Tomatoes for 2025

[Branching Out]

I was reading an Eliot Coleman book, and in it he mentioned that they space their tomato seedlings out a bit once their leaves begin to overhang adjacent plants. Otherwise it creates shade, forcing the seedlings stretch and get tall as they search for light. A bit of extra room to grow seemed like a good idea, so I moved around my collection of dwarf tomatoes to permit each one to have more light. There are three plants each of Uralskiy Ranniy, Alenka, and Honey Nail. (I don't think Honey Nail is actually a true 'dwarf'; it's more like a short, sparse, determinate).

 

[ducks4you]

@digitS' you wrote on Amkuska's 2025 Thread,

Amkuska's 2025 Garden

By "Audrey's" – is that a reference to the kid's teevee cartoon, @ducks4you ? Audrey as a name choice must be starting over. They seemed to be all older than me. "Karen," I'm disappointed that it has come to have negatively entangled. I like that name. DW and I were overwhelmed with just 8...

www.theeasygarden.com

"DW and I were overwhelmed with just 8 tomato plants in 2024 with 1 of the 8, a volunteer cherry. They all came on late so there was only a short time to enjoy them fresh. Too much wind, some were even damaged by being beaten around.

Then, the plants recovered — boy, did they! Anyway, the freezer filled up."

I am trying to make sense of WHY my 2024 tomatoes Which, bc of my bad knee last year, I got transplanted at the Last possible week to get fruit, ended up producing the BIGGEST tomatoes I have ever grown, many of them filled my whole hand.
I have Never had tomatoes that big before, and they didn’t taste waterlogged, either.
Any thoughts as to why these happy accidents happened to both of us?

 

[digitS']

Any thoughts as to why these happy accidents happened to both of us?

The SIZE of the Kellogg's Breakfast FRUIT were the largest that they had ever been. I had only grown the KB a few times before and then, only in the distant garden. It is a late variety and not trusted to produce much but in 2024, I needed fresh seed and so, grew it here at home.

Yes, it turned into a vigorous plant but so did others. Smaller fruit size in the distant, I attributed to it having to struggle a bit more in the distant garden because of exposure. So, wind was an all-season problem. Here at home, wind is seldom much of a problem, the collection of board fences, garage, carport, greenhouse, chicken coop, and house, not to mention the structures in the neighbor's yard a few feet away, all protects against the wind.

An additional idea is that the windstorms early in the 2024 season delayed growth and fruit set so that when the plants took off, aided by the protected environment, they were not hindered by fruit development. I don't know how sound this idea was but they sure did a lot of growing before the fruit began to show up. We were impatient for fresh and ripe but it just trickled in, mostly from the cherries. Still, those cherries produced heavily.

Steve