What's ripe in PNW (late July-early Aug update)

[Tania]

I have not posted here for a while - my tomato 'patch' keeps me busy at this time of the year. However, it is time for a PNW update.

So what has been producing steadily on my tomato patch since mid July?

• Sibirskiy Skorospelyi (http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/S...iy_Skorospelyi)
• Yamal
• Titan
• Anmore Dewdrop
• Maskotka
• Mano
• Sophie's Choice
• Sungold F1

Which one is a taste winner? I can't quite tell, as all of the above have been great. I love Sibirskiy Skorospelyi, Sophie's Choice, Yamal, Mano, and Anmore Dewdrop. All these are loaded with flavorful fruit, and give me enough ripe tomatoes to use in daily salads in the last two weeks. Sungold is great as usual, but not very productive for me this year, not sure why.

Yamal and Sibirskiy Skor. look and taste very similar. I wonder if these are related? (although they were bred by different Russian breeders)

Just starting to produce:

• Coyote
• Dwarf Stone
• Marina B
• Green Sausage
• Sofia
• Plovdivski Export
• Cuban Black
• Black Altai
• Black Mavr
• Orange Santa
• Orange Russian, Doukhobors
• Azoychka
• Solguld
• Fidelio

Disappointments so far:
- Fritz Ackerman from deerpark produced offtype fruit - large red and heart shaped. Needless to say, it was RL - but I think we all concluded that the original PL version of this tomato no longer exists. I have not tasted it yet, but it was the first to produce ripe large tomato (after Fidelio)

- Green Pearl appeared to be red tomato, very similar to Bloody Butcher or Matina. I was expecting green fruited variety, based on the name, so it was a disappointment, but it is certainly a very early and productive variety. My seed source did not have any details about this tomato, and only sent me three seeds.

- Bijskij Zeltyi - lots of flowers but no fruit set. Very disappointing given the fact I have been hunting for true seeds for 3 years, and finally got 2 seeds from Germany (originally from Bohl) that should be true to type. But no fruit yet!!!

- Lucky Cross - no fruit set yet.

- Yasha Yugoslavian - only 1 fruit on 4 plants. Very shy producer this year.

It would be great to hear from other PNWers on how the things are in their tomato patches!

Tania

[freelancer79d]

Tania i tried to download your seed catalog at your site and it says the link is broken.

[amideutch]

Tania, just used your link with no problem. Serenity and Sweet Dreams loaded with fruit and waiting for them to color up. My Fritz Ackerman (RL) was a bust and has round globes. Waiting to see what color they are. Growing two new ones from Andrey and both are hearts. They are Admiralteyskoe Serdtse and Krasnyi Mayak. Ami

[MikeT_PDX]

Here in Portland we're about 3-4 weeks behind our usual season for ripe tomatoes.
I have 25 plants this year and a very few are just now starting to ripen; some plants have virtually no fruit set.

Gregori's Altai, Paul Robeson, Black Krim and Brandywine Red set fruit late but have turned very productive in the last month. Probably 2 weeks from first ripe fruit. These are the clear winners this year, though late.

Kellogg's Breakfast is huge but set no fruit. Same with Great White.

Thessaloniki, Pruden's Purple, Dora, Green Zebra, Earl of Edgecombe, Omar's Lebanese, Cuostralee, and Sandul Moldovan have moderate fruit set. They're behind schedule too; probably 2+ weeks before I'll see any ripe fruit.

I put a few indeterminates in the backyard just for the heck of it. Yesterday I picked 2 Santiam and 1 Siletz......first ripe fruit this year.

It's been a tough season for tomatoes around here. Early blight caught on in late June but fortunately the plants seem to be outgrowing it. Fruit set was very late for all varieties. On the plus side, the plants are huge and robust. Most of the indeterminates are 6-8 feet tall and extremely bushy.

Mike

[Bubba]

I'm in McMinnville a little Southwest of Portland. I have been getting a couple of Bloody Butchers every other day or so. The plant is loaded with mature size greenies so I expect a flood of these soon. The others I have planted this year are Brandywine, Brandywine OTV, Red Brandywine, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, and Amana Orange. Late but heavy fruit set on all of these. I do have a few Black Krim and Amana Orange that look like they will be ready in maybe a week but the majority look to be another 3 weeks or so. The majority of all the plants tomatoes have lots of catfacing. Is that due to the cooler night time temps we had this spring?

[dice]

The only plants that have ripened a fruit so far are Moravsky Div
(delicious) and one of 15 F4s of Anmore Pink Grapes (basket
cherry project) that was bland (already pulled and tossed it
after letting a handful of blushed fruit ripen; too bad, it was
the earliest of the lot).

Stupice and Bloody Butcher have just blushed their first fruits.

Plants with a lot of green fruit set:
Alacrity
Super Marmande
Spring King
Rose de Berne
Myth (early rugose leaved determinate)
Russian Red (one particular plant, surprisingly early;
difficult to imagine a chance cross there that is still rugose
leaved, would have to be with Demidov, but the fruit look
like they are going to be Russian Red sized)
(Stupice x unknown) F3
((Stupice x unknown) F2 x JD's Special C-Tex) F1
(Eva Purple Ball x Earl's Faux) F1
(above might just be EPB, I have to see and taste
a ripe fruit to be sure)
(Dice's Mystery Black x Chernomor Regular Leaf) F1
(more fruit set on one small plant than either of the
parents have on larger plants)
SunSugar F1

I have many with moderate fruit set, but not bad given
the very slow start to the summer. Some that had no fruit
set at all two weeks ago have finally set a few, and Brandywine
Sudduth and Rose have finally produced flower clusters.
They just needed some minimum number of degree days
(heat times hours) before they would flower normally, in
addition to warmer days and nights than what we had in
May and June.

I have an abnormally large number of plants this year where
first fruit set is 3' or more above the ground or top of the
container.

[maryinoregon]

I'm in Eugene, 100 miles or so south of Portland.

Absolutely nothing is ripe, and in fact, most of the plants have barely any set. It was cold and rainy down here through May, and part of June - in fact, into early July. Colder than I can ever recall for here. Mornings as of late have been cool and overcast, much more like fall. I was listening to a climatologist on the radio who was saying he thought we were in a pattern that would bring us real fall weather in September. Meaning cold and wet for the PNW. Not uncommon for September, at least in some spots.

My soil was so cold, wet and nasty into June/July that I did not plant beans, or most anything. I put in some bush beans at the beginning of August. They are just beginning to come up. Even the leaf crops are not happy. Most of my plants are in pots.

Today we are in the high 80s weatherwise.

I think I will get some tomatoes this year, but how much I can not say.

[jwr6404]

I live in University Place,Wa.,near Tacoma. As of this date I have had Matina,Black Krim and Brandywine. Saw my first Red Mortgage Lifter this evening and it's huge. Starting to get some color on my PNWer traded Jerry's German Giant. Looking forward to it.

[troad]

Dice,

Have several plants that have set first fruit at least 3 feet above ground level too. Will take a very good September in order to get any ripe from several plants. Have some Black From Tula starting to blush and the plant has several fruit on it as does the Giannini and the Cuostralee. Mean while the Akers West Virginia next to the Cuostralee is almost barren. Go figure. Have two Cowlick's Brandywine and two generic Brandywines plus a Pik's Yugo that you could not tell apart without labels so far. All have about 8 nice sized green fruit each. Will see how they taste in a few weeks at the current rate.
Biggest disappointment so far is Rouge D' Amagu. Only three small fruit out of two plants. Hope to get to taste them . Will try again next year.

[dice]

It is a rerun of 2008, when it was 10F below normal for the first
half of the summer. Indian Summer in September and two Early
Rouge plants that produced buckets full at the end of the
season saved the harvest that year. I think I got 6 Earl's Faux
fruit and about the same number of Brad's Black Heart that
would have been lost to the rain without those 4 weeks of sunny
September weather. I had two Gary'O Sena plants and a Black
Krim that did ok that year, too, plus my usual assortment of
golf-ball sized early cultivars.

Fingers crossed for this year.

[Tania]

I am hoping we get nice weather through September - we all need it so much!

I have had a real disaster on 3 of my 'in ground' tomato beds - late blight hit after the weekend rain and it was devastating. Lost all tomato plants there, 72 plants in total. All these had immature fruit, nothing ripe. Which means I failed to save any seeds. The only fruit I manage to rescue before the disaster hit was Rosalie's Early Orange, and it sit on the counter blushing.

All the plants under plastic are not showing any disease - keeping my fingers crossed.

I am so upset with the blight issue - took me two days to accept the reality and I am still stressed up. (If I could only get 1 fruit from each lost plant, I'd be so much happier! )

The good news is this accident helped me to discover the varieties most tolerant to late blight (meaning they held up the longest, and a few are still out there struggling - but I may need to pull them out today, once I check them out this morning, who knows). These are:

Alice's Agypt
Primrose Gage
Magnum Beefsteak
Verde Rallado
Missouri Pink Love Apple
Black Brandywine (RL)
Golden Egg

The least tolerant were (showed signs of the disease first, died super fast and probably spread the disease to the rest of the patch): Paquebot's Roma, Allerbest, Zogola Pear, Red Calabash, Chateau Rose, McClintock, Tres Cantos

I still have 7 other tomato beds in the open that are not affected yet, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that these will hold long enough to produce few fruits. And no more rain here please!!!!

Dice, I agree, this is a return of 2008 weather here. Darn! We seem to have 1 'good' year and 2 'bad' years pattern in PNW lately.

I'll report better things in the next post.

Tania

[Tania]

On the positive side - I picked and tasted one of the F2 segregations of Brandywine X Carbon, and it was absolutely delicious! Taste very similar to F1, but fruits were pink. The plant was RL, and this was a fourth larger fruited tomato that ripened this year, after Fritz Ackerman NOT, Azoychka, Fidelio. (I am not counting Sophie's CHoice here as it is growing im container garden on the deck)

Had several Yamal tomatoes yesterday in a salad - and these were so good! Bright red, meaty but still juicy, very sweet flesh with slightly tart gel. Probably better than Sibirskiy Skorospelyi and Sophie's Choice, although the last two are great also.

Titan surprised me also - the last 4 fruits I picked were very flavorful, more acidic than sweet, so it was a lovely combination of Titan and Yamal in the salad.

What I love about all these 'early Russian' tomatoes is that they have small seed cavities, mature early, perfect in small containers, steady production early in the season, have no core and absolutely delicious. I can see why they did not get wider acceptance in Russia though - as none of these fruits would last too long on the counter. 3-5 days max, so you better eat them quickly!

[Tania]

Originally Posted by amideutch

Tania, just used your link with no problem. Serenity and Sweet Dreams loaded with fruit and waiting for them to color up. My Fritz Ackerman (RL) was a bust and has round globes. Waiting to see what color they are. Growing two new ones from Andrey and both are hearts. They are Admiralteyskoe Serdtse and Krasnyi Mayak. Ami

Ami,

Where did your Ackerman seed come from? I know that deerpark's seed came from Reinhard, and I wonder if these were unstable...

I also have Fritz Ackerman plants growing from a different seed source, but unfortunately these have no fruit set yet, so I may not be able to sample the 'real deal' this year.

My Serenity (and other segregations from Serenity) are loaded too, I think I will get a ripe fruit or two in the next few days.

Tania

[Wulfe]

Yikes - sorry to hear about the late blight, Tania. Is LB a common occurence in BC? Here in Alberta I've yet to know anyone that's been victimized by it ... but this has been a very humid year for this province.

[Tania]

Originally Posted by Wulfe

Yikes - sorry to hear about the late blight, Tania. Is LB a common occurence in BC? Here in Alberta I've yet to know anyone that's been victimized by it ... but this has been a very humid year for this province.

Not sure if it is a common thing in BC, but it surely very common in my area. Usually it hits in mid September, and by that time I would have removed all the tomato plants in the open ground. This year it hit 5 weeks earlier, and it is devastating. I spent all day today removing the sick plants from the garden. I am hoping the LB spores are not going to reach my container tomato garden on the sundeck... I will know in 2 days if the darn thing spreads more. The morning dew surely helps to spread the disease.

I am so discouraged today that i am seriously thinking of not planting in the open ground next year. This means I'll have to cut by ~40%. Perhaps I can extend my container garden, we'll see.

Tania