So Texans, Where do you Stand on Tomatoes?

[PlainJane]

Mine are all blooming and a few setting fruit so hoping the slight cool-down we’re supposed to have doesn’t blast everything.

[karstopography]

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Blooms today. The big one on Carbon looks like it might have set. I’ll know for sure by tomorrow. In the next 14 days, all the lows overnight are forecast to be in the high 50s or into the 60s except a 53° overnight for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Something ought to set during that stretch of weather.

[karstopography]

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Tomato height today. Not quite 2 feet, but closing in. Pruden’s purple still in the lead, but Pineapple I think will overtake it by next week. The other two are Snowball and black cherry. Pineapple is always a vigorous and tall plant here.

[karstopography]

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Brandywine OTV with the cute tomato, but others getting into the act. Most all blooming now or getting close. Glad I planted when I did, weather been highly cooperative.

[SpookyShoe]

Mulched the tomato bed area. Six plants in this bed. Two more plants in another location. It was a good day since it was cool and overcast.

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[SpookyShoe]

I assume 44° in a few days is okay? Another cool front coming in.

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[karstopography]

I’m hoping so. I don’t plan on taking any measures to protect the tomatoes at this point. As long as the wind isn’t too bad, I tend to think the tomatoes will get through this little cold snap with minimal issues. Maybe anything blooming won’t set fruit for those three or four days, but I don’t see how covering the crop will change that.

[karstopography]

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Progress. More fruit setting, especially on the cherry tomatoes not pictured. The Cool weather for the next couple of days might put a pause on setting, but I don’t see too much trouble coming from a few cooler than typical days. So far, the tomatoes this season are doing nicely. Pleased as punch.

[karstopography]

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All these tomato blossoms and little fruit are putting an extra big smile on my face. The only tomatoes not yet blooming are Pineapple and Gold Medal. I have grown Pineapple a few times now and know it is extra slow or late, but maybe Gold Medal is the same, both being large bicolors. Old German was glacially slow and Hillbilly wasn’t exactly speed racer either. Maybe all large bicolors are late?

Anyhow, I’m pretty pumped with the tomato season thus far. Seems like my timing was spot on. I’m sure I’ll see a few plot twists and some trouble as time goes on, but for now I’m enjoying the smooth sailing.

[karstopography]

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Twenty-three of the twenty seven tomato plants now have at least one fruit. All are blooming. As to be expected, the small fruited/cherry types are ahead of the slicers and beefsteak types on fruit setting.

No sign of pests or trouble yet, I’m sure the trouble and bugs will find the tomatoes sooner or later. I’m enjoying things as they are even though I know one can’t count one’s chickens before they hatch.

[karstopography]

The large fruited tomato plants are anywhere from beginning their first blooms on the first truss, Pineapple, to beginning to bloom on third trusses, Pruden’s Purple, SOTW, Persimmon, Bear Creek, and maybe a couple more are in this category. The rest are somewhere in between. Basically, it has been 40 days from transplant to blooming on third trusses for the fastest of the larger fruited types. Some are still blooming on second trusses while the blossoms are opening on third trusses. I want to say each truss is about a week apart, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily correct.

The cherry, smaller fruited tomatoes really aren’t all that much ahead on blooming. Maybe Coyote is initiating blooming on fourth truss, most the rest are in the third truss blooming now timing scheme.

I’m trying to discipline myself from pruning too much on the larger fruited indeterminates. I definitely am letting any natural forking to continue and letting at least a few suckers to grow unaltered above the first fruit truss. Natural forking has happened with several of the plants. The goal is to have a few productive stems per plant, plenty of leafy cover, but not such massively wide and unruly monstrosities of tomato plants.

I’ve increased the spacing this season a little to a lot depending on the bed in question so individual plants will have a little to a lot more room to sprawl. My vision is to have each indeterminate plant to have at least two main stems, but hopefully three or four, with each stem firing off almost uninterrupted blooms from now through the next six weeks or so when most the best fruit setting weather occurs. Maybe some of the plants will have even more than four stems, I don’t know yet. I think four stems on large fruited indeterminates is the most I have going at the present.

I’m worried about too much foliage and too many stems providing cover for the inevitable hornworms, fruitworms, leaf footed bugs and other nasties and with that in mind I don’t think I’ll let many of the plants get especially bushy and rambunctious like they might if I did zero pruning.

[SpookyShoe]

Not that you can tell one variety of tomato from the other, lol.

Black Prince

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Carmello

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Black Cherry

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[karstopography]

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BOLO, tobacco hornworm eggs spotted on tomato plants, latitude 29° N Longitude 95° west, April 2nd. 08:00. Several Perpetrators were neutralized on sight. Bioweapon deployed to ensure complete eradication of current infestation. Periodic scouting patrols are recommended to ensure additional incursions of the enemy are discovered and eliminated before a widespread invasion can be organized.

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[MarkAndre]

C5E167F8-3E66-4856-977E-235249A68E13.jpegBOLO, tobacco hornworm eggs spotted on tomato plants, latitude 29° N Longitude 95° west, April 2nd. 08:00. Several Perpetrators were neutralized on sight. Bioweapon deployed to ensure complete eradication of current infestation. Periodic scouting patrols are recommended to ensure additional incursions of the enemy are discovered and eliminated before a widespread invasion can be organized.3F19DD84-41BF-48BC-8B47-1C1A355DD1FA.jpeg

Beautiful property and a dream tomato list, karstopography. Sure enjoyed all the photos and updates on your early growing season. Your early planting date really paid off. I saw that stretch of warm weather and wished I could take advantage, but it turned out that late cold snap brought frost to my garden anyway. I surrounded my small number of plants with water bottles and suffered only minor damage. Wherever I have gardened in Texas, it seems like Mother Nature always has one last late frost to spring on me.

[karstopography]

C5E167F8-3E66-4856-977E-235249A68E13.jpegBOLO, tobacco hornworm eggs spotted on tomato plants, latitude 29° N Longitude 95° west, April 2nd. 08:00. Several Perpetrators were neutralized on sight. Bioweapon deployed to ensure complete eradication of current infestation. Periodic scouting patrols are recommended to ensure additional incursions of the enemy are discovered and eliminated before a widespread invasion can be organized.3F19DD84-41BF-48BC-8B47-1C1A355DD1FA.jpeg

Beautiful property and a dream tomato list, karstopography. Sure enjoyed all the photos and updates on your early growing season. Your early planting date really paid off. I saw that stretch of warm weather and wished I could take advantage, but it turned out that late cold snap brought frost to my garden anyway. I surrounded my small number of plants with water bottles and suffered only minor damage. Wherever I have gardened in Texas, it seems like Mother Nature always has one last late frost to spring on me.

Thank you. I’m close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to dodge a few late frost bullets that might hit others more inland. We have a pretty lengthy window in the Spring for good tomato growing weather, I just have to be a little careful and flexible on the transplanting dates and study the forecasts. There’s a lot to learn and I’m continually trying to learn more about what might work when and why.

I post a good amount partly as a record for myself that might be helpful upon review for subsequent seasons, but maybe something useful will be in the posts for other people growing in coastal Texas or similar climates.

Sometimes, I could be tempted to take a perhaps easier path with planting more of the more or less bulletproof hybrid types, but I’m still enjoying exploring different OP and Heirloom cultivars and see how they might respond to the climate here.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get some tasty tomatoes here before too long, if I can keep all the critters from them first.

[MarkAndre]

C5E167F8-3E66-4856-977E-235249A68E13.jpegBOLO, tobacco hornworm eggs spotted on tomato plants, latitude 29° N Longitude 95° west, April 2nd. 08:00. Several Perpetrators were neutralized on sight. Bioweapon deployed to ensure complete eradication of current infestation. Periodic scouting patrols are recommended to ensure additional incursions of the enemy are discovered and eliminated before a widespread invasion can be organized.3F19DD84-41BF-48BC-8B47-1C1A355DD1FA.jpeg

Beautiful property and a dream tomato list, karstopography. Sure enjoyed all the photos and updates on your early growing season. Your early planting date really paid off. I saw that stretch of warm weather and wished I could take advantage, but it turned out that late cold snap brought frost to my garden anyway. I surrounded my small number of plants with water bottles and suffered only minor damage. Wherever I have gardened in Texas, it seems like Mother Nature always has one last late frost to spring on me.

Thank you. I’m close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to dodge a few late frost bullets that might hit others more inland. We have a pretty lengthy window in the Spring for good tomato growing weather, I just have to be a little careful and flexible on the transplanting dates and study the forecasts. There’s a lot to learn and I’m continually trying to learn more about what might work when and why.

I post a good amount partly as a record for myself that might be helpful upon review for subsequent seasons, but maybe something useful will be in the posts for other people growing in coastal Texas or similar climates.

Sometimes, I could be tempted to take a perhaps easier path with planting more of the more or less bulletproof hybrid types, but I’m still enjoying exploring different OP and Heirloom cultivars and see how they might respond to the climate here.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll get some tasty tomatoes here before too long, if I can keep all the critters from them first.

Keeping a record is an excellent idea. I always figure I will be able to remember everything, but that has not proven to be the case. I do enjoy and benefit from reading about personal growing experiences, especially those from climates and conditions similar to mine.

Agreed about the hybrids. Finding out about different varieties and how they do in your own growing conditions provides a good part of the excitement in tomato growing. Trying to tinker and troubleshoot the potential challenges is a lot of the fun.

Good luck with the critters. Here in deer-topia, I have found fencing to be essential. As for the LFBs, I’m working on it!

[karstopography]

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Rain expected here today through Saturday. That means I had better provide my developing beefsteak type tomato trusses some additional support or risk crimped stems or even worse torn off the plant completely trusses from rain swelled fruit proving to be too heavy for its support.

Usually, in the past I react too late and lose a few trusses before I get around to wrapping sisal twine to provide the helpful support or even better convenient branch to do the job. I’m trying to get ahead of issues this year instead of trying to play catch up.

[karstopography]

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Mostly cherry tomatoes in the photos, but they are all blooming and setting.

[MarkAndre]

Looks like a bumper crop coming your way.

I gave everything a boost of some FF Bud and Bloom that came in a sample pack last year. Cherokee Purples are pulling far ahead of everything else (two Travelers and two unknown dwarves) with early growth, which is typical in my experience. All the plants look good, no disease, and there are flowers, but I think it’s been a little cool for fruit set here. We’ll see in a week’s time. I don’t want to even touch the plants if I don’t have to.

My summer tomato experiments, lettuce, and Jalapeño M need to be potted up. I haven’t even removed some of them from the seedling tray. They were too small, some of them hadn’t even sprouted. I thought I would just pot up the next batch into the same 72 cell tray, but now I think that is a bad idea. I might disturb the plants that are already in the tray. I might just pot up the bigger plants and replant the whole 72 cell tray with new mix and the next batch of seedlings.

Edited to add photos…

…and something tried to dig up an established Early Girl from an Earthbox. Weird. (Next to last photo.) Never experienced that before.

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[SpookyShoe]

Coming along nicely on April 14th...

The largest fruits are on Black Prince and Carmello, respectively.

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Six plants along the fence. Two more plants
are in a garden waste/compost area.

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