Gardening & Landscaping
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Tomato Talk!
I'm going to order some tomato plants this week, and I'm looking for recommendations. I've never planted any heirloom varieties.
What we tend to eat a lot of are plum size, grape, and cherry tomatoes. We only need one medium/large tomato variety. My H eats cherry/grape tomatoes like crazy in the summer. What should I plant?
"There's a very simple test to see if something is racist. Just go to a heavily populated black area, and do the thing that you think isn't racist, and see if you live through it." ~ Reeve on the Clearly Racist Re-Nig Bumper Sticker and its Creator.
Re: Tomato Talk!
Have you decided where you are ordering your seeds?
I really like the cherry/grape tomatoes and usually plant several of this size as it grows so well here and is so easy to just take what you need. I like to plant an orange cherry, a red grape, and then a chocolate cherry for the small ones, then a smaller sized red (like Eva's Purple Ball... don't love it but it grows for me), a 'black/brown' variety (like Black Krim or Black from Tula), a yellow-red bi-color and then whatever else strikes my fancy to try.
I usually end up with about 10-12 plants, but I don't count on getting a lot due to our short seasons (though I focus on shorter season and smaller varities, for the most part), especially on the larger tomatoes.
I only have a zillion seed catalogs. LOL. I'm going to try Territorial Seed this years since they have a container zucchini plant I want to grow. I got a nasty round of squash bugs last year, so I'm not going to put any squash in that raised bed in addition to removing the soil from it.
I put in one plant of Sungolds, small yellow/orange cherry type- last year and my H went nuts for them! The flavor is really sweet and great for snacking. It didn't yield as much as my other cherry tomato plan, so I'm going to do two plants this year.
In my (limited) past gardening experiance:
Better Boy (hybrid) is pretty hardy and good producer for the begining gardener. We had a good yield last summer until it rained for all of august and caused terrible rot, and that was all before Hurricane Irene hit. I was thankful it was an early producer because of all the rain we got, had I been waiting/counting on something that took longer we would have been effed for slicers.
Early Girl- Not a fan. We got limited fruit, the plant stalled out mid-season and I didn't like the flavor
Rutgers- Nom. The plant never really got to take hold before the horrible weather hit last summer, but the few fruits we got were excellent. Definately trying to grow this variety again.
This year I'd like to plant: Mortgage lifter, Brandywine, Rutgers and Black Krim as my slicer plants. Two Sungolds and two varieties of red grape/cherry should round out my snacking plants.
I love Sungolds! Mine were really prolific.
MrsLucy, what's your weather/growing season like? Ours is short, and has been pretty cloudy the last few years so bigger tomatoes haven't done well.
There are actually a lot of Mortgage Lifter and Brandywine heirlooms. I really have liked most of the Mortgage Lifters I've eaten -- no go on growing, just too big for my growing season -- but not a huge fan of Brandywines.
I wasn't sure about black tomatoes at first, but now I LOVE them.
I'm located in South Jersey, so pretty much perfection for tomato growing
Last summer my tomatoes were kicking a*ss and taking names with our hot summer- until August hit. We then got about 22" inches of rain in a week and half and a week later Hurricane Irene rolled up our way. Something about 42" rain fell in a month... My cherry plants and a "surprise" volunteer plant struggled along for the rest of the season, but it was just too much rain/wet for most of them to produce quality fruit. 2011 was a big year for green tomato pickles in our house.
If we don't have a repeat of that wet end of summer I think I can squeeze out enough time for some of the longer season plants.
Oh doesn't that suck, when you've put so much work in?
We've had a couple of rainy summers so a lot of mine ripened inside. They'll still ripen if they are green, just not quite as good. The rain will make them split so I bring them in.
Good to know there are some other tomato crazy gardeners here!