Homegrown Tomatoes

Posts Tagged ‘Celebrity’

I talked about hybrid tomatoes in part 1 of this post.  Now that we’ve discussed the cherry varieties, let’s talk about how the slicer-size hybrids are doing in the garden.

Hybrid Tomatoes in the Garden

Just as a review, I have the following slicer-sized hybrid tomato plants in the garden:

• Celebrity Bush (determinate slicer)
• Fabulous (determinate slicer)
• Goliath Bush (determinate slicer)
• Park’s Whopper (indeterminate slicer)

All these plants have there own merits, but so far, Fabulous has been, well, fabulous!  It’s by far the most vigorous, and has a nice, healthy growth, and regular leaves.  I have it growing in a 5-gallon container, and it behaves as if it were in the ground – very lush and full of blossoms.

There aren’t any ripe tomatoes yet on Fabulous (darn!), but I’m looking forward to them.  If they taste even half as good as the plant currently looks, it’s earned a continued spot in my garden.

And how have the others fared?

Bush Goliath has been the most prolific to date, and the tomatoes from one of the plants has been fairly good; the other one’s taste has been forgettable.  Both plants currently have ripening tomatoes, so we’ll see how this batch does.  Bush Goliath is a fairly small plant in my garden, at just 16 inches tall, with rugose leaves.

Celebrity Bush has had a hard time with the cold weather this year.  While it’s normally quite productive, this season’s chillier-than-usual winter has taken its toll.  It has come back some, now that the warm weather is here to stay.  I’ll keep an eye on it.  This plant is about 12 inches tall at the moment, and has rugose leaves.

Park’s Whopper currently has the best tasting fruit of the group.  The winter has been hard on it as well, but it’s coming back and producing some nice tomatoes.  Had a great one on a sandwich yesterday!  The plant is now at 12 inches tall (the February frost nearly did the plant in totally), and has regular leaves.

I went out a little while ago to check on the tomato plants. The weather has been quite unsettled lately, so I wanted to check and make sure everyone was doing OK.

I brought my camera out with me, and I shot a few pictures of a few of my tomatoes-to-be. Some are (I think) getting ready to ripen, others are “newborn”. Normally I would have had something ready to eat by now, but we’ve had a colder than normal winter so far. And when the weather is cooler, the slower the tomatoes mature.

Celebrity is the first of the tomatoes I got my photo op with. It’s actually Bush Celebrity, but has been acting a little more like an indeterminate of late; guess it’s due to the weather. The tomato in the photo gets a bit larger each day, and I know one day it will be ready to pluck. Nice shape, though, and blemish-free.

Next up is Husky Red Cherry. The two tomatoes in the photo have looked like this for the last month now; no size change. It’s only been in the last day or two that I think the color has barely started to change — it’s not quite so green as it had been. Lots of tiny new cherry tomatoes, but these two are the closest to being grown. If they don’t do anything soon, I may consider a doll-sized green tomato pie…

Patio has finally quit growing (the tomato that is) and so I’m waiting for it to start changing colors. Then again, it may (again) just be the weather. This particular plant has been less than generous with its flowers and fruits, although I am seeing a bunch of new flowers just starting to be formed.

The last for the day is the newborn Tigerella tomato. Just about the size of a blueberry, it’s the first one on this heirloom tomato plant. Lots more blooms, though, so hopefully production will start ramping up.

Like I said, with the weather unsettled, the tomatoes aren’t at their best. I’ve even had to bring in most of the seedlings that I had been hardening off, to wait for better weather. Well, growing tomatoes in South Florida in the winter isn’t a whole lot different from growing in the spring further north. At least, not this year.