Tomatoes, direct-sown

[Smart Red]

I grew SPOON for a couple of years. Cute and probably a good choice for little children, but I found the tomatoes to be all (tough) skin when popping a handful.

 

[digitS']

... I got the "Gardeners Delight" a large cherry type tomato from a fellow in Israel. They do seem to mature faster than most vareties of tomatoes that I've seen. I wonder about direct seeding these real tiny tomato varieties. You know the kind that can be grown in small flower pots .....

And, I grew Gardener's Delight with seed from Jung's, I believe. Hold on to those Israeli seeds, Blue Jay. The fruit on my plants were tiny! Took 10 minutes of picking to fill a shirt pocket.

I have grown Red Robin but ... the plants are tiny, tiny!

It's a different year. The Kimberley produced lots of nice big cherries (on small plants) and quit. I used my container mix for perennials as soil instead of straight compost. That's a mistake!

Another indication of 2016 differences: Dagma's Perfection always loads up on nice green tomatoes that look like they will be too late. Then, they ripen in a rush! Perfect shapes ... not this year. There will be perfect shapes soon but their first tomatoes look terrible and came remarkably early .

The local weather office published a chart of the temperature ups and downs. Weird, even for here, and that must be the tomato problem.

Tomato plants are tougher than some things but it would be difficult to separate mine by early and late, in 2016.

Steve

 

[Beekissed]

I had literally hundreds upon hundreds of volunteer tomatoes of all types in the garden this year...having done the stupid trick of emptying all my tomato canning scraps into the deep litter of the coop for the chickens to enjoy. Then, using that composted litter on the garden, never thinking for a moment about all those tiny tomato seeds that had spent the winter fermenting in compost, just waiting to spring into action.

The healthiest, biggest tomato plants I had this year were the volunteers that I allowed to exist...none of which contracted the fungal blight like the tomatoes I planted intentionally. Two of these volunteers were beefsteak variety and were bearing just fine, even though I didn't sucker them or stake them....but they were located just outside of the garden and the deer ate the plant and the tomatoes, while the chickens ate the rest of the tomatoes.

Most of the volunteers inside the garden were Roma or grape/cherry tomatoes...the ones I didn't pull up while still little all bore fruit and plenty of it..and are still out there putting out tomatoes like crazy.

I'm thinking of doing intentional "volunteer" sowing late in the fall of the seeds I want to see growing in the spring. I'll do it in a cold frame to see if I can give them a little extra warmth and nutrition while they get started in the spring. Don't know if that will work but I'm game to try it.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.