So Texans, Where do you Stand on Tomatoes?

[MarkAndre]

@Wildcat82 Sorry, that stinks. I do tend to have problems with tomato seedlings the later it goes in the season. It got frustrating, so this is the first time in a few years I have even tried starting tomato seeds. The plants in the ground came from a nursery. Whoever grows their plants does a good job.
I didn’t know about chileplants.com, that’s cool! I’ll have to take a look at their site.

Have you grown Flamme before? Do you know the seed source of their Improved Porter?

I grew Jaune Flamme last year and thought it was a very good orange saladette. Supposedly its pretty heat tolerant. I have no idea where they get their Porter seed from.

I've tried to do a summer grow out of the top heat tolerant types the past couple years but 2 years ago damping off/mites killed off everything then last year the Sahara heat wave/bacterial wilt killed everything. I refuse to be shut out 3 years in a row so I mail ordered a few plants. So for now, the first week in May I'll hopefully be planting 2-3 Juliets, 2 Porter improved, 2 Jaune Flamme, 1 Abu Rawan (if it can survive) and a couple more Black Cherries assuming I can get some clones.

I finally managed to grow it once after many attempts. I remember it going well pretty late into the season, but not exactly how long. I think perhaps the LFBs got it before the heat. I bet it might do really well.

I asked about seed because there is a widespread phenomenon of people getting Porter from Porter’s Pride or Porter Improved. Some people report really loving Porter, from what I gather dead ripe and water restricted.

Refuse to lose! I think that was the Rockets, but I preferred the Spurs. Anyway, yes!

[karstopography]

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Picked the tomatoes with some color this morning ahead of the rain. Pink Tiger, Principe Borghese, and the one Brandywine OTV. The others are Sungold and Black Cherry. I’ve eaten one Sungold, yummy.

Curious how you assess their taste. For whatever reason the 3 Indian Stripe I've picked were extremely mealy while the handful of Blush I picked weren't much better. The S100 have been really good though tiny.

I was going to try and ripen out on the vine, but this rain here today changed the plan. All these are new to me except sungold. Principe Borghese feels very light for its size which is exactly what I hoped for since I plan on drying most of them.

I’ll try to update the thread whenever these ripen fully and I get to taste them.

[Rockporter]

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My tomato growing friend in Kemah swears these rubber snakes keep the squirrels away. I just have to remember the snakes are there so I won’t startle, jump and break something every time I see one. I’ve got six out there now and more on the way. He had around twenty rubber snakes so I figure I better have a similar number to provide complete protection.

Sounds like a great idea but I would forget and then I would panic, lol. I don't mind a little garden snake now and then but I couldn't handle having a bunch of fake snakes all over my containers, lol.

[karstopography]

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More tomatoes breaking color.

Meanwhile, some of the big tomatoes are making big sets

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[PlainJane]

May should be fun.

[MarkAndre]

I could not remember when I last fertilized, for the life of me. I ended up digging through this thread and finding an approximate date. Just goes to show keeping a grow log here for future reference is a great idea.

Think I’ll hit the ones that I think could use some 6-4-4 tomorrow and 2-8-4 on the ones that are big and setting fruit already on Wednesday.

[karstopography]

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Growing collection of tomatoes coming inside. Pruden’s Purple, Bear Creek, and Brandywine OTV. Three Coyote cherries, one Pink Tiger, and a Sungold or two have been consumed.

Brandywine OTV is yielding to the touch, I have no idea what shade of red this tomato is when fully ripe. I’m tempted to slice this soon, but don’t want to act too early.

[MarkAndre]

I can see a couple of tomatoes set on the more robust of the Cherokee Purples. Their size is exaggerated in the photos.

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A smaller one on the other CP.

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Early Girl

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Nothing set on the Travelers. One of them suffered from a ruptured central stem when a bottle of water intended to keep it warm toppled over. I considered pulling it but ultimately left it to see what it would do. It is delayed but looking pretty good. On the other hand, it is the only plant from which I have removed diseased looking foliage.

I’m pleased overall, yet surprised things aren’t a little farther along. I have to wonder if it is because of the weather, which has been very mild, or perhaps because of the liquid fertilizers I have been using. The instructions say to use them twice a week, whereas I have been fertilizing every two weeks. Twice a week seems excessive, and there was some granular applied to the soil prior to planting. I’m also out of this brand, though, so I’ll be switching to TTF soon.

[karstopography]

I checked all my 22 non-cherry or grape types. They all have at least one fruit now. Pineapple and Aussie were the last holdouts. Pineapple might have been a case of too much N as I spilled some rather large amount of composted chicken manure earlier in the season around the base.

Aussie lost the one stem it had growing early in March. It took a while to regroup.

The champion fruit setter at this stage is Black Krim. I counted no less than 26 tomatoes on the one plant I’m growing. There might be more, some additional flowers are looking like they took. There some other plants in the teens. One of my two saved seed from 2022 Kellogg’s Breakfast is in the teens, 16 fruit at the least, tons of flowers, it expect it to be over 20 tomatoes soon.

The cherry tomatoes are ridiculous with the amount of fruit.

[SpookyShoe]

My first ripe tomato of 2023. Black Prince.

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[MarkAndre]

A purty tomato!

[karstopography]

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That recent thread on pruning is interesting. Here’s how some of the various types shake out on shape after ~70 days post transplanting. Pineapple is the narrow columnar tomato, Black Krim the more bushy spreading type.

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Edit: caption that says Pineapple should be Black Krim and vice versa

[MarkAndre]

I tore some branches off the Early Girl in an Earthbox, due to yellow mottled leaves on the oldest, largest leaves. After further review, I regret doing that. I’m guessing it is a magnesium deficiency. I have Bush Doctor cal mag on the way. I guess I’ll just drop a capful in with the water every day or so until the symptoms disappear. I hope I haven’t opened up a pathway to disease with the wounds.

[karstopography]

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Getting more fruit inside. Most the plants have set a nice amount. Some of the tomatoes are on the threshold of a color break. Diseases seem to be in check. Insects other than a few leaf footed bug nymphs have been nowhere to be seen. Squirrels have recently shown more interest in the garden, but so far nothing has been pilfered on their part.

Zero complaints except there’s an awful outbreak of mosquitoes at the moment that makes garden work slightly less enjoyable.

[MissS]

Your plants look great. They are nice and healthy without a blemish. Do you spray them with anything?

And those tomatoes... My heart be still...

[karstopography]

Your plants look great. They are nice and healthy without a blemish. Do you spray them with anything?

And those tomatoes... My heart be still...

I have used Bt I think twice now and Spinosad one time to control hornworm and armyworm caterpillars. I believe spinosad also has some efficacy on flea beetles and I definitely see flea beetles around, but they seem to bother eggplant more than tomatoes. I haven’t sprayed anything else other than the kelp extract and a TTF foliar feed a couple of times.

I don’t use any fungicide, though.

I can barely wait for more of the slicer or beefsteak types to ripen. So far of the non-Cherry types, I only have consumed one Brandywine OTV, one Bear Creek and one Pruden’s Purple. They were all outstanding and I had to share most of the Pruden’s Purple. I’m not sure I’ll share quite as much of the next one.

I feel like this could set up to be the best tomato season yet, but you know how that can go, there’s always something unforeseen that could mess it up.

[karstopography]

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Pace of the Tomatoes making it inside is picking up. These are all new cherry tomatoes since the photo on Friday, that batch went to two of the children. Three black krim, one JBT, Polish is the big one at color break and the wind injured Pruden’s Purple that I thought might rot, but the wound is apparently well sealed. I picked the Polish tomato at color break, a bird in the hand deal, plus there’s rain in the forecast.

There’s others out there just breaking color or very close. It’s about to get filthy with tomatoes around here. The cherry tomatoes alone will be insane.

Squirrels have held off so far, perhaps the dozen plus polymer snakes out there are keeping the squirrels at a distance. I move the snakes around periodically to baffle the rodents. I have also made a couple of patrols with the Browning lever action.22lr. Cartridges are primer only (primer in the rim) no gunpowder in the cartridge.22lr. Talk about a stealthly sub-sonic load and below the foot pounds of energy delivered from a better pneumatic pellet gun, quieter than the air guns also, but insanely accurate. I shoot that open iron sights, lever action browning.22 better than any other firearm. I’ve only had it 45 years. That browning .22 was well made and well designed. Heavy barrel, and a heavy barrel shoots better than a light one being easier to hold steady free handed. All my shots at the rodents are free handed. The primer only rounds are just barely lethal to small rodents such as squirrels.

I never hunted squirrels with shotguns like many folks, it was always the Browning .22lr and head shots for me. Shotguns damage meat and make a mess and costs more per round. Dad trained me to shot single shot, make it count, that was well before the semi-auto black gun era.

[karstopography]

With a high potential of a lot of rain today, I decided to pick most of the tomatoes that had broken color, although I left a few that had a bit of color, just as an experiment on what happens to color breaking tomatoes in my raised bed in a lot rain.

Nine are over 400 grams. The two biggest are Kellogg’s Breakfast and Persimmon at 555 grams each. One SOTW is 543 grams. There’s a Polish tomato at 527 grams. I wrote down the names of eachPruden’s Purple, SOTW, Polish, True Black Brandywine, Black Krim, Carbon, Big Zac, Beefmaster are all there, some more than once.

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[SpookyShoe]

Black Cherry and Cherokee Purple plants are loaded with fruit. Still no ripe fruit on the CP, but close.

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[karstopography]

Most of the tomatoes I just picked were ~80 days to maturity, give or take a little, all depending on which seed vendor information is included. I planted them all into the beds February 18th. Today is 79 days post transplanting by my count so I guess the estimated days to maturity numbers aren’t so far off.

It just seems like it takes forever, too long, lol.