomgal]

You know, I was aSTONISHED to hear that a panelist on Mid American Gardener suggested NOT using an auger for holes for my tomato plants.
She said that the roots need air and burying too deep takes that away.
I beg to differ!!!
OMGOsh, tomato plants, when buried, turn their little hairs into MORE roots. When I pull them up in the Fall (or Spring, YA KNOW how THAT WORKS!), I see massive roots on the plants that I stopped watering mid summer.
I Guess if you dig too deep the bottom roots might not work well, but who cares?!?!?
As long as there is moisture for the plants, it doesn't matter. The upper roots will soak in everything that they need,
How many of us, starting out, have bought clearance tomatoes, where the stem is trying so hard to root into the next cell? The first few inches of dirt start drying out first and then you have to water More to keep them going.
I can't remember many years where we didn't see Some kind of Spring or Summer drought.
Don't think I will Ever lay my tomatoes down so that the whole stem sits 4 inches below the soil.
Btw, My auger is manual, and I used to originally to dig 3 ft holes for 8 inch wide and 8 ft high wooden fenceposts.
SOMETIMES, the ground is wet enough to use a spade alone.

Anyway, that is my tomato wisdom for the day,

It's an interesting topic ducks! Here's my 2 cents.

If your tomatoes are doing well, and your getting a harvest that feels abundant to you - you're doing alright! Why change what works? They are a weedy species anyway, and I think it takes a lot of doing something wrong to put a dent in those harvests. A person might get 15 pounds instead of 20 with some growing mistakes.

But I will say this - that I have about 45 pots for growing tomatoes, plus a single row of tomatoes in the garden this year. About 9 of the pots are huge. Having gotten those pots years ago, when I had less soil to play with, I filled up the bottoms of the jumbo pots up with big sharp rocks that we had around. The rocks probably take up more than half the space in the containers. The smaller pots I have for the tomatoes have more soil in them. Yet, every single year without fail the rock bottomed pots outperform the others by about double, in plant size and harvest. It is quite the phenomenon to observe. (My in-ground tomatoes are the slowest growing of all, but they produce well enough though not as much as the big pots.) My conclusion at this point is it's the air available to them. Given the size of the rocks I put in them there will be huge spaces. There is really no other explanation except that the rocks might be adding some minerals the others aren't getting, but I think that's a long shot. The soil in my town is quite mineral rich generally. All the tomatoes do well enough that I don't feel a need to change anything, rocks or not, but the plants with the most air available to their roots really stand out from all the others. So I always choose the most precious tomato varieties for my 'airy feet' pots.

In the wild (the shores of the Galapagos for example) tomatoes don't root deeply. The stems are adventitious and they crawl across the ground to spread, I think this is why they do so well when transplanted that way; they grow much faster initially than if deeply planted. But of course, there are other things to factor in. Some people have challenges with tomatoes diseases and might not be able to do that, exposing the leaves to the soil like that. My short season and growing conditions are such that my tomatoes virtually never have problems. We also don't get the extended heat that might be further south.

 

[digitS']

If your tomatoes are doing well, and your getting a harvest that feels abundant to you - you're doing alright!

All gardening is local .

It has been years since I have grown anything without rocks in my garden soil! Not ttooo long ago, it was in a garden with more pea gravel than the mess I have now. There was also the time when it was mostly basalt washed out of a canyon so ... maybe I could say "sandy."

My backyard pots aren't HUGE at about 6 gallons. Most serious tomato gardeners wouldn't use pots that small but ... it's a small backyard. My tomatoes do better in the open garden probably just because they have more room.

I will just say something about planting deep at an angle. And, it may be mostly because I'm just letting the garden tomatoes sprawl through the season - no stakes, cages, fences to push them to grow vertically. If the angle orients them to the west, they grow mostly to the west. East, they grow in that direction ... north, south ... It seemed to set them up for continued growth mostly in one direction. All of them in a row and westerly -- they would grow over the top of each other! That's not so good.

Of course, a strong windstorm can set them off growing over the top of each other or, all of them, invading a path on one side. Another factor is the climate with its cool night temperatures. I once had a neighbor who moved here from Colorado. I'm not sure where he was in that high elevation state but he planted some tomatoes and said that they were supposed to grow about 5 feet. He said that he had never seen a tomato plant that grew 5 feet! Okay, he probably wasn't very well traveled but I can assure you that tomato plants here can certainly grow 5 feet. Maybe not a lot more than that ... I mean, you go out in the early morning and the poor things are huddled together shivering in the 50°f (10°C) morning cold. This might be after a 90° (32°C) afternoon, 12 hours previous! This isn't the Brandwine River Valley nor the Galapagos Islands. So, a tomato plant can struggle but they do alright.

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

Here's a picture of my tomato differences based on location. All the transplants were still very small by the time they needed to be hardened off because of some bad soil mix I used.

In ground yesterday

The bigger pots, double the size. Una Hartsack in the back is over 4 feet tall already.

 

[heirloomgal]

Little okra update. Despite nearly killing them all in late May, and then planting the survivors and nearly killing those few by giving them TONS of water for days in a row (mea culpa, but some plants like that!) I have finally got them to grow again. I stopped watering them. Period. This doesn't mean they'll make it, but it might increase the chance they'll make it. They did survive our rainy period last week.

I must say Pentadragon, Burmese (surprisingly) and Dwarf Lee have proven themselves to be quite hardy against my lack of okra growing experience. And my conditions. They'll still need to fight all the annual berries to survive. If they don't grow higher soon though, they'll probably lose the battle. Oh, Cajun Jewel turned out okay too. So far.

Burmese

Dwarf Lee

The lovely Chiltepin pepper, seeds from @Alasgun! They aren't super huge, but the growth is healthy and bushy. Sweet little leaves!

Just a pretty flower I bought in a reckless moment of retail therapy. Not sure what it is. Maybe calibrachoa. Peppermint! lol

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I've grown that one - very, very, very white! I didn't know that it could be used to detect ghosts though. I should have tried that. What's the method? I had assumed it had ghost in the name because it was white as a ghost.

According to legend, you put a ripe one on your windowsill. If there is a ghost in the area, the tomato will start to glow.

Note that this is Laos, where a ghost being around is considered a positive thing (i.e. one of your ancestors has stopped by to check on you.)

 

[heirloomgal]

According to legend, you put a ripe one on your windowsill. If there is a ghost in the area, the tomato will start to glow.

Note that this is Laos, where a ghost being around is considered a positive thing (i.e. one of your ancestors has stopped by to check on you.)

Wow! I had no idea that tomato had such an interesting story attached!