Recommended large micro or hanging basket variety?

[Greatgardens]

I'm somewhat disappointed with my micros this year. I realize they are small plants, but they are just delivering a few tomatoes every few days. I have the following this season:

Red Robin
Vilma
Aztek
Mohamed
Linda

Linda and Vilma have been the best producers thus far. Linda is a larger micro (maybe mini?) and produces very large cherries -- nearly 2" in diameter. They are actually sliceable (barely) for a BLT. And Mohamed (which would win a contest for the best foliage of the bunch) is very late. I got Dwarf Pink Passion tomatoes before Mohamed, and DPP was planted several weeks later. All these were planted in 12" plastic hanging baskets.

I've grown a number of hanging basket varieties such as Tumbler in the past, and they produce far better, but then are larger plants and are difficult to keep in my cold frame until the weather is settled in early May.

So -- any suggestions? And maybe for a somewhat more compact hanging basket type?

-GG

[Cole_Robbie]

dfollet is the man with the micros. A lot of us are growing his crosses. I am just about to go pick a few ripe cherries right now, and try to make my seed selections out of what he sent me.

A hanging basket is a really poor place to grow a tomato plant. They are mostly a decorative novelty. The only variety I have ever grown that looked good in baskets has been Tumbling Tom. The red tastes pretty awful, but the yellow is edible. Neither are that great. I've grown a lot of micros, but none of them cascade well and make an attractive plant.

Terrenzo F1 actually did ok when I had it in a hanging basket. It is not as pretty as Tumbling Tom, but the fruit are larger and have tremendously better flavor.

Angora Treasures was my favorite micro from last year. It is super early, productive, and has good flavor.

[zipcode]

Utyonok was a bit bigger than a Red Robin. About 1.5 times biger. Great foliage. Great production. Taste was kinda not there.

[Greatgardens]

"A hanging basket is a really poor place to grow a tomato plant..."

Hi-

Just curious about the issue with a hanging basket? 12" makes a pretty fair sized pot for a micro (or two). Yes, they aren't the best tasting, but so much better than from the store.
Understand about DFollett. I have some of his mini's this year, but none that will be micro's. Don't know yet about earliness.

-GG

[Greatgardens]

Here's Mohamed. Two, actually in the 12" basket. Lots of "greenies" but maybe just a half-dozen ripe ones thus far. By the time this one delivers many, I'll have plenty of Fourth of July, Early Girl, and Dwarf Pink Passion But a really nice looking pair of plants, I think.

[Cole_Robbie]

My Utynyok is red, not orange. It does not have the pointy ends like that, either. It is a great producer, though, and the flavor can be very good. It actually has given me my best-tasting red of the year so far, but I think it was so good because the plant only made about two fruit before dying of fusarium.

I think my hanging baskets are 10" which may be part of why I don't like them. They dry out way too fast. They have to be dunked in a bucket almost every day in hot weather. If I was growing in hanging baskets, I would definitely want a drip system set up to water them, as well as the largest hanging baskets I could find.

[zipcode]

That was probably something else. They should be orange and pointy.
The one to the left is fully ripe.

[AlittleSalt]

When I think of a hanging basket variety - I get a picture in my head of Tumbling Tom. The picture is from https://www.google.com/search?q=tumb...=1497730074768

[Hatgirl]

Bajaja, Red Profusion, and Sweet N Neat Scarlet Improved did well for me. Compact with a nice flavour. But none are slicers.

506 Dwarf Bush Early, Mega Bite / Megabyte, Little Sun, and Snow Fairy grow taller (but still very short, under 2ft!). But they have larger fruit than the first 3 I mentioned.

[Cole_Robbie]

Originally Posted by zipcode

That was probably something else. They should be orange and pointy.

The last time I looked, it seemed like I found someone else on google images calling Utyonok a red tomato, but you're right. It is supposed to be orange. Mine displays all the other traits I think it is supposed to have - squat, bushy growth "like a duck," earliness, and very good yield. It's just red, instead. I don't know if it crossed for someone along the way and I have those seeds. Mine seems stable. I actually have a lot of hope for it as an early greenhouse tomato. I think it would do well under low tunnels, too.

[KarenO]

One of my experiments, These are some F3 terenzo plants (3 in a 16 inch pot on a stand)
Just starting to bloom. Attractive enough to be on the patio, early and should be productive.
I think that success in baskets or a pot in a stand for determinate tumbler types is the size of the pot, bigger being better along with a lot of attention to water and fertilizer.
Something like my photo should be expected to produce easily 600 tomatoes before the end of the season. Tumbling types in baskets are popular in the Canadian prairies and are great for short season areas. Productive and attractive enough to be decorative a large 16 inch basket with 2-3 plants in it, terenzo being a popular one here, blooming and with green fruit on it sells for 50.00 at the big greenhouses in the Edmonton Alberta area. And they sell a lot of them. If I was selling tomato plants in Edmonton I surely would be selling big tumbler baskets well started.
Plenty of bang for the buck and if you can commit to looking after it you will get a lot of tasty tomatoes from that one big pot. My mom grows one tomato pot each year and enjoys counting them. One year she got over 1000 and gives them away to all her friends.
A well watered pot of this size loaded with fruit will be very heavy so consideration needs to be given to a strong support and a strong ( wire or chain) hanger if you plan to hang something like this. My preference is to use the iron plant stand. This will tumble close to the patio floor all the way around and be at least a meter wide once it really gets going. I don't think they are just a novelty, at least not for short seasons and I intend to continue to stabilize my OP version of this one.

KarenO

[KarenO]

My photo won't load, I will try again with better wifi
KarenO

[Cole_Robbie]

I may be asking you for some of those OP Terrenzo seeds in the future, Karen. Stabilizing that hybrid is a great idea, I think. It is one of my favorite hybrids, but the seeds are fairly expensive.

[KarenO]

They are! A dollar each in my area. I will certainly share once I have something stable. They seem pretty uniform already.
KarenO

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks, Karen

Stokes has the best prices on Terrenzo that I have found:
http://www.stokeseeds.com/product.as...checkCookies=1