I only had ONE PH plant survive out of about 14 that germinated from the pkt. of 30 seeds. But it is now happily growing nicely here in this very hot WV weather. No blossoms on it yet, but should be soon.
Keep posting and showing your pictures. I am anxious to see if PH lives up to it's billing,.

Something is nagging at the back of my mind. I stuck some plants into some

After seeing the tomatoes in Vince's most recent posting of June 1st, I kinda think that I am right about which plant was the Porterhouse. From the number of them and their appearance within the last couple of days, (getting more ribbed and some of them somewhat oblate) strenghtens my suspicions that

It looks like that they are going to be prolific and if they taste very good, it should be a winner.
Bill P.

Bill,

I can't tell from the picture if that is a porterhouse. But either way it looks like it is setting a ton of fruit. To me their most striking growth habit to this point is how compact the plant is.

Vince

I am impressed with how prolific it seems to be and the fast growth rate. Just look at the difference in the size of these little tomaotes in just

I am envious. My single Porterhouse Beefsteak is only now about a foot tall with one blossom.
I just took a couple pics of it, but have no idea how to attach them to this message.

Thumb, I will post a link below to a little page that I wrote on how to post a picture. Enlarge the print after the file is opened the same way described above, by moving the cursor over it and clicking on the little magnifying glass. You could print it out if you wish, which might make it easier to follow. Things always keep changing, and there may be some minor changes since I originally wrote that.
If you have further questions, do not hesitate to ask.
Bill P.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:42896}}

thanks gonefishin, but that is way too involved for my feeble brain. lol Guess I will just be reading and looking.
I apreciate the help though.

I also note the short, stocky growth that Bigdaddy mentioned with PH. I'd say that this might fit in the semi-determinate category. Because of the short internodal length and thicker stems suckering is somewhat difficult. I wish these plants would stretch out a bit.

Is anybody doing any blossom culling with this variety? I noticed that almost every cluster has one huge double blossom in each cluster. Vince, your fruits appear pretty normal in shape. Are those fruits arising from the double flowers?

We are noticing the same growth habit. I only have two plants of PH growing and plan on doing no pruning or blossom removing whatsoever as is my usual (lazy) custom. I will report back how my technique (lazy) works out. It will be interesting to me how others grow PH via pruning/blossom removal etc. If any one does that that is and reports on it. I only have the tiniest fruits setting now and none of the "doubles" have set yet as far as I can see. To compare, my Brandywine and Brandyboy plants are my tallest plants outside and they are about 40 to 50% taller than the PH. The PH are way bushier though. I would like to add that so far this season the weather has cooperated beautifully and this looks like a banner season here for me.

Did I mention I am a lazy gardener?

As a side note, besides composting, organic growing fits my lazy gardening method perfectly....:)

Time for a little update on the

Here are the two plants today, pretty sure these fruits will get no where near 2 lbs. The pics are a little misleading(the fruits look bigger than they are). These are really compact plants and neither the plant or the fruit has put on a tremendous amount of growth since the last post.
plant 1

The fruit in the first pic is really yellow like the pic shows. I felt it today to see if it was ripe, but it was hard as a rock.How are everyone elses PH doing.

Vince

Wow those look wonderful, are those organic?

Those are beauties Vince! :)

As of yesteday's stroll past the tomato patch...your plants are only about a week ahead of mine now Vince tomato size wise. Mine are catching up. Lots of small fruit. And in my last report I mentioned that my PH were smaller and bushier than most of my others like KB, Brandywine, BZ, Brandy Boy, Neves, etc. Well one of my two PH plants is zooming up now and is still extremely bushy! (I never prune) It is almost as tall as the aforementioned varieties! The other is still on the small size. Still a long way to go on these PH....

I agree that shown in your pics there isn't a 2+ pounder anywhere. So a disappointing early start.....

I will try and take pics this weekend...

Sprtsguy76,
These are organic in they have had no pesticides or fungicides added at all, but I did give them a dose of MG a while back.

This is the first ripe fruit, and one of the bigger ones on the two plants. I didn't weigh it but I would bet it is under a lb by an ounce or two. I am almost certain their will be no fruit 1 lb or more off of these plants. for comparison, this year I have picked several Cherokee purple and BW sudduth that were well over 1 lb. I am still waiting for omars lebanese to size up, but hopefully it will blow the porterhouse away with respect to size. On to flavor. A very good tasteing tomato, but not excellent. Full flavored, but on the sweet side. I have not detected even a hint of salty flavor in any of the Blacks (many say these type have a salty flavor)I have picked this year, but this Porterhouse definately had a slight unexpected salty taste. Makes a great BLT.

Vince

Vince, thank you for all your reporting. I'd say they were a big disappointment size-wise based on your experience. Feeble actually compared to the Burpee advertising of "2 to 4 pounders".

My plants are still a ways off regarding the first ripe. All fruits still small and at this stage impossible to predict ultimate size. My plants ARE getting taller though and maintaining bushiness. How tall are your plants now?

The plants are around 4-4.5 feet tall. The fruit kind of remind me of well shaped beefmaster hybrids I grew last year.

Vince

Vince

I have grown Beefmaster so I know what u describe. Sliced yours look a little 'Brandywine' to me. My plants are almost 4 foot tall now. If all they get is 4.5 that will be a puny, puny plant compared to most of my other indeterminates. In about 3 or 4 weeks I should have a mich better description to post here...

I have one green tomato on my single PH plant. It is obvious it is gonna be misshapen and less than one pound size when it ripens............sure not living up to the hype. It looks quite similar to Vince's pic of his ripe one that he posted above. I'm just happy now that only one plant survived out of the entire pkg. of seeds!

I read early on that people were having problems with germination so I bought plants instead. I recieved them the last week in May and they were ridiculously tiny. They are about a foot tall now with no buds in sight.The tags they sent with them says mature height 60" so I guess they stay on the small side.It is great that you are posting your experiences here, it's the only way to sort truth from fiction. This may not be a winner like Brandy Boy.: )

I did have germination problems, but in talking with a lady at Burpee regarding another matter and mentioned it, she voluntarily said that she was going to refund my money, and she did. The plants that did eventually come up were puny and scrawney, they were potted up to 16 Oz styrofoam cups in MG potting soil and grew to a respectable size.

They are no longer small or scrawney at all, and show no signs of being determinate or semi determinate as mentioned by some. They are setting more tomatoes than many other varieties in my garden, although none of them are yet large. If things keeps going the way that they are in my garden, and IF the taste is right up there on the upper part of my taste list, they look like they will be a winner for me and will have another trial next year. However those IFs still remain to be resolved.
Bill P.

I thought that perhaps a couple more pictures might help paint the picture. This Porterhouse is about {{gwi:80903}} although it is not in an ideal location, only getting high shade after about 9 A.M. and full sun only from about 1:00 P. M. on. I don't think that all the blooms show up that much in the picture, but the tomatoes get progressively larger going down the plant as they are older, on down to this

Thanks for the recent pictures Bill. I can only hope mine will grow up to that someday. It will be interesting to see how these perform in different zones. Please keep posting!!

These are not bad tomatoes at all. None of mine, even the new fruit set will ever make it to 2 lbs. PH is kind of like Cherokee purple, with repect to growth habit, but with much larger leaves. The view I am getting now is reminiscent of pictures I have seen of champion. Nice SMALL plant with lots of good sized oblate toms. Can't complain for a hybrid red(BTW good disease tolerance).

Vince

Bill, thank you for the pictures. My PH are way bushier than your picture. My plants are in Texas cages and maybe three times bushier than your plants. Mine are about 4.5 feet tall now. I have good fruit set but not great. Green tomatoes still getting bigger so no report regarding final size/taste from me yet. I just thought it odd your plant looked so wispy compared to what I have...

Ok, I am trying to post pics and have this new camera I'm not good with but here goes.

First pic is of two PH plants growing in Texas cages. They are extremely bushy and the fruit are all hidden deep within the foliage canopy. http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=156021587/PictureID=2993665711/a=6784689_6784689/t_=6784689

Second pic is a shot of a typical cluster: http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=156021587/PictureID=2993665710/a=6784689_6784689/t_=6784689

All the fruit are about this size and I am getting good production. Both plants are now over the Texas cages and Texas cages are 6 feet tall. These PH have caught up to my other tall indeterminates.

OK, it looks like I don't know how to post the pics directly on this forum. I can only post the URL. Sorry. If anyone can help me learn how to post pics directly I would appreciate it. I have spent an hour searchin GW for instructions but GW is more interested in me seeing the same movie commercial than in teaching how to load pics to the website...:(

I know what you mean. I gave up trying to learn how to post pics. in here. It is mid-2007 now and everyone else has a program for posting pics by just browsing and selecting a pic and then dragging and dropping it to get it posted. GW is still in the 1980's on that score, unfortunately. I imagine numerous folks in here have also given up trying to post pics. Darn shame, but apparently the powers to be in GW don't care to join the 21st century.

Here and here. Howzat ?

I don't know how to break this down enough to be accurate without it trying to execute but I will try it this way to see if this will work.
Start with Then you put the http link that you had above right here.
Then follow that with ">
followed immediately with the description, title or words that you want the link to the picture known by.
That is immediately followed by another to close the code.
There are no other spaces other than the one near the first after the first a and there are no caps.

You may or may not be able to follow those simple instructions print them out then just follow it one piece at a time. If I type it in the way it is uspposed to be, it tries to execute and you do not see the code.

What that does is put a link in the body of the text, like I did above instead of displaying a picture. I think in many cases that is better any way because while nice, a picture or a bunch of pictures will take up a lot of room and cause very slow loading for those on dial up. Or, a big picture will cause untold aggravation for many from people having to scroll back and fourth horizontally to try to read the text. I really think that there are probably many like I am, just prefer to skip through or completely skip those.
Good luck, a little bit of concentration, patience and trying and you will soon be linking your pictures.

Just putting the pictures in is actually even easier, you just copy the second (TAG) line under the picture in photobucket (I do not know anything about snapfish) and paste it where you want the picture to display. It will just show up as text until you click on preview picture and then it will be there in all it's glory, if you like the results, click on submit.
Bill P.

Thank u Bill. I tried to no avail. Anyway, thanx for doing it for me in your post. You made it work. I didn't....:(

And I agree with the guy behind me who said it is a silly way to add pics compared to most places.

I might try again later.

Back to Porterhouse. Like I mentioned, this BUSHY plant has really caught up to my other indeterminates height wise. It has way to many toms on a cluster to produce really big ones like a Big Zac. But we shall see. The jury is still out.

Maybe you're trying to link to a slideshow or display a page of pics (even if there's only one pic on that page). GW only displays pics that are single images. Things like needing to register at the place where you uploaded the picture or if we have to enter a password, it will not work.

-Ed

I should have a taste of Porterhouse before long. These in containers are beginning to .

For some reason I have had more trouble with stinkbugs and other insects on this bunch of tomato plants than all the other ones in the garden combined. Perhaps it is that they are too close together.
Bill P.

Got nothing better to do so trying again:

{{gwi:1502}}

{{gwi:1501}}

Cool, looks like it works good from Flickr.

Update:

Plants now over 6 feet tall. Some big tomatoes are forming. Nothing HUGE yet so far. Seems to me to have too many fruit in a cluster to be capable of really large tomatoes but a little more time will tell...

I picked the today. If I can resist for a day or two, I will let it ripen a little more on the counter inside, but am eager to see what it tastes like. It was one of those in the container that the bugs plagued more than others.

I have some on other plants that are already bigger, and show no sign yet of beginning to turn color.

I will post again after I know about the taste.
Bill P.

Bill nice looking tomato. Mine are just setting so will be patiently waiting to hear your opinion on taste. My Mr. Bruno's are still looking nice. In 30-45 days will be able to tell a lot more here. Will be eating Mr Bruno's by then.I'm keeping better records this year so should be able to do a fair comparison. Jay

It is clear now that my two porterhouse tomato plants are not the same cultivar. One is oblate and very ribbed and the other is rounded and of a uniform shape. Either this cross is unstable, or I have a F1 plant and one of the uncrossed parent seed. BTW both have put out fruit above a pound now, but no where near 2 lbs.

Vince

My plants are somewhat different but not of a different variety I believe. In my case I think that the difference comes from one being in a half barrel and the rest being in the ground, some more shaded than others.

I think that I am going to have to give up trying to evaluate the taste of any of my tomatoes until it quits raining (if it ever does here) and dries up some along with warmer weather. If we suddenly get those 105+ temps that some are getting across the nation that will probably do mine in. They will be parboiled on the vine.

I did this morning and was disappointed with how bland it tasted. If not so much water, I think that it would probably be pretty good, but right now it would be a stretch to rate it as a 7 on my scale of 1 to 10. I would surely hope that the flavor improves when the weather does.

If so, I think that it will at least deserve another trial next year if the seeds are available. It does seem to be very productive with good sized tomatoes. In you can only see the two bottom clusters of tomatoes, there are several more not shown. The one that can be seen at the bottom is . Those are six inch squares in that CRW cage.

Perhaps some of you that are not in the rain forest climate will have a more fair opinion of the taste.
Bill P.

Bill P, sorry you are having that deluge.

My two PH plants are growing nicely. Good production and good size on the toms. But like Vince's plants I don't see any future two plus pounders on them. So the jury is still out here but PH thus far isn't living up to it's hype based on early reports on this thread.

Here's a pic of 12 tomato plants growing in Texas cages in my "long bed". All plants are now over the top of the six foot tall cages. The two plants on the end (opposite the deck umbrella) are PH. The flowers are way past their prime Trumpet Lilies. Pic taken 7/3/07:

Good news,I found one one the vine probably around 2 lbs on the ribbed plant. So it is about tied right now for top size with omars lebanese, BW sudduth, and perrsimon.

Vince

Posting pics - what I learned from another poster.
Download to Photobucket, yes, you have to make an account, but it's really easy. Then follow these easy steps. If I can do it, so can you.
Once your pics are on photobucket, follow these easy steps...

-put a tickmark in the little empty box under your thumbnail image...
-then scroll down to the bottom of the page and on the lower righthand side, click on the words
"generate HTML and IMG code".....
a new page pops up....
-for Garden Web, click on the code under the heading
'HTML clickable thumbnails for Ebay, Livejournal, MySpace, etc. - recommended '[the first one in that list]....
-copy and paste that code into your post where you wish you image to show up....

This shows your smaller image in your post but when the members click on it, the larger size opens in another browser page for them to view it and doesn't widen your actual post or slow the loading of the post down for members who are on dial up servers. Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Vince

Same here. I see a couple now approaching 2 pounds and that ain't bad since I don't prune. They are still green but I think I see a slight inclination to start turning color this morning. My plants are both well over 7 feet tall now and extremely bushy. Not the tallest plants here but not the shortest either anymore.

I'm using webshots.com and they provide a link that you just copy and paste into the message. This is what it looks like:

a href="http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2274373840039792618hkYnTR">img src="http://thumb18.webshots.net/t/64/464/3/73/84/2274373840039792618hkYnTR_th.jpg"; alt="pics3.27.05 002">

In the above I removed the "You also might want to see if snapfish links to the picture you want to post. That is how webshots does it.

Bill S

I have some monster sized tomatoes on PH now. I'll try and get a pic or two tomorrow. I bet a few over two pounds. These guyz are giving Big Zac a good run for the money but then I have yet to taste a PH. But I finally see a blush on a few so in a few days I'll be reporting my taste report...:)

Here

And after going to that trouble, here is what I got.

We're sorry...
...due to a high volume of page requests, this Webshots page is not available right now.

If you are looking for a photo, it is possible that the photo has moved or no longer exists.

If you are in the process of creating an album, please be assured that your data has been sent to our site. You may try refreshing the browser window or reloading the page in a few moments.

I will have my first PH taste in two days. I will take pics of just the fruit. The ones I took on the plant the other day aren't very good.

These PH plants are loaded up with HUGE fruit! Most over a pound and some over two pounds. Not the 2 to 4 pounders promised in the Burpee catalog but then I don't prune so these are huge to me. They are right up there with Big Zac regarding size.

Now, how will they taste? I'll know Tuesday...

I've been gone on vacation for 3 weeks and came back to this one:

1.5lb Porterhouse

1.5 lbs. Been waiting a few days to try it maybe tonight.

not very pretty tomato is it kingfarm. I have just one vine of PH. It has several tomatoes on it, with most of them being stitched boat shaped ones. The first one that set on is now ripe, and looks to be a one pounder. Am gonna give it another couple of days to develop maximum flavor before I pick and eat it though.
Shame Burpee's exaggerateed PH shape and size though.
Would like to post a pic in here, but am not going to mess with the hassle.....too hard for my feeble mind. If this site can't make it easy to post pics.......the heck with it.

I have a couple more that are about ready but they don't look that great. This was the best looking one. The plants weren't taken care of that well while I was gone so I'm curious if any new ones will shape better.

Of course if it tastes great I don't care what it looks like ;)

OK, it's not Brandywine but it's good. I ate my first one today.Looks like they go 1 to 2 pounds with a few slightly over 2. Not the 2 to 4 as Burpee promised. They are big beefstakes and some gravy boat shaped. I don't prune so I am not disappointed in their size. PH makes consistently large tomatoes that taste good so I am happy with it. My plants are very bushy and about 7.5' tall now. Production is very good for such large fruit. I will take pics of individual toms in a couple days when they are totally ripe. The one I just ate was a "little" guy about 10 ounces which is about as little as you can find one on the plant. I am happy with PH so far this season.

Here's a pic of 2 PH's. One is 1.75 lbs. and the other 1.90. They are all coming in between 1 and 2 pounds with the average about 1.5 pounds. A couple are slightly over 2 pounds. A couple are also slightly under a pound. I never prune so this is a big tomato for me!

They give Big Zac a run for the money size and production wise. Both EXCELLENT! BZ has an edge in taste. I will continue growing both. It is very rare to get so many HUGE tomatoes from a single plant.