There are the Cherokee Purple. They started making fruit about 2-3 weeks ago.

This one is the Tigerella plant. This one really looks like a bean stalk. It has blossoms and small fruit but is kind of scare looking. I'm constantly pulling tiny suckers off the bottom of it.

Very nice tomatoes! I think most regulars on this forum prefer not to remove suckers. If you can grow your tomatoes in a large cage or by using a trellis, you don't need to prune at all. The one time you might is if the tomato plants are on stakes and very close together. It's almost impossible to grow a large heirloom like Cherokee purple on a single bamboo stake without removing suckers. Is there some reason all your plants are so close together? I try to give my container tomatoes a lot of room and never let them touch each other. I have been growing tomatoes in 20 to 25 gallon fabric containers using Texas Tomato Cages, which are six feet tall and 20 inches wide. My Cherokee Purples, and most of the other large indeterminate plants I grow, reach the top of the cage and spill over 2-3 feet or more.

Hi Sun
First off I hope you are feeling well and I will keep you in y prayers. Secondly welcome to tomato gardening. I'm pretty new to it myself. I've been growing them for years but not reallyknowing what I was doing.. You know...Stick them in the ground. Feed them Miracle-Gro and hope for the best. It has only been this past year that I really started studying "the art of growing tomatoes"(LOL). Wow and have I learned a lot. Yes definitely go organic because chemical fertilizers such as MG ruin your soil plus you are eating chemicals. With regards to pruning I do prune and not just bottom suckers. Yes you are limiting your yield somewhat but the tomatoes that you do harvest will be larger. I not only pruned the suckers but I also pruned non-productive branches that were just taking away energy from the producing branches. One of the varieties that I planted was a German Johnson. I pruned the heck out of it and it still produced 66 large tomatoes with a total weight of 40lbs. That's pretty good in my book for one plant. As far as staking is concerned I went to Lowe's and purchased green iron fence poles ($6.00) plus tomato cages. I too have limited in ground space so I did containers. True you can grow indeterminants in pots (yours btw look on the small side) but if the pot isn't large enough you won't get many tomatoes and then you have to ask yourself was it worth it. Next year 2014 I'm going to attempt to grow mine from seed and start them indoors. There are sooo many varieties that are great for containers that you can only find the seeds for. If you are interested in this please let me know and I can give you some pointers on doing this. For example I'm going to germinate seeds from the 1st variety of tomato introduced here in America way back in 1870 called the Paragon and I'm going to do the same for a new variety introduced this year (2014) called the "Pearls of Wisdom". I'll have the old and the new! Anyway I wish you the best. To me your plants look healthy. Let me know what varieties you have planted. Take care and have fun. I find I am the happiest when I'm out in my garden and I can't wait to get started for 2014!

I would allow a few lower suckers and prune off any that fill in an area too much. It's more of a preference procedure than a set rule. My advice would be to not keep the soil moist consistently while they're doing their growth spurt. Allowing a short drying between waterings is fantastic for pushing those roots to push down and grow. A more extensive root system will pay some cool dividends later in fruit support. :)

Hi Ohio Fem! I don't have a particularly large amount of space that isn't shaded. We put the plastic shed against the house when we first moved in, back when the property was all lawn. The previous owner sub-divided and sold the lot behind us. I look at that 1/4 acre of sun-drenched bliss nearly every day and shake my head. I got the buckets from the bakery dept in the local grocery store just to try out container tomatoes. Then I bought 2x10x10 boards and that was how they fit. I didn't give it much thought at the time since the seedings were teeny when they went in. I've decided to move the shed. That will give me an area about 10' x 10' for growing my tomatoes. I have to empty it and find a few strong guys to move it. I have a huge live oak in the shade, so we'll put it under the tree. I bought 32 resin pots last week and a pallet full of soil stuff. The white buckets will go along the cyclone fence and I'll use them for plum tomatoes for sauce.

Thanks JoeOrganic. Prayers are always appreciated. I feel pretty good most days. My energy remains low so if I have an hour of steady work in the garden, it's a good day!

When I move the shed and switch to the new pots I was planning to build a different sort of trellis system. I don't know why, but when they built this house they put the septic and leeching field behind the house. OTOH, the front lawn is HUGE and would have been a great place for the septic business. I figure they had to have been on drugs or something. It's FL! Everyone puts a pool behind the house! You can't dig in the soil where the shed sits, so I was going to put 2x2x10 in buckets and fill them with cement. Then I was going to attach 10 feet of 4x4" wire fencing to each end and grow tomatoes on either side with 8 pots per row. I'll have 4 rows of tomatoes with an aisle in between. That should take up the entire amount of tomato growing real estate I'll have in that spot. Plums will stay in the white buckets along the sunny fence area around the yard.

THis is what I have so far:

Cherokee Purple
Floradade (developed specifically for FL by UF)
Black Cherry
Black Plum
Amish Paste
Tigerella
Green Zebra
San Marzano
Mortgage Lifter
Yellow Gooseberry

I bought more seeds to start inside in Dec for the second half of the FL growing season:

Sun Gold
Berkeley Tie Dye
Yellow Mortgage Lifter
Dr Wyche's Yellow
Pantano Romanesco
Paul Robeson
Black Krim
Large Barred Boar
Green Grape
Jersey Giants
Blue Berries
Purple Bumble Bee
Pink Bumble Bee

I've been told that cherry and smaller variety tomatoes do better in the FL heat than large tomatoes. I had planted Beefsteak and Brandywine in the ground last spring thinking they would be fine to grow in the summer. I don't think I had a single tomato more than 1' around. Almost all of them split wide open from the daily monsoon rains. I guess that's why the growing season here is from Sept - June. The heat and constant rain here kills everything. The only thing that grew all summer was Okra. I did get n enormous amount of Roma tomatoes but they were very small and thick skinned. Thank you so much for your words of advice.

I do have quite a few very small plants. When I started the seeds I had 100% germination, except for the yellow gooseberries. They didn't grow at all until I placed a few seeds on top of the soil in the bucket and kept them well watered. I had placed two plants in many of the buckets, thinking one might die. They didn't. After 4 weeks I pulled the second plant from each pot and put them in 1/2 gallon pots. The plants in the five gallon buckets started to take off and get bigger. The plants in the small pots will get transplanted into a bucket for the spring season. Hopefully they will have a head start over the seedlings I'll be starting soon. Like I've said, I really don't know what I'm doing. My Italian grandparents had a farm in upstate NY when was a kid and I spent every August there. We helped pick the tomatoes and spent days cooking, straining, making sauce and canning with grandma. My parents always had lots of tomatoes, swiss chard and peppers too. I can't call any of them for advice because they no longer walk among us, LOL.

So it sounds like I'm hearing that I should trim the suckers if I want to have a few large variety tomatoes and leave the cherry and plums alone so that I have more production with the small varieties?

This post was edited by sunqueen57 on Mon, Nov 18, 13 at 13:42

Praxxus - thank you so much! I did not know that! The irrigation system waters 2x a week at night and all of the other days I hand water at the crack of dawn when I take the dogs out. I will stop doing that!

Wow...Sunqueen I am envious. All of those different varieties has my head spinning. Thanks for the great post. I'll be lucky if I can put in 16. And your growing season Sept to June....lucky you..ours here in PA is from May thru Sept if we are lucky. This past year we had frost on May 24th and temps in the high 40's in August...Go figure...BUT I did get tomatoes and that is all that matters! HAGD!

Welcome- it's good to know you're doing well and good luck with your plants...they're doing great by the way!

Thank you surya!

Last week I dug out a 6x2 bed to plant artichokes inside my fenced yard. I laid the groundwork to create 2 beds that are 8x2 in front of the fence for sunchokes. I went out for about 15 minutes and checked all of the tomatoes for caterpillars after I spotted a few lacy leaves here and there. Looks like they be getting a spray with Bt tomorrow morning (tonight is an irrigation night). I couldn't make myself do another thing. Some days just squatting in the tomato plants for a little while is enough!

I didn't water yesterday following Praxxus' most welcome advice. My better half stopped outside to say so long before work and was shocked at how much the plants grew since late last week. I'd say they were going through a growth spurt, LOL. I went out with the dogs again at lunch time. It's sunny and 85 degrees currently. It broke my heart not to pick up the hose. The poor things are all droopy and begging for water. I'm going to try to see if getting watered twice a week with the automatic sprinkler system at night will hold them while they're growing like this. It makes sense! There is a giant spiderweb of roots visible all over the top of the soil. Even getting covered with compost every two weeks doesn't make a difference. I can infer that the roots are content to stay shallow and near the surface because they know they'll always be nice and moist. It's about time to make them work for it!

I can't believe I'm anthropomorphizing my tomato plants. Oy.

Although I would agree with Praxxus' watering advice for in-the-ground tomato plants, I disagree for plants in such small containers. With your weather and the rate of growth your plants are making now, I do think you will need to water every day. A mild droopiness from thirst is OK, but don't let them fully wilt. Also, I recommend against watering them with a sprinkler, especially at night. The best practice is to water only at the soil line early in the day. Wet leaves at night invite disease.

And, I don't think the roots of your plants are only in the top of the pot. I grew mine in 20 to 25-gallon pots, and roots showed at the top after about six weeks. At the end of the season, those pots were almost totally full of roots from side to side and top to bottom. This is a photo of my container tomatoes just eight weeks after I put the plants outside. I believe these are Brandywine and Mortgage Lifters. These plants are monsters, and they need a lot of water and food.

Nice plants.

Welcome to the forum, SunQueen. :)

Having grown tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets (which yours look to be), I second the advice to water regularly and not let them dry out. While it's true that the roots of in-the-ground tomatoes should be encouraged to go deep for water, plants in containers (especially smaller containers) don't have that option; there's simply no where else for the roots to go. If they are drooping and begging for water, water them! In full growth mode and 85 degree temps, you likely will have to water every day, if not morning and evening both once they really get going.

I'm not familiar with all of the varieties you are growing (but I am envious that you are trying so many; how fun!) but especially for the full sized indeterminate bushes, watch out for blossom end rot in the fruit, especially if the soil is allowed to dry out. When I grew in 5 gallon buckets, I found that I couldn't seem to keep the moisture in the soil consistent enough to prevent this in my larger plants. Dwarf plants and smaller determinates, no problem at all ... but my full size indeterminates in the containers developed BER on more than half the fruit (!), all season long, while the exact same variety in the ground next to it had very little. (I planted one of each variety I grew in the container and the ground, as an experiment to see how they'd fare.) Your experience may be totally different, but I just wanted to warn you, in case you have something similar happen.

Good luck!!

Kathy

Thank you for the welcome Kathy. I have been trying to keep them moist. I can't control the irrigation system that the previous owner put in to water the lawns without hiring someone to come in and redesign it. Like I said earlier, I had to stop working (I was a hospice social worker) so now we're on one income. I got the buckets free from the grocery store, bought some cheap tomato cages and read online how to build a cage from 6' bamboo canes. I think I may try some new way to support the tomatoes that doesn't cost a fortune. I've been accumulating resin pots from HD and will switch those out with the buckets. If the indeterminates in the buckets survive the 1st half of the growing season, I will leave them alone and just move them. When things get re-arranged, I may try to rig up some support poles and try the weave method. Been studying and watching YouTube videos by people who seem to know what they're talking about. I think that will work well for the cherry tomatoes. I'll have 7 or 8 variety of those growing. They will go in the new resin pots were the white buckets are now. I'm adding 1 or 2 more steps and will space them better.

I'd like to keep the plums (amish paste, san marzano, black plum and jersey giants in the white buckets and put them around the yard in sunny spots along the fence. I'll put some of the smaller/medium tomatoes there too like green zebras, tigerella, floradade and berkeley tie die. I started digging out shrubby things that are in a nice little 7' x 4 ' bed.right off my screen room that gets tons of sun. I'd like to get some large pots to grow the two types of mortgage liftes, black krim, large barred boar, and pantano romanesco. I was thinking I would get a few smart pots if money allows and maybe try the weave method there too. One thing for certain, I need to have MANY mobile supports. I was thinking of stuffing pressure treated 2"x 4"x 8' into large single chamber cement blocks and filling the hole in with cement. I can use them for all sorts of things like supports or structures to hang various things from. We have a few rare nights down into the 40s.. I have plastic sheets and 150 feet (total) of c-9 and c-7 christmas lights to wind between the plants before securing the cover. A woman farmer who works in the local HD says that method works great to get us through cold snaps. I have other fabrics to cut down on sun and rain, and for keeping the birds away when the fruit ripens. Last summer 1/2 of my take had beak holes and tomatoes that were chomped on. I found some neat 1/4 in mesh that will keep the birds away.

I'm watering daily. They grow best and look the healthiest when they have regular waterings. I made it through one day of withholding water and it made me too anxious. I use the hose directly into the bucket with a gentles spray right after dawn. I hand water with the can when I'm adding fish/kelp - now about once a week.I'm not sure how often I should foliar spray the leaves with the fish eumulsion. For now, I'm just watering with it. Once or twice a week I spray the leaves with 1 teaspoon of epsom salts mixed into a quart of water. Today they got a tablespoon of azomite and two tablespoon of Job's organic Heirloom tomato and Vegetable food.

So far, knock wood (slaps head), no BER. All of the blooms are healthy and productive. My patty pan squash, otoh, is producing a wonderful output of slimy orange flowers with no fruit.Oy. We will have days like this. I'll take a pic of the tomatoes a week later later if I have time, or tomorrow if the grey cloudiness doesn't let up.

Peace out!

Ah. I've written another dissertation.