I've had some cold temps already for our area and the hoophouse has paid off.

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Jay, it's good to hear from you again. I've been following your progress with interest. The tomatoes look great. When you post again, can we have some pics of the hoophouse, inside and out? I know you must be inspiring many gardeners to push their gardening seasons, whether with tomatoes or other crops. Robert

Hi,

Here are a couple of photos of the hoophouse:

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Jay

brazosvalleygardener,
I almost have to go to the doctor's office to get some medicine for anxiety! Finally you are back, so do your tomato pictures. Love all of them. My tomatoes are now double quater size. Do you open up your hoop house when it is 70F outside?
New gardener

Wow, I can almost smell that greenhouse smell...and stinky tomato vines...mmmmmmm....

Beautiful! Good to the updates!

Thanks!

Tom

New Gardener, I leave the door open when temps are in the seventies and also slide open a couple of the top panels for ventilation.

Okay folks, here are some additional comments:
Caspian Pink has 22 fruit currently.
Carbon has 19.
Brandywine and Carbon are both almost 7' tall plants.
Chianti Rose is the least productive plant with only two.
Big Zac has produced the largest fruit but none have ripened yet.
Cherokee Chocolate has the highest fruit production thus far.
Burpee's Golden Dwarf Champion is a very vigorous plant but still waiting on fruit to ripen.
Bush Goliath is now ripening fruit.
I need to prove this out but Aunt Ruby's German Green appears to have a natural resistance to root knot nematodes.
I've got a few fruit on Siberia but it is suffering from RKN. I've left it in the ground to see if I can get a couple of fruit to ripen.
Marianna's Peace has been disappointing. Only a couple of fruit. It did catch up with most of the other plants but still, it's not the plant that it should be.
New Big Dwarf has some fruit on the vine and is a very healthy plant but nothing ripening yet.

Slices of Clear Early Pink
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Caspian Pink
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Jay

Brazo-
Nifty work...with the toms and the updates!!

How do they taste? I've heard cooler weather makes them taste not as good as during the summer and have noticed that with my toms....

Thanks!

Hi,

I've always observed that green (unripened) fruit that experiance low temperatures ripen with their full tomato flavor and tomatoes that have already ripened and are still on the vine do lose their flavor to some degree. So far this fall, I've only sampled two varieties.....JD's Special Pink is delicious and Extreme Bush was good.

Jay

Hi Jay, thanks for the great pictures. We just had our first freeze a few days ago and I had hundreds of green tomatoes on the vines. Same with peppers. I gathered most but was surprised at how many I missed too. The freeze really knocks them down in just a couple of days. You are quite a bit south of me, but I am sure that those great hoop houses will come in handy.

Sorry to see about the problems with root knot nematodes. One plant that I pulled showed some evidence of something similar. In researching it, I see where it says that it can be introduced to a garden on the roots of a plant that you buy, but other than that I do nto know how they would have got here.

The article also said that to eradicate the problem one should grow and turn under green manure crops (I do) and also add lots of compost and other materials to your soil (I also do that). I have a big pile (for me est. 3 cubic yards) of good home made compost piled in the middle of the garden waiting to be spread when I mulch and mow my greens after the first of the year, plus a great deal of shredded oak leaves to apply before turning it all under.

I am hoping that will head off any further problems with the RKN. I have not seen any above ground, visible evidence of problems from it. How did you identify the plants that had it? I am looking forward to starting those seed for my spring garden in late January to early February.
Best regards.
Bill

All my three plants were killed this past Saturday because my mini hoop house cover was blowed away. So many green tomatoes were on them. Now I can just watch brazosvalleygardener's plant and harvet, drooling.

New gardener

Hi Bill, I pulled a few other plants and noted that the RKN were not nearly as bad as I had observed on the first two plants earlier in the fall season. I've gardened at this location for several years and never observed a single gall on any of the roots of my tomato plants - I'm very religious about examining the roots of each plant when they are pulled up at the end of the season as well as splitting the main growing stem in half. Anyway, I had noticed two plants that were way beind the other determinate varieties and decided to sacrifice them to see if anything was going on below ground and there was the calling card of RKN....huge galls and extremely swollen roots. Since I have plenty of space to grow tomatoes, I'm not going to grow in this section of the garden next year and will till, solarize and then follow up with a green manure crop to help reduce the RKN population in that area. Some varieties I grew this fall didn't not seem to be affected at all by the RKN...there were galls on the roots of those varieties but the plants fully matured.

newgardener, I'm right there with ya. My plants took a major hit by the freezes this past weekend. I pulled the majority of them and harvested the green fruit. I still have a few plants but am about ready to pull them in order to prepare for next spring.

Be back in a bit.

Jay

Jay,
I am so sorry to hear that your plants got hit too even you have a really nice greenhouse. I can see the feeling of loss. But still you are my inspiration of growing tomatos. Very helpful, informative, educational and friendly of all you posts and beautiful pictures. Thank you. I harvest 4 softball sized tomatoes and cooked them all. When will you plant your spring batch? From seeds or plants? Can we grow big zac in our hot Texas weather for the spring garden? Will you post your pictures again? I really enjoy looking at your table full tomato pictures from the spring time and the tiny-plant--become-bush fall gardens.
Merry Christmas and happy new year
New gardener

Jay, I'm sorry to hear that many of your tomatoes are done for the season. Your pictures and narrative have been a favorite part of GW for me. I doubt I'll ever have a hoop house setup like yours, and it was fun to see how you built it and used it. Thanks for sharing your tomato experiences with us.

Thanks to both of you for your kind words. I think what the low temps of last Friday night did not take care of, the low temps of last Saturday night did. Still, I've got some dwarf / bush type varieties hanging in there. I picked all of the green Big Zac fruit on Sunday morning. I'll get a photo of that posted tomorrow.

Here is a photo of the remaining green fruit that was on the single plant of JD's Special Pink:
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Jay

I had what I thought was Cherokee Chocolate growing in the fall garden and below is that the plant produced. This is the third time I've grown this variety from seed out of the same seed packet. Craig had suggested that it might be a cross due to the high number of fruit on the vine and of course the color. At one point it had 58 fruit.

Here is a photo of the fruit:
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And here is a photo showing how productive this plant was:
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I'll get more photos posted this week but along with JD's Special Pink, I now have ripe Brandywine fruit along with Caspian Pink which is not quite fully ripe and some Siberia fruit.

Spent most of yesterday working in the gardens and getting ready for the spring season. Seed starting will begin this week.

Jay

brazosvalleygardener, I am your royal follower. It is so nice to see more tomato pictures. Would you please post how you start the seeds for the spring too? I have collected 5 kinds of seeds: Big zac, cherokee purple, kellog's breakfast, brandywine and an unknown name pack. Thank you.
New gardener

Just Beautiful Jay

It must be nice to have two growing season, with a hoop house to includ fall.

I summited the plans of this type of Green house to my code department two years ago. But I live near the water, and needed a more sructural sound green house.

But, its good to see your in action, and producing great Tomaotes.

I am enjoying my winter stored tomatoes from last summer.

I feel Blessed and you are being Blessed Amen!!!!

Jay, I'm enjoying reading about your tomato sagas. Sorry to hear that frost & nematodes got to them at this stage in the game.

Thanks for the update!

Green with envy here in MA...