Homegrown Tomatoes

SuperSweet 100 cherry tomatoes are fun to grow. And what’s really nice is that the cherry tomatoes they produce are nice and true to their name – sweet!

A Little About SuperSweet 100

This particular tomato is an improved variety over Sweet 100.  And supposedly a relative of Sweet Million.  It’s a hybrid tomato, so plants grown from the seeds won’t necessarily breed true.  Although I do believe I will try it anyway!  I’m curious to see what I’ll get next season.

The plant in the photo (and you can click the photo for a larger picture) has the cherry tomatoes just starting to turn red.  It will be interesting to look at when more of the fruits start ripening.

This particular plant is a survivor!  It’s made it through nights in the 30’s, being nibbled on by rabbits and being blown down in high winds.  It’s also not growing in the best part of the garden, so it’s got a lot going against it.  But it doesn’t seem to matter; it keeps putting out flowers, and nearly every blossom sets fruit.

SuperSweet 100 is an indeterminate plant with regular leaves.

Growing Cherry Tomatoes

One nice thing about the SuperSweet 100 is that it’s a cherry tomato of a perfect size for your mouth, at about 3/4″ to about 1″ in size.  I have mine growing in the ground, but I think they’d grow fine in a large container on the patio.  For a true bounty, I’d use a 10-gallon container.

You will need to stake this plant.  Mine is on a 5.5′ stake, which would probably also be OK for a container.  If it was in the good part of the garden, I’d rather use a 7′ stake.

SuperSweet 100 is a fantastic “garden candy” — great for popping in your mouth while working in the garden.  Actually, so far this season, none of the ripe fruits have made it to the table — I’ve munched them while out in the yard.  Soon enough, though, there will be plenty to eat outside and bring into the house for salads.

I’ve had a bit of a setback on The Great Tomato Experiement; I ran into a stretch of bad weather, followed by what I think was possibly an overdose of potassium.  As a result, all three plants are in sad, sad shape.  In fact, so sad that I am starting over!

What Will I Do Differently?

First, is that I have come across some nice 17-gallon containers, and I’ll use them instead of the 10-gallons I had been using.  I’ll sterilize and re-use the 10-gallons for some other tomatoes I have coming up for the summer (including two mystery tomatoes).

I’m going to add sphagnum peat moss and perlite to each of the containers.  I’ve found the original mixture I used compacted a bit too much for my liking.

I’m going to add the main dose of fertilizer to the soil before planting, then mix it in well.  I found with my raised bed tomatoes that when I did this, the plants grew more vigorously compared to the ones where I added the fertilizer as a side-dressing in the beginning.

Finally, I am using a different tomato variety.  For some reason, Pineapple doesn’t seem to like my growing conditions (I have a 4th plant that I am growing in the ground in another part of the garden).  It’s growing fairly well and putting forth tomatoes, but it’s not as vigorous as I would hope.

And the New Tomato Variety Is…

I have chosen Big Raspberry as the new tomato variety for The Great Tomato Experiment for the following reasons:

• Big Rasperry is a potato-leafed plant, and I find that tomato plants with potato leaves generally fare better in my garden.
• The tomatoes don’t generally  get large (maybe 9 ounces), so if I can get a tomato of this variety over 1 lb using the giant tomato techniques, it will be an accomplishment.
• The plant is productive, but not necessarily tall.  So if I can get the plant over 6 feet using the world record tomato techniques, it will be a visible  accomplishment.  Especially since I am growing it in a container!
• Finally, I’m choosing Big Raspberry because it’s an earlier tomato compared to Pineapple.  Since it’s already April, I need to play catch-up before the worst of the South Florida summer heat arrives.

If you’re still wanting to experiment along with me and can’t locate Big Raspberry, a good second choice might be Prudens Purple.  In fact, I would have used Pruden’s Purple as my first choice for this test if I hadn’t already had some growing in the garden.  My other choice would be Caspian Pink.

So, I planted my seeds today.  I planted 5 so I could choose the best 3 for the experiement.  The other two…well, I’m sure I can find someone in my neighborhood who might like a couple of plants!

So, while the first part of the experiment failed, I still have an opportunity to continue.  Onward!