I did not have as many tomatoes as I should have had but of the new ones that I planted, I especially liked the taste of Sungold and Black Cherry. The Sungold was more productive that the Black Cherry for me, but I had a TON of spring rain. I will certainly plant both of those again for the taste. Carol

Well, I must say that I am doing well with my GW clipping. Thanks once again, Dawn.
Sammy

Hi Sammy,

In a few days I'm going to post two separate tomato grow lists for 2009: (1) the seeds I'll start on Super Bowl Sunday if I think that our county's drought is going to continue; and (2) the seeds I'll start if I am expecting more normal rainfall. Although the lists will have some overlap, the "drought list" will have a lot more determinates and semi-determinates. The plants on the drought list also will feature a lot of really tough workhorse types that can produce in awful weather. The "good weather" list will have plants chosen more for disease-resistance and outstanding flavor.

Dawn

I only try a few new varieties, and that over time. I planted Souix in 2007 and again in 2008. The first year I didn't give it optimal conditions, putting it in very late. But this year I paid it more attention. It did great and we love the flavor! It's a great one for canning too. I've noted that it does much better with support than if left to sprawl.

Other than that, I did plant Roma VF this year, at my wife's request. I wouldn't recommend the variety for fresh eating. But it was an absolute workhorse for home canning. The medium sized plum tomatoes help to thicken up a sauce, since they are lower in moisture. I'm going to put in more of these in 2009.

Baker Family Heirloom: strong indeterminate, large/medium red round fruit, needs strong tall support. I use cages. This one continues to be our mainstay. Great for slicing and also very good for canning. This one produced all summer, right up to frost, with only about 6 weeks of "dead time" due to the mid-summer heat wave. I have to raise this one every year.

Will write more!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Dawn, do you have a green house or garage? Where do you start your plants? Unfortunately for our garden, the nicest room in our house is the recreation room we made out of our garage. Someday in the future we may try a type of green house, but not this year.

So, form Super Bowl Sunday until the plants are exposed to the light is how much time?

I am so naive, I cannot believe it. I keep telling myself that to learn things like this makes me a better teacher when my students ask me "obvious" questions about Spanish. Even though I feel a little stunned, I patiently and quietlly see to it that the question is answered in a way that it is a permanent answer rather than a "keep quiet" answer that I used to get.

Sammy

Sammy,

I don't have a greenhouse, although it is on my "wish list". Maybe one of these days.

I start my seeds in 72-cell flats on Super Bowl Sunday and grow the seedlings under lights for about 4 to 5 weeks before I start moving them outside for part of each day to harden off.

My light shelf is just one of those assemble-it-yourself plastic shelving units you buy at a place like Lowe's or Home Depot. I use ordinary shop light fixtures with plain old fluorescent lights.

I leave the lights on for 12 hours a day, more or less. The light fixtures are on a chain and the chain is attached to hooks that DH screwed into the bottom of each shelf. Using the chains, I can raise and lower the height of the lights as needed. This is very important as you want your light source as close to the plants as possible without actually touching the plants. Keeping the lights very close to the plants keeps the young plants from stretching and getting leggy.

When it is time to harden off the seedlings, I give them 1 hour of outside time the first day, 2 hours the second day, etc. I am careful to put them in a location that is completely sheltered from the wind because too much wind can cause windburn and windburn will kill the plants in the same way sunburn will. After a week of gradually lengthening exposure to outdoor conditions, the plants are hardened off and ready to go into the ground. Now comes the tricky part....

Just because the plants are ready to go into the ground does not mean the weather is going to cooperate with me and the calendar. So, sometimes I carry them outside every day for a couple of weeks before the weather is cooperative enough for me to plant them in the ground. And, if worse comes to worse and a major cold spell settles in for several consecutive days and the plants have to spend all those days inside, then they lost their "hardened off" status and I have to start all over with the hardening off process.

Down here in extreme south-central OK, with an average last freeze date of March 27th, I like to get my plants in the ground between March 5th and March 27th, and the earlier the better. Is it risky? Yes. Sometimes we have sleet or snow after I have planted and, in that case, I cover up the plants and hope for the best. The same is true of cold nights--early planting means you must be diligent about covering up the plants on any night that it might possibly go below 40 degrees. Frost, after all, can form at 38 or 39 degrees if all the other conditions are just right.

Planting early is the key to having plants in bloom and setting fruit before the temperatures get hot enough to impede fertilization.

Because I am a tomato maniac, I also plant 4 to 8 plants in containers in the late Feb. to earliest March timeframe, and carry them into the very well-insulated barn every night, and back outside every morning. Using this method and using tomato plants purchased in Dallas in 6" pots the minute they arrive at Lowe's or Home Depot, I generally have my first ripe tomato between April 20th and May 1st. This is possible only because the plants I buy are about 10"-15" tall and in bloom when I buy them. I cannot even explain how important these first early tomatoes are and how much we enjoy them. I could raise the early plants myself, but to get them to the size they are when I purchase them, I'd have to start the seed around Nov. 1st and the holidays are too busy as it is.

I think that tomato seedlings transplant best when they are 6 to 8 weeks old. Anything older than that and they suffer more transplant shock.

And, even though I advocate early planting, there is no point in doing it if the soil is still very cold because they won't grow in cold soil. Instead, they'll just sit and sulk until the ground warms up. In Feb. and Mar. I check the Mesonet soil temperature data daily and then, when it is in the right range in my county, I go out with my thermometer and check the soil in my beds to see if it is warm enough.

With early planting in the ground, if I am able to keep the plants from freezing to death or suffering freeze damage, even my in-the-ground plants will give me ripe tomatoes before Memorial Day, which is at least a month earlier than my gardening neighbors can even hope to have a ripe tomato. One of my "old farmer" neighbors tried for 7 or 8 years to "beat me" by having the first ripe tomato and finally decided it couldn't be done. LOL (I'm not competitive--I just want to have ripe tomatoes to eat as early as possible!) Some years, after we've eaten the first 3 or 4 earliest tomatoes, I'll give the next couple to my "old farmer" friend because I know he and his wife are as hungry for a garden-fresh tomato as we are, and they probably won't have ripe ones until mid- to late-June.

If I am very, very careful with my spring plantings and am able to carry the tomatoes deep into fall, we eat ripe tomatoes at our house from April through late November or early December, and sometimes into January if I have late keepers. In the winter months, we have "oven dried" tomatoes to toss into salads or to use in cooking, and some years I can and make sauce. I'd rather have the tomatoes fresh, but canned, dried or frozen ones are still better than the garbage that grocery stores call "tomatoes".

Right now, in fact, I have a big pot of tortilla soup on the stove and I can't wait to eat it. When I harvest onions in June, I chop up a ton of them and freeze them in zip-lock bags and I do the same with peppers. So, when it is time to cook, all I have to do is open up a few zip-lock bags and pour the stuff into the pot. Right now, I still have a lot of onions, tomatoes, peppers and corn in the freezer. By about Feb. or early March, though, I am counting the ziplock bags left in the freezers, and hoping we have enough home-grown stuff to last until we can harvest again.

Dawn

Okay, I'm back. Like I said, I plant the a selection of varieties from "a pool" that I maintain. I don't usually grow too many new ones. In the last 7 years I have probably only tried three new varieties, if I count Roma VF, which I hadn't grown since 1985.

Tuxhorn's Yellow & Red, which is very similar to Hawaiian Pineapple did great for me this year. I originally received this variety from Mrs. Ed Tuxhorn, of Warsaw, IN, back in 1985. I distributed seed through the Seed Savers Exchange before we moved to Mexico, for a good long while. Back in 2004 I requested seed from one of those SSE growers. I've been selecting it every year since, since the seed I received had been crossed and produced 25% off types. This was the first time that all my plants came true to type. Tuxhorn's Yellow & Red's plant handles heat very well. When it's extremely hot doesn't set fruit as well as Sioux, or even Baker Family Heirloom. But the plants just keep growing. Then, when temps moderate BOOM! It sets all sorts of fruit! The fruit, which is very large, is also very perishable. I have found that I have to pick it when it's just turning, and let it finish ripening indoors. Otherwise a lot of the tomatoes go bad on the vine. Oh, and one more observation: this is the best tomato I've tried, for fried green tomatoes. It has a lot more zip when green. Strong Indeterminate.

Polish Pastel, a bi or tri-color stuffing variety, from Australia, continues to win its place in our garden. It's a good producer, albeit late in the season. The fruit are mainly yellow with swirls of pink and red. This is an extremely dry fruit, which we mainly use for cooking. It also lasts a long time on the shelf. Indeterminate.

Sunray VF, did very well for us this year. I distributed quite a few plants to gardening friends. This yellow/orange, baseball sized fruited variety has a unique flavor. But I do believe the flavor is very much affected by conditions. I've tasted it when it's the best in the garden, and when it's the worst in the garden. Overall, however, it seems to receive comments about being quite sweet. Most folks either really like it or really don't like it. Strong determinate.

That's it, I think.

George

I thought I'd mention, that as of today, we still have fresh tomatoes on the counter, from this year's garden. They are Sunray VF, Polish Pastel and Roma VF. Roma seems to keep okay, not great, but the reason we have it at this late date is that our late planting had pretty much only green tomatoes when frost hit. I picked them green and they have been ripening all along. So Roma, though it may not be a long keeper, ripens very well from a stage of being very green.

Sunray VF & Polish Pastel, on the other hand, last a long time even after ripening.

George