Too early to plant tomatoes?

[HmooseK]

I agree HmooseK, that's what I keep telling people -
go to Texas, and take somebody with you! Haha

In all seriousness, growing tomatoes here is sort of gamble. If you put them out too early and you get a cool spell, they don't grow as well as if you had waited. You wait too long and it gets too hot to set blooms till fall. Still, I enjoy growing them. I don't grow too many run of the mill types as a rule. Mine are generally family heirlooms or something someone has bred and passed on to me. This year, I'm growing a number of Dwarf tomatoes for a project on another forum.

I grow for the enjoyment of saving seeds. I'm not really what you would call a mater eater.

 

[HmooseK]

@thistlebloom

This is Dwarf Striped Rumplestiltskin. It seems happy between the carrots & Komatsuma greens.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

I went to the Farmer's Market this morning. It was a little breezy, slightly cool and I watched the tomatoes and peppers drooping from it. I did not buy anything. One table did have tomatoes and things standing up pretty good to the weather. My tomatoes are still in the greenhouse, except 2 I bought a week ago from a garden place, which have been in the shade and filtered sun. I am leaving them outside tonight.

 

[digitS']

@HmooseK , I think that I eat too many seeds, in the form of milled flour.

Leafy greens make up much of my diet. In a small way, I try every year to make them a more important part. (Hey! I've grown Komatsuna. Almost a bok choy - I don't think anything is as quick in the Spring.)

Fruit is ambrosia. I'm a little too far north to grow all the varieties of melon that I'd like to grow but I have a few. Tomatoes, especially cherry, are right up there in the cornucopia of myth .

I save some seed, @HmooseK . My grandmother saved seed for what she called the peddler's tomato. Dad's youngest brother gave me some of the seed. After a few years, a thought I found a match for that variety in a catalog description. I sent away for the seed.

The first year that I grew Porter side by side with Grandma's tomato, I thought that there was a difference between the foliage. The fruit was identical. The second year, I decided that they were one and the same!

Before I told Uncle Marvin what I had learned, I asked him if he wanted to know. "No!" Olde guys ...

It makes sense that they are the same. Grandma was born in northern Texas. Porter was from the Porter Seed Company in Stephenville Texas.

Uncle Marvin said she began saving that seed during the Depression. By then, she was in New Mexico but peddlers get around ...

Stephen

 

[HmooseK]

@digitS'

How cool is that! I first planted Porter back around 74 or 75. My uncle always had a huge garden and he gave me a porter and a red pear plant to take care of. Back then, Channel 10 out of Waco had a noon Ag show with a host named Johnny Watkins. My Uncle was a woodworker and Johnny came out one Saturday to interview him for his show. He also visited and walked with us through the garden and told me about a method of putting a tin can with holes punched in it out beside our tomatoes, so the fertilizer would get into the ground quicker. To this day, I still plant at least one tomato that way. I don't think it helps, but it doesn't hurt either.

I wouldn't mind swapping seeds with ya! I got a gallon jug full of different types of maters.


Here is a run of the mill Tomato called Lithuanian. It's a potato leaf plant. I love potato leaf plants here in Texas cause they help protect from the sun.

 

[HmooseK]

@digitS'

Oh I also meant to mention to you to please maintain your Granny's seed. A lot of the crap that is sold as Porter's these days isn't the original Porter's.

 

[so lucky]

@HmooseK, what do you do with the can sitting beside the tomato plant? Fill it with water? or fertilizer? or...?

 

[HmooseK]

@HmooseK, what do you do with the can sitting beside the tomato plant? Fill it with water? or fertilizer? or...?

Yes, it's used as both a place to water and also if you need to side dress. I don't go to the trouble to do all my tomatoes that way, but it's more of a tradition because of being a youngster back then and learning something new from someone I watched on TV and got to meet.

 

[digitS']

Yeah, there is a Porter "Improved."

Sure. I had her tomato in my garden ... before we moved to this home in '95 and grow it every year. Uncle Marvin is gone now. His granddaughter told me that her mother grows that tomato.

I think as much about him as her when I sow the seeds. Also, I'm pleased how true they are. The flowers must self-pollinate in a very controlled way.

I'm not dogmatic about it or most any variety. However, I am sentimental. Those 2 tendencies are probably too strongly related to pretend otherwise . Okay, Marvin was sentimental and dogmatic. Ha! Ya know, you can get a little competitive with younger uncles ...

Anyway, it's like I was gifted with a couple of tomato varieties that turned out to not be what they were supposed to be. A cross in the gardeners' tomato patch might be suspected. They really have more importance to me than if they had been exactly what others elsewhere are growing. Hey, I've got something unique!

Since I like tomatoes, it's not very likely that I would be disappointed. Now, I'm stuck with these things! Neither of my kids have shown much interest in gardening. I'm not sure how much interest they might have in family heirlooms. Hard to say, my son recently showed up with one of my jackets. He had picked it up at my father's home. It was a jacket that I wore when I was 4 years old!!!! At 4, I might have been interested in gardens but I'd never even seen a television.

Steve

 

[HmooseK]

@digitS'

I so wished I would have known about saving seed back then. All my family gardened, but they just went down to the feed store and bought seeds every year. I didn't start collecting & saving seed until the early part of this century.