Giving Up

[ninnymary]

Oh Thistle.. You can't have a garden without tomatoes! Don't even think it! I bet you next year you will have tomatoes coming out of your ears and you will be glad that you planted them.

Last year my heirlooms did terrible. This year they did great and I can't tell the difference in weather here from one year to the next. Maybe it was my chicken compost. Lesa said that it would make a diffrence. Guess she's right.

Mary

 

[digitS']

And, variety choice.

Now, not even all cherries will ripen early in this h**l hole, I mean, this big step up from Devils Lake! Yeah. Large Red Cherry was in my garden for years and years. I thought that it represented the one and only cherry tomato. Heck's fire! It is a 70 day tomato. Sungold: Johnny's has it as 57 days. Now, we can't expect it in 2 months of the May & June we had this year but, compared to most heirloom beefsteaks, Sungold takes off like a bat outta blue blazes!

Thistle', did you know that there is a Kootenai tomato? What county do you live in? How about a Benewah tomato? It has been a long time but I have grown both . Turns out, they are open-pollinated. Can't find the seeds everywhere but check out Sand Hill Preservation! They've got those 2, Sandpoint and Shoshone, as well.

Makes you feel kind of surrounded by tomato friendliness, don't it ? (For you folks at some distance from this neck of the woods: those are also names of counties and cities in northern Idaho . A UofI professor of horticulture took pity on local folks about 40 years ago .)

Prairie Fire is now considered something of a "standard" by Alaska Cooperative Extension. Kimberley was first grown by a French Canadian in the Rocky Mountain community of that name. And, I guess the Sub Arctic variety was developed by US Air Force personnel stationed in Greenland! Of all places!

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

Yeah Steve, I know variety choice makes a big difference in what you can expect. Even so, I do get seduced by the descriptions in catalogs and throw sense to the wind sometimes.
I'll be very interested in the "local" types and am making a note to order some for next season!
I'm in Kootenai County btw.

What puzzled me this year was the absolute obstinacy of my crop to ripen. In my "early experiment " I set out several varieties (6 I think ) on April 23,
with bubble wrap around half, and a large clear trash bag filled with water around the other half. They were planted on the south side of my shed. I wont do the water bags again, but the bubble wrapped ones survived. One of those was a Cherokee Purple.

There wasn't an apparent advantage in the early ones compared to the ones I left in the house and planted at the official date.
However, the Cherokee Purple had more ripe fruit than the Bloody Butchers, by a long shot! That's 80 days compared to a 55 day tomato. The only thing I could think of was that the CP must have had a bigger root system from it's earlier planting.

Anyway, I feel a little spanked and humbled this year and will try to pick more appropriate varieties for next season. And set up some kind of hoop house to grow the tomatoes in. :/

uhh... did you call this paradise a h**l hole? hahaha!

 

[digitS']

Even so, I do get seduced by the descriptions in catalogs . . .

Well, that is how it should be but it would sure help to have a 60 to 85 plant tomato patch.

I wish I wasn't so risk-averse. When it comes right down to it - I'm willing to chance about 5% to 10% of what I've got each year. At that rate, it will take me 70 years before I'll come up with a dozen winners . I'd probably need psychotherapy to help me deal with the stress of trying Cherokee Purple. What would my Cherokee ancestors say if I screwed up!

uhh... did you call this paradise a h**l hole? hahaha!

Shush now!!

Steve
Mountain :bun Cottontail

 

[thistlebloom]

Steve have you ever tried Dr. Wyches Yellow? I didn't get many to ripen, but I liked the flavor and it was developed by one of your distant Cherokee relatives.

 

[digitS']

Dr. Wyches Yellow is one of those 80-day varieties that I have avoided since that 1 foray into the class with Box Car Willy about 10 years ago. The BCW plants produced no more than 1 ripe tomato per plant. I think I had 5 so there were 5 tomatoes .

Jaune Flamme was one of those tempting catalog offerings but seed sources had it listed as 70-80 days. It took me about 4 years of "wishing" before I had enuf courage to try it. By the way, it is very much a 70-day tomato . Cherokee Purple is sometimes listed as 80-days, sometimes 75-days. That 75-days is just about my boundary. That number still makes me hesitate and I really want to see fewer days so the beefsteak row is filled with Big Beef at 72-days and Goliath at 65-days.

I fully comprehend the unreliability of the weather to cooperate in these days-to-maturity and the seed companies to provide these ratings. I mean, Husky Red Cherry is supposed to be a 65-day variety but my plants produced not 1 red fruit until just about 1 week before frost. And Health Kick got booted!! That 72-day tomato never ripened right up until the night of frost.

And the weather -- shoot! One August the patch will be unloading all month! Then in a year like this one, I won't really have a beefsteak harvest until September shows up. Imagine my disappointment when we had a year like 1995, I believe it was, when frost showed up in August :/!

So, I play it safe and usually have reasonable harvests. Really, when you come right down to it, there are many, many varieties that are below 72-days.

I like the taste of just about all tomatoes. Trying to keep DW happy with some mild tomatoes and to not have to grow very unproductive Orange Minsk more than a year or 2 . . . I did try to come up with some yellows and oranges this season. Woodle Orange came thru well but a lot of the fruits are kind of woodle . I was deeply suspicious of the Kellogg's Breakfast seed sent to me by a friend but gave them a go. Maybe it was the strain that he had but they did real well at ripening . I will grow those 2 again.

The big surprise after a bad review by a local gardener from 2010 and taking forever (!) to set fruit in our cool year - was Dagma's Perfection. I had lots of those!! They are an ivory yellow with a light blush on the blossom end - kind of unusual in appearance but pretty. They are definitely coming back !

Steve

 

[lesa]

As fascinating as I find all the lovely heirloom tomatoes ( and enjoy drooling over them, in the catalogs)- I am not going to devote much garden space to them. Each year, I seem to end up with late blight. So, I intend to choose a variety that is blight resistant. If I had a longer growing season, I might be more adventurous.

 

[digitS']

I have grown Legend which is supposed to have some blight resistance, Lesa. It was quite a remarkable tomato in that it seemed to have more fruit than leaves! They weren't remarkably tasty, however.

Johnny's has JTO-99197 and Plum Regal. JTO-99197 is said to have "Early Blight" resistance. That disease shows up sometimes in my garden, I believe. Late blight is something else and Plum Regal specifically says "Late" - and, it has a profoundly better name .

Here is a variety list from Rutgers University.

Steve

ETA: Hey! Notice that they have some heirlooms that they felt were worth noting! And, one of them is Prudens Purple. "Moderate resistance US17" That's a real nice beefsteak! It will ripen in my garden and is just a bit late in the season .

 

[digitS']

Here is a picture of my tomato stash:

Colors are a little misleading but mostly that is because these are all in various stages of ripening. I don't know if there is a Kellogg's Breakfast here or not . Too many go thru an orange stage as they ripen.

The 3 yellows in the blue basket are Dagma's Perfection. They don't really have the red blush, probably because they were quite green when picked (about a week ago). The largest 1 is right at one-half pound. Most were that size but shrunk down some, late in the season.

The 2 small tomatoes, 1 in front of the smallest Perfection, are Woodle Orange. A few were about twice that size and I'm still wondering why the size was so variable on the same plant right thru the season.

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

Very handsome!