Report On The Five Tomatoes You Talked Me Into

8 years ago

This year was all new to me: I started everything from seed and chose varieties based on recommendations from this Forum. Overall, I am pleased with the results.

Sungold - The plants grew great, produced early and the fruits were very sweet. However, we found the skin to be very tough. Nobody really loved them due to the unchewable skin.

Bloody Butcher - The fruits are small, barely bigger than a cherry tomato. But, they were early and tasted pretty good.

Mortgage Lifter - As of Aug. 12, we have only picked a few medium sized tomatoes. They tasted good. The plants are huge. There are many larger fruits on the plant but they appear to be 7-10 days away from maturity.

Brandy Boy - We actually got a few large fruits by early July. Slow, but steady production since. Great taste. Not that different from Brandywine.

Black Krim - Steady production of medium to large tomatoes from early July. Everybody seems to love the taste once they get past the color. The plants seem inclined to sprawl rather than climb the support provided. Mature BK is a bit harder to find on the plants since the shoulders are dark instead of red.

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Comments (20)

digdirt2
8 years ago
Sorry to hear your Sungolds had tough skin. That is unusual for them IME. What kind of support did you use on the BK? They don't "climb", have to be tied up if not using cages.

Dave
Labradors
8 years ago
I'm eating Sungolds right now and they don't have tough skins. In fact, most people complain that they crack easily! I wonder what happened.....

Linda
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Cindee It won't help to talk about Galina (Hazera) because seed isn't available to us backyard gardeners, only commercial big-guys (5000 quantity $500). If you find a source PLEASE let me know as I am out. Someone (can't remember who) sent me a few seeds a year ago when I was complaining about TYLCV ruining my harvest. And of course being a hybrid can't be replicated from saved seeds. I'm looking forward to Corrie's TYLCV resistant seed tryouts and hope she is successful. Otherwise I will continue to have multiple plants ready to replace ones that get taken out by the disease. Interesting note: Marianna's Peace, a very fruitful tomato for me (lots of small salad size on one plant and the other plant has 2 beefsteaks). The LARGE MP (maybe 20 feet long) draped in the tree had TYLCV on some branches but not wanting to pull this productive plant I cut off the areas showing it. It continues to grow and has new blossoms. So I'd call MP "resistant" once it gets some size on it. OTOH a full size Cuostralee was killed quickly by TYLCV before it had a chance to fruit. All I want are tomatoes! Not an education in agriculture :-) Denise P.S. Good luck with Big Zac. Grow a BIG one.
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Pat, We eat all we can while it is fresh. We freeze, we dehydrate, we can. We give away fresh produce (not as much as you'd think, though, because I like canning it) to family and friends. We send lots of produce to work with our son, who is a professional firefighter. Since they work 24 hours shifts, they cook a lot of their meals while working and always appreciate a few fresh veggies (plus, it helps them stretch their food budget). Last year I filled up 3 freezers, the root cellar (aka the tornado shelter), and the "jelly closet" (which originally started out as a coat closet, but is much better used for food storage of home-preserved food). I canned a little over 700 jars, but that's because it was the best fruit year ever and I had 350 lbs. of plums and peaches to process in a fairly short period of time. Most years it is more like 200 or 300 or 400 jars. What does a small family do with all those jars of jams, jellies, salsas and hot peppers? We eat some of it, but give away a lot more than we eat. My DH is a police officer and every year at Christmas he gives gifts of our home-grown and home-preserved goodies to about 80 or 90 co-workers at the PD. We give the same sort of gifts to our friends, including all the members of our vounteer fire dept, and to family members. We donate jars of jellies, jams, salsa and candied jalapenos to local fundraisers for some of our county's volunteer fire departments and oter causes. I think that last year, each gift bag at Christmas had 1 jar each of jelly, jam, peppers and salsa. Of course, the ones for family members had more---maybe 8 jars. I figure if I am going to put all the time into the veggie garden, I want it to be as productive as possible. So, of course, I'm happiest with big harvests. However, in some years you have to be happy with any harvest at all and this is one of those years. We love eating fresh food from our garden and appreciate the fact that we know how it was raised and that it wasn't sprayed with a lot of pesticides. Now that we have become so used to eating from our own garden, it would be hard to go back to eating only grocery store produce because the quality of the fresh grocery store produce just is not the same as that of what we grow. I garden biointensively with very close spacing so I can get the most out of the space I have. I do a lot of succession planting. My favorite way to do succession planting is to start the succession crop indoors 7-12 days before I expect to plant it into the ground. I often start beans and peas in in 3-oz. bathroom cups filled with potting soil. I cut a big "X" in the bottom of each cup for drainage, and for the roots to grow down through later after I transplant them into the ground. I use the paper cups as plantable pots to reduce transplant shock. I germinate the seeds indoors where I can control the temps and light, them immediately move the seedlings outdoors to grow in natural light as soon as they germinate. (This eliminates the need to harden them off.) At the time I'm removing a finished crop like, let's say, the mid-season corn that will be coming out of the bed in a few days, I'll harvest the corn in the morning and replant that bed the same day. In the afternoon I'll likely use my little Mantis cultivator to work the existing mulch into the soil in the early afternoon. In the cool evening hours, I'll transplant the started bean or pea plants, cups and all, into the soil and water it in. Then I'll mulch it. So, if you were at my house early that morning, you might see a raised bed of ready-to-harvest corn. Then, if you came by at 8 o'clock that evening, the corn will have been picked and processed, the bed cleaned out, the corn stalks on the compost pile, and rows of small southern pea or bush bean plants freshly transplanted into the former corn bed. It surprises our friends and neighbors sometimes when they stop by on a day I've harvested/replanted. I'll get a funny look and a question like "weren't your corn plants there this morning...?). Doing a quick turnaround like that speeds up the harvest cycle. For example, in beds from which I harvested onions the first week in June, I'm already harvesting okra from transplants that went into the bed the same day the onions came out. The watermelon plants I put into the ground that day have melons that are the size of softballs, and those plants have been in the ground for only about 5 or 6 weeks. I have a lot of trouble with good seed germination in early spring when soil temps are too cold or soil is too wet or when the cutworms are too active. That's one reason I prefer transplants as much as possible. It is a lot more work and a lot more time-consuming, but you get more consistent germination, and there's not any gaps in a row caused by poor germination since I don't transplant any cups with ungerminated seeds. For something like southern peas that germinate easily in warm soil, it isn't so much that I get better germination in paper cups indoors, but that I get a head start by growing the plants in cups. If I start seeds of southern peas in cups and transplant them into the ground about 10-14 days after I first planted the seeds in the cups, then those plants will produce 1.5 to 2 weeks earlier than plants that would be direct-seeded on the same day. I've grown the crops here so long in that mnner, that it is easy for me to look at the spring plantings and know when it is time to start seed of the follow-on crop. I even start seeds in cups sometimes of veggies that don't like to be transplanted, like carrots. Since a lot of things don't like to be transplanted, I just plant the cups and all right into the ground. The paper cups break down pretty quickly. If every succession crop I put into the ground is already a week or two "old" when I plant it, I get a faster harvest, which allows me to get the next succession crop into the ground quickly too....and so it goes until I run out of space, water, or time. Fall beans are the best! It is nice to be picking them in October when the temperatures are milder. We just called them "October beans" when I was a kid because that's when you picked them. I probably was a teenager before I figured out that "October beans" was a general name for all fall-harvested beans and not a specific variety of bean like "Lazy Housewife" or "McCasland". The older I get the more I like pole beans because it isn't fun bending over to pick bush beans, but I always plant bush beans in spring for the early harvest, and pole beans for fall, and more bush beans for fall in a good rainfall year. I'm not sure if I'll plant fall bush beans or not. In order for me to do that, I want to see some good rain falling first. About the only succession plantings I'm making this summer are additional sowings of lima beans, southern peas (I'm growing pinkeye purplehull, crowder, zipper and cream types), okra and squash. They can take the heat when nothing else can. I'd never, ever, ever sell my veggies at a Farmer's Market. I've been to Farmer's Markets, I've witnessed idiot customers trying to bargain with the grower/seller and convince them to sell their fresh veggies for next to nothing. and it is a pet peeve of mine. It is unreasonable for consumers to expect sellers at the Farmer's Markets to sell their produce for lower prices than they'd pay at Wal-Mart and it just infuriates me. Knowing all the blood, sweat and tears, and time and effort, and worry and sleepless nights on a "frost watch" that go into growing fresh produce, I feel like the growers at Farmer's Markets ought to be able to sell their produce for more, not less, than the price local grocery stores charge. Raising veggies well is labor-intensive and time-consuming and to me it implies a certain lack of respect for the farmer's or market grower's time and effort to try to bargain them down to a "cheap" price. To me, their work and the quality of their produce is deserving of the price they ask, and sometimes I think they sell too cheaply because they feel they have to in order to compete. So, it will be a cold day in Oklahoma in July before you'll see me selling at a Farmer's Market. A friend of a friend of ours sold produce at a local farmer's market for several years and finally gave it up to get "a real job" with a guaranteed income and I can't say I blame her one bit. Our produce is too precious to us to sell it to unappreciative people for whom the only thing that matters is the price they pay. Dawn
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Picked second ripe mortgage lifter yesterday (first one bird or squirrel took a few pecks at it) I have another mortgage lifter on another plant that has been turning color for the last 3 days and have 2 heatwave hybrids on the deck that have been turning for about a week and are very orange hopefully turning red soon. All plants are in containers and were started from seed. I do have a couple of Brandy Boys that I orderd plants (will start from seed next time) that got our a few weeks after the other plants but they should start turning in a few weeks. It has been a pretty good year here my plants are huge and loaded with tomatoes. Only disappointment is a super fantasic plant I bought that has had BER on all of the tomatoes I do not think it likes being in a container.
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Seysonn_ 8a-NC/HZ-7
8 years ago
I share your findings on Bloody Butcher and Mortgage lifter. I grew them last year. Like you said BB fruits were very small, just about a large cherry size. Taste was good.

ML ( a bonnie plant) was a total disappointment. Never got a fruit bigger than 5-6oz.

On the Sungold, I differ. I grew it last year. As others have said actually it has a very thin skin and thats why it cracks so easily and thats why I stopped growing it.

Brandy Boy : I am growing it . Taste is good but mine have not been good producers. Out of 3 plants have picked just 4 so far. But the fruits were close to 14 oz each. But I am debating its return next year.

Sey
gorbelly
8 years ago
Perhaps it was one of the OP selections? I grew an OP sungold selection this year, and the skins are very tough.
Vince (8) Kemper
8 years ago
When it rained just a little the sun gold split. The reason I quit growing them. Had trouble with Black Krim splitting also.
PupillaCharites
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
harryshoe, I just wanted to really thank you for for coming back to share your results (Did you take any pictures you'd be interested in posting?), which is great! As others before me have said something is not right about your Sun Gold review. I would like to ask what gorbelly suggested, in a different way. Where was the source of your Sun Gold seeds and are you sure they are F1 hybrids?

Cheers

PC
harryshoe zone6 eastern Pennsylvania
Original Author
8 years ago
Sun Gold was ordered from Burpee. It says " Sun Gold Hybrid" on the packet. Maybe not F1 hybrids. Interestingly, there was no cracking.

I try to knit the vines through a wire fence. Black Krim seems happier to snake across the ground. The fact that they set large fruit early added to the knitting problem. I did tie them up to the fence. Insignificant problems. Black Krim is a super performer here.

I will try to get some pictures, but I have had no luck trying to post pictures since the Houzz takeover.
gorbelly
8 years ago
I don't think my OP sungolds would ever crack (they are Sungold Select II from Baker Creek). The skins are way too tough. I won't be growing those again.
Labradors
8 years ago
Yuck Gorbelly! Glad you mentioned it because I was all set to grow Sungold Select II and I hate tough skins!

Linda
PupillaCharites
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
"Sun Gold was ordered from Burpee. It says " Sun Gold Hybrid" on the
packet. Maybe not F1 hybrids. Interestingly, there was no cracking."

It seems improbable that there would be a mistake like that from Burpee. Don't worry about the "F1" designation, when a larger seed company sells something it marks a hybrid, it better be F1! I hope you give Sun Gold another chance, and maybe consider whether you watered it adequately. If you want something else to replace SG which should have a relatively thin skin also, Sun Sugar hybrid (Sun Sugar F1) is worth a try to see how it does in your garden. The good part is they are bigger than Sun Golds, and for others they don't split open nearly as much. Hopefully that doesn't mean the skin is tougher though under your growing conditions...only one way to find out.

Cheers

PC

Edit, I just noticed, Sun Gold of your 5 varieties was the most vigorous (the only other hybrid was Brandy Boy, and it didn't seem to get a stellar grade though you liked the flavor). Did you water all the tomatoes the same amount? Sun Gold may have required a little more watering, especially with the hot summer, if it didn't get a chance to develop it's trademarked huge root system. That could easily be responsible for the tougher skin and absence of splitting, as mentioned if the plant were under-watered. Under-watering usually isn't the concern, as most active gardeners tend to over water. But it seems to me the most likely explanation. If this is the reason, Sun Sugar would have even a tougher skin, had it been grown in the same conditions.
gorbelly
8 years ago
Labradors, I see harryshoe is also in Eastern PA. It may be something about conditions around here? Although my other cherry tomatoes are fine.
Labradors
8 years ago
It's weird how that happens. I grew Purple Bumblebee last year and it was as hard as leather. A few other people noted the same thing while others said it was perfectly fine !?!?!?

Linda
gorbelly
8 years ago
Pupilla,

"Did you water all the tomatoes the same amount? Sun Gold may have
required a little more watering, especially with the hot summer, if it
didn't get a chance to develop it's trademarked huge root system. That
could easily be responsible for the tougher skin and absence of
splitting, as mentioned if the plant were under-watered."

It's been pretty wet this year in our part of PA, and the heat was late in coming and hasn't been too extreme.
aegis1000
8 years ago
You might want to try Sun Sugars for next year.

They grew well for me ... and the fruits were delicious ...
Labradors
8 years ago
Aegis, Your tomatoes look very pretty!

Did you know that you don't need to put them on a sunny windowsill for them to ripen? I keep mine in the basement because hubby complained that they took up too much room on the kitchen counter. They ripen just fine.....

Linda
PupillaCharites
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
"It's been pretty wet this year in our part of PA, and the heat was late in coming and hasn't been too extreme."

I am just trying to find the most likely explanation for the tough skins and absence of splitting, since neither is a trait Sun Gold has. Even if it is against our intuition there is an explanation somewhere. You mention it has been rather wet, but Sun Gold has a big appetite for water when it grows into a vigorous plant. The answer could be in Rain + irrigation = Fine for the other varieties, but Sun Gold doing so well that the plant demanded more than the rain and irrigation, although that was fine or even too much for the others. I am growing some plants in open containers (to rain) where I was hand watering. At first I gave all equal shots which averaged 10 quarts per week, skipping on significant rain days and reducing on cloudy, humid days. It became clear that this was not working for some varieties, and this was modified to 10 and 20 quarts per week.

I only say this because you had three symptoms that pointed to this:

Thick skin, no cracking, very sweet: all can occur with insufficient water ... basically you mentioned 3 for 3.

Granted with Sun Gold, very sweet might be what it is normally, but tomatoes get sweeter usually when they receive less water than could be applied healthily. Sun Sugar, which I suggested and was seconded by aegis has a thicker skin, so before I did that, I would try SG again if you liked them except for the skin, but try watering 1.5X the amount of the others assuming the Sun Gold plant gets vigorous.

Just my opinion but I hope that helps. Sun Gold is a special tomato and worth a second try!

Cheers

PC

edit: just noticed it was gorbelly's comment I replied to and not the OP's like I thought. So, we really would need to know how the OP handled the watering, but gorbelly's comment is well taken. There should be an explanation, and I suppose bad seed is not off the table, I just consider bad seed, subjectively, less likely.
gorbelly
8 years ago
"Thick skin, no cracking, very sweet: all can occur with insufficient water ... basically you mentioned 3 for 3."

FWIW, mine were not very sweet. But, as I said, I grew an OP selection from Baker Creek, not a hybrid.
PRO
Jim's
8 years ago
I have a dozen black krim plants and they are very unruly. Even the branches at the top/ends are very thick. I have wire cages, bamboo support through the cages, and bamboo trellis that is screwed to the outside of the raised bed and they still collapsed the support. I try to pick them back up but the tangle of the leaves makes it very very challenging. I have since decided to try to do a horizontal trellis to support the branches once they fall over.

One plant seems to be hosting fruitworms. I have thrown out about two dozens tomatoes from that one. I sliced open most of them and found no internal signs of the worms, but I did find one on a branch. I took out all my anger and disappointment on that one. Anyway, good luck with trying to contain them. I suppose cattle panels or CRW would have more success than what I did.

They are my favorite tomato, hence having so many of them. The amount of fruit each bears is impressive. I usually clip them as they are mostly ripe as to not lose them to birds. I have no issues with them ripening indoors and I put them in my wine cooler, yes really, as the temp 58° seems to keep them good for quite some time.
Seysonn_ 8a-NC/HZ-7
8 years ago
I grow/plant in small R.Beds. I am using kinda my own rectangular cages ( ~ 3ft x 5ft) from cedar lumber. .They have at least one leg next to each plant , plus few more., all driven into ground So this makes a sturdy structure. I also do some weaving. The height of the cages is about 7ft at the final stage. From there on I just let the plants do their thing. I have found out that one stake per plant won't work , no matter how much you prune.

For longer rows , slanted trellis should be better than vertical, as plants would lean on it and get tangled. So need minimum tying up.

Sey
harryshoe zone6 eastern Pennsylvania
Original Author
8 years ago

Finally a picture! Some Black Krim, a Brandy Boy and some Bloody Butcher. These are typical. Some of the BK and BB were 5".

Report On The Five Tomatoes You Talked Me Into

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