Rusty said:
. . . and maybe Sugar Buns for my main corn crop. I like the lower profile of the Sugar Buns at 5 ft because it tends to be so windy here that it can lay over my corn. Any other suggestions?
And I do prefer the beefy-type tomatoes but I don't like the real acidy ones. Is there a VFFNT variety out there that is better than this one?
Rusty
obsessed said:
I would be interested in recommendations for a short season heat loving tomatoes than can still produce with the heat and humidity of the Coastal South. I say short season because the heat usually stops and flowers and fruit setting making my maters done by early June.
See, that's a little confusing to me -- until a few years ago, I thought it was only people like me that had those kind requirements for short season varieties. Now, I realize that difficult weather may mean that there's only a narrow window of time to grow crops - anywhere!
Rusty, I've considered growing Sugar Buns but corn varieties that I do grow take up quite a bit of room growing, as it is. Sugar Buns is an early, sugar-enhanced yellow corn. Some seed companies call it an se (sugar-enchanced) some call it an eh (everlasting heritage), if I understand the terms. Two things are important to me - the early maturing and that the se's are usually tolerant of cold soil and can germinate. Seed from some corn varieties would rot in the ground at the soil temperatures I have to plant in.
You don't have that problem in Alabama, Rusty, but that "lower profile" would be of help in the wind. Smaller plants are usually quicker to set a crop, also. Succession sow and you should have the earliest and the longest season on the block
!!
I'm not too sure about humidity - that just isn't something we have here during the growing season. There are lots of tomato development that have gone on in Florida. I like Indeterminants. It just seems like Determinants ripen about half of the crop and then some disease begins to weaken them before the other half comes off. Legend has been the only Determinant that I've grown that is able to stand up to the problems that doom the others.
Here are recommendations from Florida Extension.
I see that my favorite cherry, Sweet Chelsea, made their list. It has lots of that "resistance" that Rusty is looking for. A gardening friend grows Better Boy each and every year - and she grows a lot of them! I've often stood there looking at 'em and wondering if they don't do better than the larger hybrid I grow, Big Beef. I'm staying with BB but I can tell you, BB compares well to BB . . . huh?
A Texas heirloom saladette that can take the sun (we've got plenty of that during the summer
) is Porters. Thessaloniki is another heirloom that can get thru those hot (dry) months but it is just a little later than I'd like it to be for ripening. The last 2 summers have been unusually warm and the growing season has extended several weeks into fall so Thessa has done fine for me. Both of these are real mild, flavorwise.
In fact, that seems somewhat characteristic of early tomatoes. Maybe the plants need those long months to build up flavors in their fruit. An exceptionally early and flavorful heirloom is Bloody Butcher. It is already trying to bloom and set fruit 6 weeks after the seed goes in the soil in the greenhouse. However, when those dark red little guys ripen - zow! They are a big surprise.
Disease-resistance? The heirlooms pretty much don't have it. I understand that they were developed from only a very few tomato seeds taken from South America to Europe by the Conquistadors. More recently, the horticulturists have gone back to South America and gathered more varieties so as to develop modern hybrids with greater resistance to diseases.
Okay, I think I'll stop. Knowing so little about the southern garden experience makes me wonder if my 2 even amounts to that.
Steve
