Reed's Garden Report(s)

[kazedwards]

Jul 4, 2016 22:57:33 GMT -5 toomanyirons said:

Flowers on my MN Stumpy plants that have them are similar to the one in your photo. 

Here is a picture of my ten little Stumpies in their isolated patch.  Right row contains my best plants that are approximately two feet tall at time of photo, left row contains somewhat runty plants.  Flowering has slowed on all plants, they seem to be spending their energy putting on growth for the time being.  I did give them a couple of high nitrogen boosts.  Future fertilizer apps, if any, will be low nitrogen.  I expect plant height to max out at 3-4 feet.




I have three fruits at this point, on two plants. One tomato is on a runt plant, photo shows the other two on one of my better plants.  Tomatoes are a bit smaller than golf balls at time of photo.  The flatness and slight pleating tell me these are not cherries.  Shape is very familiar to me, same characteristics as the 4 inch fruits that I got from the original plant last year. 

I think those stumpy plants are dwarfs. It looks like they have rugose leaves which is a main characteristic. Plus they have the sticky build.

[reed]

I was not aware of dwarf tomatoes but did a search and what I found does look like these. toomanyirons, were there any of those in your landrace mix?

Also were there any medium to large pink fruits in your mix? It looks like they are going to be my first to ripen. They are in the row supposed to be the local ox heart type except the tomato I saved seed from was a red heart shape, I'm wondering of I got my tags wrong. 

[reed]

Disease tolerance is certainly something I would also like to see and pending final outcome on production and flavor will definitely be growing these again. I'm also not opposed to the more controlled growth habit. I'm actually used to picking tomatoes right up till frost but figure it is only a matter of time till that changes, especially since I have increased the amount of potatoes I grow.

I have only been in this business for a few years but certainly agree crossing occurs on it's own. What else would explain my pea sized current tomatoes which I have let grow wild for years turning into multiple much larger phenotypes.

Unfortunately unless we find and move to a new place I won't be able to grow the numbers to fully appreciate what a real landrace can produce. I'm limited to a smaller landrace subset. I'm dividing it into two basic classes, slicers and processors and will only have 15 - 20 of each each season. I'm pretty happy though with what I'm starting out with this year. With your's (toomanyirons) and Joseph's seeds along with mine from past years I think I have a pretty good start.

In the slicer patch now Joseph's XH-9 is likely crossing with my Cherokee Purple and Pineapple as well as the F1 and F2 of the hybrid Red Rose which we liked a lot, they all have open flowers or at least open enough to interest the little bees. I hope to just blend them into one kind and don't care if they are not exactly the same every year. 

Over in the processing patch some of your ox heart and paste types are loaded with fruit, way more than we will need to fill the pantry. Fruits on what I called Utah heart form Joseph's seeds are a little less numerous but huge. Two of my own Rutgers are particularly heavy with fruits and again all of them have open flowers.  

I'll always try out a new one or two each year but for the most part I'm just gonna save seed from maybe 10 - 15 of the best ones and call it done. 

[reed]

I expect I'll be able to spare a few, barring some catastrophe. But then I still have about a 1/4 cup from last year too, just in case.

[steev]

Jerusalem artichokes: makes sense to plant them on Indian land, being they're native plants; par-boiled, then baked a bit with butter and Parmesan: delicious; hang out in a well-ventilated place after eating, though.

[reed]

I'll take that into consideration about the sun root, I'v never eaten them before.

Here are some of my tomatoes this year from seeds I got from toomanyirons . *I'm sure now I labeled my rows wrong, which means some of my pictures are labeled wrong. I'll have to take more flower pictures rather than going back and trying to figure it out. I want to make cards with pictures of the flowers and fruits of each plant to fix the seed packs to.

This nice pink one is the first to ripen, I'm gonna pick and eat it when I get home today. 

These long skinny ones, never seen this type in person before.


And these weird looking things, hope they are good cause there are lots of them on this plant. 

[kazedwards]

reed I am growing toomanyirons landrace paste too. My first one to set has a similar fruit type.

[reed]

I'v been speculating what those skinny ones might be like stuffed with some cheesy concoction and rolled around on a hot grill. I see your point on the fluted one but I'm not picky about many things if the flavor is there. Also if you notice the others have some spots on the leaves, it almost always happens to my tomatoes, mostly on bottom leaves and usually isn't that much of a problem but I still don't like it. Compare the leaves on the fluted one, interesting. MN Stumpy and some others also have less of it than I'm used too. I also don't see it on kazedwards plants, again interesting. 

[kazedwards]

I have not noticed any spotting. Curled stressed leaves yes but not spotting.

[reed]

Mine pretty much always have it, guess maybe it is early blight? Some have it worse than others but generally does not have a serious effect on yield. Maybe it is just common to this region, all tomatoes around here do it. I used to think it is just a normal thing they do.

The pink tomato was good but not my favorite, flavor was mild and sweet. I don't mind sweet but like a little more acid mixed in.

Don't know what is up with my common pole beans, they just are not blooming. Runners and Limas are blooming and have little beans but most of the others are not. The one I believe to be a cross between Ideal Market x KY wonder are and the one I believe to be a common x runner cross are but Ohio pole, NT 1/2 runners and my pole ladrace are just big vines. I don't think it is too much nitrogen, they are mostly growing where corn was last year. Early crop of bush beans is mostly over and had good harvests but we were counting on the poles for most of our canned beans this year. 

[mskrieger]

Those all look good. My family is partial to the long and skinny type--we grow Speckled Romans, they're striped red and orange down their lengths. Not so juicy, as toomanyirons said. Nice, concentrated flavor. Good for drying, good for sauce, good for fresh eating in salads. I basically just grow them and cherry tomatoes of a different species (Matt's Cherry, the variety was called) which are self-seeding volunteers in my garden every year.

[kazedwards]

Jul 6, 2016 11:29:50 GMT -5 reed said:

I'v been speculating what those skinny ones might be like stuffed with some cheesy concoction and rolled around on a hot grill. I see your point on the fluted one but I'm not picky about many things if the flavor is there. Also if you notice the others have some spots on the leaves, it almost always happens to my tomatoes, mostly on bottom leaves and usually isn't that much of a problem but I still don't like it. Compare the leaves on the fluted one, interesting. MN Stumpy and some others also have less of it than I'm used too. I also don't see it on kazedwards plants, again interesting. 

Is this the spotting your talking about?

I'm starting to get it on most of Tom's landrace. I first thought it was tomato spotted wilt virus but then remembered your post here.

[reed]

I generally see brown spots and die off of lower leaves but nothing like that on the stems.

[reed]

My MN Stumpies have the brown spots and I'v removed a couple lower leaves but that is typical for pretty much all tomato plants in my garden and has been for years. I don't worry about it that much because I generally still get tomatoes. I don't know if it is late blight, early blight or what. I don't worry about identifying diseases that much, don't matter to me cause all I'm gonna do anyway is keep growing the ones that produce. 

I can't remember when I saw a tomato with less of an issue than that plant with the "Costoluto-type genes".  It's fruits are much larger now than I expected they would be. If it has good flavor, along with this disease tolerance it will definitely have a permanent place in my garden, I'll work around any other issues it might have.   

[kazedwards]

Yes I am thinking that mine have something to do with the rain and humidity too. I am seeing it on 5-7 plants. I noticed it while pruning them last week on a few plants and now it seems like more have but I could have missed it. I pruned them quite a bit to lighten them up. With how heavy and dense they were I was having cages break. I hope with the better circulation it will get better.