Planting early varieties late!

Originally Posted by darwinslair

have there been any long-storage tomatoes bred to be short season? That might be nice, having a tomato that sets its fruit in september but not before. The storage ones are nice to be eating in December, but just dont have the taste of the others, so kind of a waste to have them producing in july and august.

Tom

The Goliath Bush tomato variety worked pretty much that way for me. Planted in the heat of summer, they didn't start blooming and setting fruit until late August/early September. The fruit grew well, but was very, very slow to ripen as the days cooled and the daylight hours became shorter. We did harvest a lot of late fall vine ripened fruit, but probably fifty percent of the fruit was picked green the day before our first frost. I filled a five gallon bucket with green fruit and stuck it in a cool, dark place in my shop. When we needed a fresh tomato, I would dig through the bucket selecting the ripest to eat. We ate them into January. One odd thing about the fall fruit was the fact that they retained an almost white color. They never developed the typical green color before ripening. We also lost very few fruit to rot before ripening. They also remained very hard until they ripened. They tasted great when ripe.

After the first frost killed the vines, I pulled the vines with many tiny tomatoes still attached and threw them on my compost pile. I noticed earlier this month that many of the tiny fruit still attached to the dead plants on the compost pile had ripened. We had a couple of really hard freezes earlier this month that finally put them to rest.

Ted

[b54red]

I agree with Ted in your climate if you spray with Daconil you probably won't have much in the way of tomato diseases. Just remember to spray every week and after each rainfall.

I live in an area of very high humidity and heat so I have a much harder time preventing diseases from getting started. Most mornings my plants are dripping with water and don't dry out til mid morning due to the high humidity making it very difficult to spray often enough. Once I see a disease establishing itself I go to a diluted bleach spray which has been discussed in other threads to slow or stop the disease.

[brog]

Ted the best luck I`ve had with indeterminates is Ponderosa both red and pink. plant them (in garden) 1st week in June. Three years ago I had great results with suckers. Have not tried suckers since. Good luck Bill

[ireilly]

Originally Posted by tedln

Living in North Texas, we have very low humidity so my tomatoes rarely get fungal diseases. My squash and cucumbers almost always get powdery mildew. Daconil used as a preventative works well for me and it should work on tomatoes. After the fungal diseases have established themselves on a plant, they are hard to get rid of. Preventing them seems much more effective. I usually spray once per week in the late afternoon as the sun goes down. I want the water to be able to spread over the leaf surface to spread the fungicide evenly. If I spray in the daytime, the water sometimes evaporates before I get even distribution of the fungicide. I also sometimes add a non toxic insecticidal soap to the mix to aid in distribution as a wetting agent. It also helps to retain the fungicide on the leaf surface longer.

Ted

But when that huricane remnant came through last year it dumped so much water that we did have high humidity for awhile, and that's when my problems started. I was never able to recover from that fully.

Oh well, live and learn.

Yes, we do have some humid days in the DFW area, but as you travel South from Amarillo to Houston; it seems to be as follows.
Amarillo / Bone dry air
DFW / Occasional humid days
Austin / High humidity
Houston/ Humid like a steamy sauna

Ted

[BigdaddyJ]

I think a few early varieties is a great way to extend your season. Nice fresh plants that got a good shot at producing just as the summer ravaged plants are giving up the ghost. Instead of trying to get two crops in you are getting in 1 and a half so to speak. Good luck on your timing.

[b54red]

One of the best things about growing tomatoes down here in this steamy sauna is the ability to have that fall crop which means you don't usually have to stop eating fresh tomatoes til December or January. This year by covering my screened in back porch with plastic and using a couple of tanks of propane to keep it warm I have not done without homegrown tomatoes yet. Just figuring the cost of the propane those few dozen tomatoes off the porch have been quite expensive.