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Growing Tomatoes garden

Opalka Tomato Questions

5 years ago

Hello!

So this is my second year growing Opalka tomatoes and I’m curious about a couple things. I’ve already seen that they are susceptible to BER, which I can remedy.

Are they normally leggy plants with spindly leaves? Next to my Brandywines and Cherokee Purples, they just look meh.

Also, I always prune to the main stem, so should I do that with Opalkas and expect a good harvest? I ask because the plants make a lot of side branches but I’ve always pruned to the main stem for my indeterminates.

Thanks for any help.

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Comments (6)

ncrealestateguy
5 years ago
Most plum tomato plants have fine, wispy foliage compared to other plants. This is normal. All of my plum tomatoes are always slow to get going but once they do, they grow just fine. I find that they can handle more fertilizer than other types. I stopped growing them, because of the BER problems I had.
User
Original Author
5 years ago
Yeah, I’ve lost about three big fruits to the BER so far. I thought when I grew them last year it was a nutrient deal that made them so wispy so I made sure to up the nutrient content of my bed this year minus some nitrogen. Glad to know they are growing correctly at least.
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Frank, I have never considered Amish Paset to be a true paste used for sauces, etc. The reason being that's it far too juicy. Nothing wrong with the taste, so it just means that you have to cook it down more. Back when, some folks named varieties just based on the shapes of the fruit. I think that's how Amish Paste was perhaps named. Another one is Lillian's Red Kansas Paste, which in no way is a paste variety. The issue with paste varieties is that they should have dense fleash and few seeds, but so many of the paste varieties that folks cling to like the romas and costolutos, etc., are far more susceptible to BER as well as Early Bight. Which is why many folks don't bother to even grow paste ones, they use the best tasting ones from the garden that have dense flesh and few seeds, usually the heart vareiies, which have some of the best tastes, as well as some of the large red and pink beefsteak ones that have dense flesh and few seeds. Carolyn, but there are some paste varieteis that I do think work out well.
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I grow Opalkas, they are my favorite tomato. I get blight every year (including this one) but the opalkas keep churning out tons of maters despite looking poorly from blight. I did grow Amish paste one year and the plants did very poorly for me and died before the end of the season. Could have been a fluke. One thing I love about opalkas is they are nearly all tomato meat, so very good for canning or anything you would like to use them diced up in.
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Comments (4)
None of the fruit on several plants have the correct appearance? That would be quite unusual in my experience with the variety. I have had a few rounds turn up now and then but the majority of the fruit on each plant are clearly Opalka. Do the plants have the typical wispy leaf appearance of Opalka? If not then I would suspect a seed mix up of some kind. Dave
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Comments (4)
They have good flavor and texture for paste tomatoes, and I grew them for quite a few years here. I might be growing them still had I not found Heidi. The problem with Opalka vs. Heidi is that Opalka doesn't seem to care for our heat and production slows down a lot once we get hot---and sometimes that heat arrives in earliest June which stops the production far too early for me. Heidi, by contrast, shrugs off the heat and produces like mad. So, I guess it depends on how many tomatoes you want. We want lots of them for canning, and Heidi outproduces Opalka probably 4 to 1 in our heat, so for us the choice was clear. I didn't use Opalka for juice though---just for canned tomatoes or to make salsa for canning. They are not especially juicy--they are very meaty.
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Barrie, (Central PA, zone 6a)
5 years ago
I also typically prune indeterminate tomatoes to one stem except for heirloom varieties. For those I’ve been following Dr Adm Montri’s(Mich State) recommendation to prune those to 2 stems. And I’ll add that there are a few oxheart types that seem to look poorly and I allow an extra stem on those to develop.

I too have had a few tomatoes so far with BER and I blame it on myself for not watering more when we had hot weather. I pulled a shade cloth over them for a few days, then the weather made a complete change and now I’m wondering if other issues will surface.
ncrealestateguy
5 years ago
I prune all of my tomatoes, except a few, to three or four stems. This way, I can plant 33% more tomatoes in the same space. I cage my cherries and my Rutgers.
Barrie, (Central PA, zone 6a)
5 years ago
NC, what types of cherries are you growing? My Indt cherry varieties, on stringline support in high tunnel, already need to be lowered b/c I can’t reach many to clip now. There are few exceptions like Candyland Red and the Bumblebee series.

I have a very few det cherry tomatoes to plant outside in near future just to see how they will produce but I hate to pick cherry tomatoes through cages. I’m not even going to grow Mt. Magic this year b/c I spent too much time on my knees picking other years.
fungus
5 years ago
I don't have Opalka but something very similar from eastern Europe (might be the same one, who knows). Leaves are wispy, yes, colour is lighter than most.

Production in one stem on these is almost unbeatable if you keep them disease free (they are quite susceptible) with super heavy trusses and very good continuous growth. Don't underestimate the wispy leaf.

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