Carolyn's Fall 2014 Feedback Reports

[Farmette]

Fatima, Medovoe Serdtse, Orangevyi Velikan

[Farmette]

Sakharnyi Pudovichok

[Farmette]

Ted's Pink Currant:

Well, I cannot get the file (of the same size as the others I just successfully uploaded) to upload. Here is the message I get; perhaps some of the people more computer literate than I, can weigh in on what is happening.

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

[JLJ_]

Originally Posted by Farmette

Ted's Pink Currant:

Well, I cannot get the file (of the same size as the others I just successfully uploaded) to upload. Here is the message I get; perhaps some of the people more computer literate than I, can weigh in on what is happening.

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

You're not alone, Farmette. I tried to post feedback info in this thread last night -- or rather in the wee hours this morning. It uploaded and displayed in preview one pic, then gave me the same messages you saw. I was using small images, well under the guideline size, all stored in the same desktop folder -- and it uploaded the first one with no problem. I closed the window, then came back, reloaded the forum and thread and tried again -- no luck. I closed the browser and tried again -- no luck. I even thought I'd perhaps put each variety, with its pic, in a separate post in the thread, to see if that helped -- just got repetition of that same message. I thought the problem was probably there, not here, but I was using an old machine which was being whimsical in other ways (now switched to an even older one, but at least it's behaving itself).

Anyway, I was glad you posted your experience, it's nice to know I'm not alone.

[MrsJustice]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

I think that Granny's Heart is excellent, but fact is that I know two Neil's, one in Canada, Neil G, and one in IA, Neil L, but it really doesn't matter which one gave you some replacement seeds. What's important it that you got to grow a plant.

Carolyn

Loka Seeds Germinated 6 DAYS 3/5
1. Seeds texture------ All Seeds appeared to be saved naturally. All Seeds had great color consistency.
2. Soil-------¼ Angel Field Tomato Soil baked in the oven a 360 degrees for 30 minutes to sterilize soil with ¾ organic Seeds started Soil from local Store. I do not want to use name of Soil Company, unless they want to sponsor my work.
3. Date Planed------ February 14 during a full moon
4. Total Number Of Seeds------- : 5
5. Germination Date: -------------February 21 2014
6. Germination Rate:-----3 out of 5
7. Season harvest report. The plants grew 9 feet in height, producing beautiful rainbow range of colors until before reaching a deep red. A very highly yielding variety small decorative looking with good flavor.


Indian Stripe Pl. Germinated 5 Days 4/5
1. Seeds texture------ All Seeds appeared to be saved naturally. All Seeds had great color consistency.
2. Soil-------¼ Angel Field Tomato Soil baked in the oven a 360 degrees for 30 minutes to sterilize soil with ¾ organic Seeds started Soil from local Store. I do not want to use name of Soil Company, unless they want to sponsor my work.
3. Date Planed------ February 14 during a full moon
4. Total Number Of Seeds------- : 5
5. Germination Date: -------------February 19 -20 2014
6. Germination Rate:-----4 out of 5
7. Special Notes: One of the Indian Stripe had to be pulled because thinnest and poor quality. Only 3 plants remain. I am also growing Indian Strip Regular Leaf, so it will be interesting to see the Tomatoes Fruit from both.
8. Season harvest report – I am in love with any tomato plant with potato leafs. This Potato leaf plant has strong structure with the strips very noticeable to me for the first time in growing this variety for many years. The unique shape was very uniform that you can feel in your hands: as if there were 4-6 tiny small corners on a big tomato. The Indian strip Potato leaf grows 8-10 feet whereas the Indian Strip regular leaf grows 12- 16 feet. Indian strip Potato leaf have a deeper tomato taste but sweetness with deep stripe whereas the Indian strip regular leaf produces more yields of Black tomatoes, with almost invisible strips on it dark skin with no unique shaping. I that God I was able to test the Indian Strip because I was able to sob many questions about this variety. If I had to choose between the two Indian strips I would choose to grow the Indian Strip Potatoes Leafs because of it beauty and taste, and strong structure.


Mortgage Liters Germinated in 5 Day 2/5
1. Seeds texture------ All Seeds appeared to be saved naturally. All Seeds had great color consistency.
2. Soil-------¼ Angel Field Tomato Soil baked in the oven a 360 degrees for 30 minutes to sterilize soil with ¾ organic Seeds started Soil from local Store. I do not want to use name of Soil Company, unless they want to sponsor my work.
3. Date Planed------ March 1 2014 New Moon
4. Total Number Of Seeds-------5
5. Germination Date: -------------March 6, 2014
6. Germination Rate:-----2 out of 5
7. Special Notes: Both plants are doing well.
8. Season harvest report: Seeds produced very healthy plants grew up to 12 feet and still producing its last harvest. Regular yielding plants, with large fruit, pinkish red 9-16 oz. As always delicious in taste.


Luck Cross Pl “5 Seeds” Germinated in 5 Days 3/5
1. Seeds texture------ All Seeds appeared to be saved naturally. All Seeds had great color consistency.
2. Soil-------¼ Angel Field Tomato Soil baked in the oven a 360 degrees for 30 minutes to sterilize soil with ¾ organic Seeds started Soil from local Store. I do not want to use name of Soil Company, unless they want to sponsor my work.
3. Date Planed------ March 1 2014 New Moon
4. Total Number Of Seeds-------5
5. Germination Date: -------------March 5, 2014
6. Germination Rate:-----3 out of 5
7. Special Notes: Plants are doing well
8. Season harvest report –again I am in love with any tomato plant with potato leafs. These were very health plants, growing around 8 feet and wide. The ripe fruit appears in a picture like scene painted under the potato leaves surrounding these beautiful tomatoes. So Beautiful to the eye that all: displays included the Potato Leaves with the Lucky Cross tomatoes underneath. Regular yielding with 8-12 oz fruit. Good tomato flavors.


Granny’s Heart 100 % Germination in 5 Days
1. Seeds texture------ All Seeds appeared to be saved naturally. All Seeds had great color consistency.
2. Soil-------¼ Angel Field Tomato Soil baked in the oven a 360 degrees for 30 minutes to sterilize soil with ¾ Organic Planting Soil from local Store
3. Date Planed------ March 1 2014 New Moon
4. Total Number Of Seeds------- 5
5. Germination Date: -------------March 6, 2014
6. Germination Rate:-----5 out of 5
7. Special Notes: All plants broke because an accidental dropping while walking them outside for sun. Planted the last 2 Seeds this April. {I dropped my granny hearts trying to harden them off in the spring and the last one did not germinate. A friend of Ms. Carolyn Named Neal sent some replacement seeds.
8. 100 % Germination: New Plant are doing and healthy
9. Season harvest report: This beautiful deep red heart shape tomato is truly shaped like a real Human Heart. I could not stop holding this tomato in my hands. I was completely in disbelief of the real feel of a human heart. The Fruit are very very deep Red, with out-standing deep tomato flavors for slicing and cooking 10 to 16 ounces. These plants grow up to 12 on a Large vines, which needs caging or much staking to support the large size fruit. Deep Tomato teste


Heart Breaker:
1. Seeds texture------ All Seeds appeared to be saved naturally. All Seeds had great color consistency.
2. Soil-------¼ Angel Field Tomato Soil baked in the oven a 360 degrees for 30 minutes to sterilize soil with ¾ Organic Potting Soil from local Store
3. Date Planed------ March 1 2014 New Moon
4. Total Number Of Seeds------- 5
5. Germination Date: -------------March 5, 2014
6. Germination Rate:-----3 out of 5
7. Season harvest report: Well I only received 3 full sized tomatoes with baby tomatoes green and growing. So I can say these Heart Beakesr are very late season tomatoes like the Amish Dexter Tomatoes. Next year I will start them much earlier to get a jump on the harvest. I pray that they make it through the cold weather we are experiences: which is very usual for my growing zone November 2014. The 3 tomatoes so far has been strangely shaped as if they are broken hearts:"which is very interesting to me" Slow yielding. 5-7 0z.

Black tomato for tomatoville Plant protection.jpg

Tomatoville Loke 1.jpg

Tomatoville Lucky Cross.jpg

[JLJ_]

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


-----------



. . . quoth the "manage attachments" screen when I tried again. This time it was willing to upload two of the six I was trying to upload -- all six are small jpg files, 56k or smaller -- all in the same folder.


I'm not inclined to think the problem is here, since is does find and upload a couple of the images.

Interesting that Farmette also said it uploaded some images, then gave that error and wouldn't upload . . . and that this time it uploaded one for me that it had said it couldn't upload last time, but gave the error on the others.

I suppose I could just skip the images, they're not anything particularly special, but seems to me that they give some kind of useful info about "true to type" -- and they add a bit of value for those using the thread in future to scout new varieties.


For now, I think I'll just wait and see if the problem clears up.

[MrsJustice]

Hello JLJ & Farmette

I was having the same problem with my pictures. But it seem to be working better.

Good report and pictures Farmette

[MrsJustice]

Originally Posted by Farmette

Ted's Pink Currant:

Well, I cannot get the file (of the same size as the others I just successfully uploaded) to upload. Here is the message I get; perhaps some of the people more computer literate than I, can weigh in on what is happening.

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

That's the message I was getting to. I like to post pictures with my reports. I was able to upload only 3 pictures last night. I guess that is enough.

[JLJ_]

So (at least) three of us have been getting the same error message in response to some, but not all, of the images we are attempting to upload -- and at least in my case -- all of them -- those that uploaded and those that didn't -- are small jpg images taken by the same camera, resized with the same software and stored in the same desktop folder. With at least three of us seeing this, the problem seems unlikely to be at our end of the process. Hopefully, it's one of those things that will get fixed presently . . . or just go away by itself when the sunspot pattern changes or the polar jet stream hops in a new direction.

[MrsJustice]

Originally Posted by JLJ_

So (at least) three of us have been getting the same error message in response to some, but not all, of the images we are attempting to upload -- and at least in my case -- all of them -- those that uploaded and those that didn't -- are small jpg images taken by the same camera, resized with the same software and stored in the same desktop folder. With at least three of us seeing this, the problem seems unlikely to be at our end of the process. Hopefully, it's one of those things that will get fixed presently . . . or just go away by itself when the sunspot pattern changes or the polar jet stream hops in a new direction.

Yes I think someone is trying to fix the problems because I too used small images last week too an was unable to upload. It good to know that's not my computer acting up.

[Farmette]

Glad to know it is not just me.

[carolyn137]

JLJ just posted in General Discussion about problems posting pictures and I suggested that you might want to consider contacting Mischka about it b/c I can't do anything myself.

And just noting that there should be many more feedback reports here and doing it in text would really help if your pictures don't download.

Thanks,

Carolyn

[spacetogrow]

Benissoinante (only 2 of 7 seeds sprouted).

Modest height on indeterminate plants. 1 oz. fruit - yellow edging toward orange. "Bright" sweet-tart flavor. Both plants seemed true to type.

The one planted in a pot on deck was reasonably productive but not fantastic. The one planted in community garden plot had low productivity, along with most other tomato plants, probably due to cold and very wet spring and early summer.

Thanks again for the seeds. Have a blessed winter.

[JLJ_]

The short report is that all five varieties grew healthy plants, produced fruit, appeared to be true to type, and were "grow again" quality, though with our unusually chilly/wet summer none of them were able to mature their bagged seed-fruit.



Zolotoe Serdtse 2012
Germination: 4/4 100%
Medovoe Serdtse B 2013
Germination: 1/9 11%

All the Serdtses that germinated, four Zolotoes, one Medovoe, made it to the garden and produced fruit. Zolotoe produced quite a bit more fruit, but with four plants, that's not surprising. I'd guess their per-plant production was similar. Fruit was also similar, though Zolotoe ran a little larger. It's possible that Zolotoe just ripened a little sooner, so more of it reached full size before the snow. Fruit shape was all as represented below.

Considering that both Serdtses were in the last group of big tomatoes to be planted, and yet they out produced several other varieties planted 1 to 3 weeks earlier, they appear to be good producers in our climate.

One observation: During mid to late summer, the Serdtses periodically developed wilty looks, especially toward the top of the plants, though other plants in the same row -- Sweet Ozark Orange to the west and Fioletovyi Kruglyi and Black Prince to the east -- did not, nor did other heart tomatoes in the same garden. The 'wiltyness' did not appear to be disease of any sort -- and because it changed periodically, I don't think it was just heart-tomato-wilty-foliage-conformation. I finally concluded it might represent a greater sensitivity to heat and/or water-deprivation stress. They were not water-deprived compared to other tomatoes -- all the tomatoes were on soaker hoses, and all were watered and fed at the same time, as weather warranted. Under those conditions only the Serdtses showed the periodic wilty behavior. It appeared to respond to a little extra hand watering -- though I also put a light dose of all purpose Miracle Grow in that extra water, which could have played a role in the recovery. When I pulled the plants, their roots looked healthy, but seemed to be a smaller/denser main root clump than other tomatoes -- which could fit with normal good growth that was more quickly stressed by heat/drying soil than their neighbors. It also fits with the experience I had last year, where strong Zolotoe seedlings reacted badly (nearly died) in response to hardening off conditions under which other young tomatoes thrived. Last year's Zolotoes did eventually recover, after an extended period in the shade of very low branches of a pine tree, but they never did catch up enough to produce fruit last year.

So my tentative conclusion is that Medovoe and Zolotoe Serdtse are good producers of what was to me surprisingly large fruit, even in a short season, cooler than a usual summer, but that they *may* be more sensitive to heat/low water stress than some varieties, and may benefit from special attention to avoid/alleviate such stress. If so, effects would seem more likely to show up in containers than in the ground, and the soil in which they were growing -- container or ground -- might well impact whether or not signs of stress appeared at all.

As the Serdtses were good and comparatively early producers, I would not say this apparent wilty stress reaction was a fault -- it might even just be a "one of" occurrence for some unknown reason -- but it *might* indicate that in some soils and/or climate conditions these two varieties benefit from extra attention to water and nutrition, compared to other tomatoes.

Joe's Pink Oxheart A 2012
Germination 7/9 78%

Four of the seven Joe's that germinated made it to the garden. (All but one of the seven that germinated were helmet heads, but those that got their hats off did fine. I think the seed is OK, but might benefit from presoaking before planting.)

Production of mature fruit from Joe's was not large, and the smaller green fruit, though usable, did not mature to the quality seen in indoor-matured small green Marglobes, for example. Both effects, though, are both probably because Joe's DTM is just barely within our normal growing time, and in a summer that was cooler and wetter than usual, there just wasn't time for the Joe's to mature a good crop. They did mature some fruit and judging by the small fruit on the plants, just a little better conditions would have produced quite a lot more.

Overall, my impression of Joe's is very favorable . . . can't say it better than I did in the Joe's thread . . .

"the four Joe's Pink Oxheart plants that made it to the garden May 26 are among the biggest, strongest, greenest, generally most healthy looking of all the seed-started tomatoes.

Just looking down the row of others planted at the same time, it's clear that Joe's is a winner, even if factors beyond its control limit its performance this year . . . and I'm not at all sure any adverse condition will slow Joe down . . . if Yellowstone goes off, that might discourage it some, but this is one tough tomato!

Fred was right, this is an exceptional tomato variety . . . about as close to 'a tomato everyone should try' as you'll ever find, I suspect. "

Iva's Red Berry 2013
Germination 3/9 33%

Only one of the three that germinated was strong enough to make it to the garden. I planted this with Super Sweet 100 on one side and Sun Gold on the other, as I understand that to be its ancestry. It was not as large or as productive as either, but the difference was small, and I suspect that it might be just a little slower to mature and that in places with a longer season, or even in a normal weather season here, it might have matched them by season's end. Flavor I thought was pleasant and, more important, in a picnic lunch before the weather changed we took an assortment of cherry tomatoes, and Iva's Red Berry was Mom's favorite cherry.

Sweet Ozark Orange 2013
Germination 5/7 71%

Four of the five that germinated made it to the garden. Like Joe's, the DTM for this is just barely within our normal growing season, and in a cooler, wetter summer like 2014 it didn't have time to perform as it would in a little better season. The plants were sizable and strong and we did get a few green fruit large enough that they ripened well. Based on those, it's Mom's new favorite tomato -- though Indian Stripe PL and Indian Stripe Heart?, she says, run very close. (Seeds for those from plants grown in last year's seed offer.)

As with the other varieties, the Sweet Ozark Orange fruit I'd bagged didn't have time to mature before our early September snowstorm, but Sam has kindly sent more seed so we'll be able to try it again next season, hopefully under more favorable conditions.

Images:

With our season as short as it is, season's yield, average fruit size and probably fruit quality was undoubtedly affected by the early September snow/freeze that caused all these tomatoes to be picked "ready or not" just before that weather change. At that time, none of these had produced ripe fruit, though Joe's and both Serdtses had produced a few fruit that I'd picked when they were clearly mature green in late August. Included pictures of the fruit give some idea of the fruit, therefore, but may underestimate its normal quantity, quality, and size.



Serdtses: Medovoe and Zolotoe

Joe's Pink Oxheart (3) would not upload -- error message as above in thread

Iva's Red Berry (1) would not upload -- error message as above in thread

Sweet Ozark Orange


Edit: The picture oddities continue. The Serdtses image and the Sweet Ozark Orange image did upload, and both showed in the preview, but the Serdtses image didn't post. It's showing up in the preview again now, so I'll see if it posts this time.

[carolyn137]

To all of you who posted most recently thanks so much and again I'm not theone who can do anything about pictures, sorry.

IN about a week I have to get my seeds out and start deciding which of them will remain for 2015 so if there are any additional feedbacks, that would be great.

Carolyn