Homegrown Tomatoes

Posts Tagged ‘how to grow tomatoes’

The heirlooms in the garden are growing strong!  With 2 days of gentle rain, the plants are rocketing skyward.  Who said hybrids were the only ones to grow fast?

I mentioned in my post for the last heirloom tomato report that I’d post some photos.  I just walked out to the garden, camera in hand, so here they are!

How Fast Have They Grown?

On this past Sunday (March 15th), I decided that I’d go around with my Sharpie permanent marker and mark how high the plants were.  That way, by Sunday the 22nd, I could tell how fast they had grown. 

I decided to wander out with my camera today and Brandywine has declared its intentions to make a run to the top of the 6-foor pole.   See the red arrow?  That’s pointing to where I marked its height on Sunday.  And blossoms?  The photo doesn’t show it, but there are lots and lots on the plant.

But Kellogg’s Breakfast isn’t far behind!  Nor are my Pinapple tomatoes, for The Great Tomato Experiment.

Truth be told, every tomato plant is showing marked growth since Sunday.  The plants that have gained the least height are my Loxahatchee plants.  On the other hand, they have apparently decided that large, dark green leaves and flower buds are more important, and they are truly lovely plants.

Here’s a photo showing Loxahatchee (foreground) and Kellogg’s Breakfast (background).  And speaking of Kellogg’s Breakfast, it’s also gotten a lot wider, as well as a fair amount taller.

(By the way, you can click on the photos to see a larger image.)

Black Sea Man and Druzba have grown, but not quite as spectacularly.  Then again, they are both much younger plants, being in the main garden for not even 2 weeks yet.  Actually, I kind of take that back — Black Sea Man has grown some huge, long leaves, and gotten quite wide.  It’s just only grown an inch taller in height (which isn’t as exciting as Brandywine growing 5 inches).

The others are also doing well; White Bush is blossoming, and I can’t wait to see the ripe tomatoes on it (getting ahead of myself, though).  Eva Purple Ball and Pruden’s Purple are about a week away from being transplanted into their final spots.

Oh, you may be wondering who won the blossom contest (i.e. which heirloom had the first open blossoms).  The winner was…Pineapple, closely followed by White Bush.  Brandywine followed and all the older plants (those that have been in the ground for at least 3 weeks) all have buds.

So that’s it for today.  And if you’re womdering if I grow any hybrids, the answer is yes…and those photos are reports are coming up shortly!

Tomato varieties for the Southeastern USA are pretty wide-open for most locations, but there are certain considerations.  I thought I’d start some posts about tomato varieties well-suited for different locations around the USA.  And this, my first post, is on the Southeastern USA.

What is the South East?

Well, here are the boundaries I’m considering the Southeast:

• South of Maryland on the eastern seaboard
• East of Texas
• South of Kentucky in the middle part of the USA.
• I’ll include Arkansas, but exclude Missouri.

So now that we know the boundaries, what tomato varieties are good for this area?  Let’s consider the two things common to Summer in most of these locations.

Heat.  Humidity.

While a little of both are great for growing tomatoes, too much of a good thing spells bad news for your eventual fruits.  So what kind of problems do the heat and humidity cause in the Southeastern USA?

Yikes!  There’s a Fungus Among Us!

Unfortunately, fungus thrives in humid locations without good air circulation.  Diseases related to fungal infections include alternaria, blights, gray leaf spot, fusarium wilt, damping off, verticillium wilt, mold….you get the idea.

If you are finding a lot of fungal infections in your plants, you’ll want to at least think about some hybrid tomato varieties that are more resistant to these problems.  You’ll recognize them by the letters after the tomato name; they include:

• A – alternaria
• F – fusarium wilt strain I
• FF – fusarium wilt strain I & II
• V – verticillium wilt

So for example, if you look at the description for the tomato variety called Big Beef, you’ll see the letters VF1F2TNA, which means the tomato is resistant to alternaria, both strain 1 and 2 of fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, tobacco mosaic virus (the “T”) and nematodes (the “N”).

Other hybrid tomato varieties with good fungal resistance include:

• Applause (ASCF1F2StV)
• Celebrity (VF1F2NTASt)  (one of my favorite hybrids)
• Country Taste (F1F2TV)
• Fabulous (VF1F2TASt)
• Razzleberry (VF1F2)

So this gives you an idea of what to look at when evaluating one of the tomato hybrids. 

Other Tomato Diseases

Unfortunately, fungual diseases aren’t the only ones to threaten our homegrown tomatoes.  We also have to worry about bacterial diseases (bacterial speck, spot, wilk, canker, fruit rot, etc.).  And if that wasn’t bad enough, we have nematodes and viral diseases.  It’s a wonder that we have any tomatoes at all!

The chances of bacterial diseases can be greatly reduced by careful mulching, as it’s the bacteria in the soil that causes problems.  Nematodes…well, if you have them in the soil, the best thoughts would be to either plant your tomatoes in containers (using potting soil) and/or plant hybrids that are resistant to nematodes.  Viral diseases can also be present – yikes!

(You may want to read the post on tomato diseases to become more familiar with these banes to growing tomatoes.)

What About Heirloom Tomatoes?

Sure, you can grow heirlooms!  Just keep in mind that because mosty don’t have extra resistance, you’ll need to be more on the lookout for any problems.  So that means make sure your plants have plenty of air circulation (without being too windy), mulch the soil and consider growing in containers if you have a problem with nematodes.

Where I live in South Florida, I try to grow most of my heirloom tomatoes on the “shoulders” of the season.  In other words, I do my best to avoid having the fruit trying to set between mid-July and mid-August, when it’s the hottest.  This may mean starting the seeds earlier than normal so I can get the seedling plants outside at the first possible moment.

However, if you live further north where freezes are common, you don’t want to set out your tomato seedlings/plants until a week after the last frost date for your area. So for example, if the average last frost date for your area is April 5th, you’d want to start putting out your seedlings/plants no earlier than April 12th.

And the Tomato Varieties Are…

Here are some that I like for a hot and humid climate. One thing to keep in mind is that most tomatoes don’t pollinate well at temperatures above 90 degrees, so you want to do your best to try and have their pollination mostly finished by that time.

All that being said, here are some tomatoes I like for the Southeast.  Keep in mind this is not all the tomatoes suitable for the Southeast; just a few of my particular top picks.

• Determinates: Celebrity, Razzleberry, Applause, Early Girl
• Indeterminate Hybrids: Park’s Whopper, Better Boy, Supersweet 100, Beefmaster
• Indeterminate Heirlooms: Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Pineapple, Mortgage Lifter