heirloom tomatoes

[ninnymary]

I have a tomatoe question.

Are heirloom tomatoes harder to grow than regular ones?

I've always planted early girls, sweet 100's, and sungold. They allways did great.

This past spring I planted heirlooms, hillbillie, zebra, and can't remember the rest. Only a couple plants did somewhat o.k. But the others didn't. They were all planted the same way. Dug big hole, put organic fertilizer, fish head, bone meal.

I love the heirlooms and they are very pricy, so I would like to try them again. Any suggestions?

I probably should not have replaced by tried and true ones until I saw if the heirlooms would grow. But I did, and this year I didn't have as many tomatoes as I would have liked.

mary

 

[Rosalind]

They can be more susceptible to disease than the regular kind. There was a blight going around in 2009, so it may be worth it to try again. I always plant the heirlooms, because I reckon I can get the regular kind from the store, and I never had a problem getting plenty of tomatoes until this past year--but this year was a wash for everyone, not just me.

 

[obsessed]

I have grown a few heirloom with my usual lot from the nursery (home depot, whatever). I use do those tomatoes because I suck at seed starting and if I didn't I would get no tomatoes. They generally produce pretty well. where as the heirlooms I have tried do seem to take longer to bloom or harvest and the tomatoes are never as big or plenty full.

With that in mind, I am going to attempt to grow all heirlooms this year. I bought a bio-dome for Xmas and seed starting be damned I WILL BE SUCCESSFUL THIS YEAR. I WILL. I am switching to heirlooms just for variety. I am getting tired of the reg and want to grow some thing different. Heirloom doesn't mean much to me. I wish I could be passionate about the whole seed thing but I figure once I can start seed then I can jump on the whole Monsanto thingy. I also don't intend on saving seed. I just want something other that a red mater that I can get at the store. So I am going green yellow and orange. That is why I am doing heirloom.

Also I do have a small unrecognizable alter ego that says if the bio-dome don't work...... well off to home depot..... oh and I love my little sweet million. It really is like a million.

 

[ninnymary]

Rosalind,

The plants looked healthy. There didn't seem to be any blight or any problems with them. The problem was that I got only a couple tomatoes per plant and they were not very big. The hillbillie which is my favorite did better than the others. It gave me a few more and were of good size.

Next year, I think I will only plant the hillbillie and go back to my early girls and sungold.

mary