Fall Tomatoes

[houseodessey]

Do you guys start new seeds mid summer for fall tomatoes or do you use your strongest plants to root new ones or a combination of the two? Are there any drawbacks to keeping the old plants going as far as plant health, fruit yields, etc? Could one feasibly grow the same tomato plant for years?

[bluelacedredhead]

Redbrick had a great suggestion last year about removing the suckers from tomato plants and then rooting them. I think it's a great way to get free plants for a fall crop.

[johno]

I start more plants from seed a couple of months after the first batch, mostly so I can try new varieties...

I will try starting from cuttings this year if I have any non-diseased plants to cut from. That's a tall order in these parts.

[bluelacedredhead]

REally? Why is that??

[johno]

Creation Groans from Idig tells me he thinks it's because they used to grow so many tomatoes here in the old days. There used to be canneries everywhere in the Ozarks. They were shipped out by railroad all across the country.

Maybe so, but that industry fizzled out before I was born. I'm not sure how long the foliar diseases can lie dormant?..

I think it's just a matter of our climate being perfect for them...

[bluelacedredhead]

I never had problems with Tomato diseases when I lived in the Niagara Peninsula, and from that area west along Lake Erie, almost down to the Windsor/Detroit area is rife with commercial tomato growers and canneries. Mind you, in those days, many of the varieties I grew were hybrid. But not all. Rutgers was a fave of mine back then..

[jeannine]

I did an experiment this last year with 3 tomato plants after chatting with Blue one night. I used one rooted sucker and two volunteer maters to over-winter in the house to see how they would do and if I got any maters for the trouble. The results are in! I still have all but one plant, the rooted sucker has died. A few weeks ago I started putting them out on my front porch when it was nice so they could get used to being outdoors once again, I wasn't home one day when we got some wicked winds. Needless to say it died from wind damage, BUT I did re-root two little branches from it that weren't to bad off. I don't think I'll do it again for 2 reasons; one I didn't get many maters and second they took up a great deal of space in my living room! The final test will be to see how well they produce for me this year. I plan on doing some seeds later in the season for some of the maters that I don't have room for now, ones that are new to me so I wont do many of each.

Johno I think the disease thing has more to do with our conditions than anything else. Warm, wet/humid and frequently over cast. All the ingredients for any self-preserving disease to grow!

Jeannine

[PapaVic]

Last two years, I rooted suckers in jars of water with just a wee pinch of dissolved fertilizer, and planted them in pots after good roots developed. Once in gallon pots, if the plants were good and healthy and it looked like they might have a chance to produce before frost, I transplanted them to the dirt. A few did really well this way, but those were mainly midseason types.

I've also started late tomatoes from seed, but found that starting seed after mid June is really too late unless all I was after was a few ripe tomatoes for seed and the rest green tomatoes for frying or storing to ripen in a box.

This year, I planted some dwarf seeds Monday and will plant some early or midseason hybrid seed near the end of next week (or whenever the moon looks a few days prior to full), and raise those as outside seedlings hopefully to plant the first week of June as a late crop. I might also direct seed a few next to plants in the garden whenever the established garden tomatoes are in their first full bloom ... but again, that'll be toward the middle of June, which may turn out to be too late except for very early season tomatoes.

PV

[downinmyback]

I was reading somewhere that somebody had pruned their vines back to a foot and then feed the plants and had a good second crop. I do not know how good it would work in the southeast with all of the tomato blights.