Monday, April 27, 2009

Final Tomato plant tally

This is the final list of tomatoes I am growing this year:

Market Miracle - Siberian. Determinate, 8-12 oz (~227-340 grams) red tomato

Amateur's Dream - Siberian. Indeterminate. Big, bright red tomato. This plant has outgrown ALL the others and it now looks like a small tree. Short but with a very thick stem.

Black Russian - Indeterminate. Medium size black tomato. Someone claims that when dried, they have a delicious smoky flavor. I will have to try that.

Perestroika - Siberian. Indeterminate. 8-10 oz (~227-283 grams) orange-red tomato.

Urbikany - Siberian. Determinate. Very early 2 inch (5 cm) red tomato.

Galina - Siberian. Indeterminate. 1 inch (2.5 cm) yellow tomato. Sweet.

Maskotka - Determinate. 1 - 1.25 oz (25-35 grams) red cherry tomato.

Jet Star - Indeterminate. Hybrid. Medium size red tomato.

Yellow Pear - Indeterminate. 1 inch (2.5cm) yellow pear shaped tomato. This one I actually grew two years ago. Because it did not produce fruit in the Spring or early Summer, I let the two plants go. They did not die but thrived and then they started producing like crazy in late Summer and produced all the way to October. I liked the flavor of this tomato. I did not try to grow it last year but just a few days ago I decided to plant a few seeds of it to see what happens.

Golden Jubilee - Indeterminate. Yellow softball size tomato.

Brandywine - Indeterminate. Large, beefsteak type tomato. I failed to stake them properly last year and they broke in half during a thunderstorm midseason.

Alien unknown cherry - I planted a cherry tomato last year. I lost the packet and I don't remember the type. The plant grew and grew. I did not know last year about pruning tomato plants to a single vine so I just kept tying the vines to stakes. This year I have a bunch of volunteer seedlings from that plant. I took two of them and put them in a container.

I have come to the conclusion that one lifetime is not enough to try every tomato variant out there but I will have fun trying. Also, there is ALWAYS something new to learn about tomatoes.
For example:

Feed them via the leaves (Foliar Feeding)
Give them Aspirin
Prune them

I went with mostly Siberian tomatoes this year because I wanted early fruit. I put the Siberian tomatoes ouside when the highs were hardly in the 40's and the lows were often near freezing and none of the plants died. (I did lose a couple to very high winds). I did get to eat one Black Russian tomato last year and it was indeed rich and flavorful with a taste unlike any of the red tomatoes I've ever eaten.

2 comments:

  1. An interesting array of tomato plants to see .... I love too see their progress.... Mine for the moment is coming to second harvest... Home grown tomatoes are sweet and crunchy!! ~ cheers.

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  2. Very, very interesting. I will be tracking your progress... not stalking though :D

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