Noobie observations and questions and progress throughout season

[tnkrer]

This is my second year of vegetable gardening and I have increased my tomato plants from 2 to 6! So here are some observations and questions ... Also I will update my progress through the season in this thread ..

1. Earthtainer tomato plants have grown with more vigor than my large SWC. (same grow media, same fertilization, same depth of grow media, only difference is water storage and wicking). So more earthtainers next year.





2. Brandywine flower looks quite different from other tomato flowers. Is that true of other PL tomatoes as well? (Brandywine is the only PL tomato I have right now)



3. I have a yellow pear tomato marked as "heirloom tomato" by Bonnie. The leaves are RL. So I suppose heirloom tomato does not necessarily mean PL. But will that be OP and I can save seeds from that to plant next year?

4. The leaf size and overall plant expanse seems to be different for different varieties. sun sugar is growing quite vigorously, but the leaves seem to be much smaller than early girl or even other cherry tomatoes (yellow pear and black cherry). Is that normal or is my particular cherry not growing well?



5. mint grows like weed. (and if you look at my lawn, you will know that I am very good at growing weeds). I dont feed it any fertilizer, water it only if I remember and yet it is luxurious.



6. And my peonies, just because that was my first successful plant .. (planted from root stick 4 years ago)

[kath]

Hi & welcome! Close observation of your plants is such a good thing and all the plants in your post look great. Tomato flowers can vary from plant to plant and even on the same plant regardless of leaf type. Sometimes early blossoms are megablooms and will look different from most of the other flowers that the plant will produce. All heirlooms are open-pollinated and so you can save seeds from them but not all heirlooms have potato leaves. Leaf sizes and shapes can look a bit different on different parts of the same plant. Certain varieties can have a distinctive color or leaf shape. Tania, a member here, has a website called Tatiana's Tomatobase which has lots of information and pictures that might help you. Enjoy!

Lovely peony, by the way.

kath

[tlintx]

I am ridiculously jealous of your peonies. They're one of the few things we can't grow here, or so I've heard. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong, that would be awesome!)

Tomatoes come in two leaf types -- regular and potato leaf (like the Brandywine). And some novelty shapes. Leaf shape won't tell you if it's a hybrid (seed might not come true) or open pollinated (OP). Heirloom just means it's old!

This is one of the most helpful pages I've ever come across on what does all this tomato stuff mean anyway.

http://www.sampleseeds.com/?page_id=4991

And the Tomatobase kath referenced:

http://tatianastomatobase.com/

Some of my tomatoes have big, floppy leaves, some have much smaller ones... I think leaf size depends on the variety and growing conditions. But I'm still learning too!

[AprilMayJune]

Those peonies are lovely! We're still waiting for ours to bloom.

[Vespertino]

I love this thread!

And I agree with tlntx, I was disappointed when I heard Peonies don't do well in TX. I love them so much I wouldn't want a backyard without them.

[tlintx]

I have heard you could go out daily and dump ice on them. But that seemed so wasteful... before we got a fridge with a working ice maker.

HMMMMMM!!!!

Hey, I did some research, and it turns out you can grow them, at least in North Texas. If you baby them and maybe put a jug of ice on them over the winter.

[Sharpcheddar]

Wow, your peonies look completely different than mine! We just bought our house and apparently the old owners really loved peonies so we have TONS of them. My German Johnson has blooms like the one in your close up photo. I'm a total newbie at this gardening stuff, so I've been wondering about the different shape and using seeds too.

[tnkrer]

Thanks for the welcome Kath. I have looked at Tatiana's tomato base, but havent really used it a lot. will spend some time with that information for my varieties. tlintx, thanks for the links. While there is a lot of information is out there and that enables new gardeners like me .. it takes a while and actually doing things and talking/discussing those things makes it into your head as permanent knowledge .. Its a journey and quite enjoyable one. (except when your plants die ..)
I always envy the southern states for their longer growing season .. Well we get peonies as a consolation (and now there are 20 blooms there, they die out very quickly though )
Sharpcheddar, I am sure that there are many different kinds of peonies. We have some double bloom ones that bloom somewhat later, some red ones. I just like these since they were the first plants that I did not kill and they look nice too.

On the brandywine, after reading around, I decided that it is a megabloom. Still I am wondering why it is not showing any yellow petals in there

So onto my next question. On the sunsugar, three flowers have dropped, but I do not see any tomato in there. (may be they are too small). I have a very blurry photo of that attached here with the yellow circle .. Is it because its not pollinating? All the trees next to it are forming tomatoes just fine. Should I manually pollinate sunsugar?

[kath]

Originally Posted by tnkrer

I always envy the southern states for their longer growing season ..

On the brandywine, after reading around, I decided that it is a megabloom. Still I am wondering why it is not showing any yellow petals in there

So onto my next question. On the sunsugar, three flowers have dropped, but I do not see any tomato in there. (may be they are too small). I have a very blurry photo of that attached here with the yellow circle .. Is it because its not pollinating? All the trees next to it are forming tomatoes just fine. Should I manually pollinate sunsugar?

It seems to me that it's more difficult to grow tomatoes and quite a few other things in the southern areas of the country and I kind of enjoy the break from gardening that winter provides.

Megablooms sometimes look much more green than yellow- I attached a photo of the largest one I've grown.

It's hard to say what's going on with your Sunsugar especially if your other tomato plants are setting fruits. You can try vibrating the plant a couple times a day by shaking the stake or cage. It won't require special attention, though, and will be producing lots of fruits soon.

kath

[tlintx]

Kath is right! We're blessed with 270 growing days, but the heat means it's really more like two 90 day growing seasons.

Still awesome, but very few edibles will thrive in 90 degree weather with 90% humidity. And you really can't stay outside long enough to do much.

Needless to say, I'm already missing winter!


Tl

[lycomania]

Oh, you poor babies with your TWO 90-day growing seasons! Boy do I feel bad for you! (Hehe we have one 90-day growing season and the beginning and end of that lonely season comes with caveats.

[tnkrer]

The megabloom now has yellow petals in it and looks very much like the photo attached by Kath ... And on the sunsugar I spy a very tiny globe of a tomato, I think. So may be sunsugar just starts with a minute tomato compared to other tomatoes.

All tomato plants are now at least two feet tall and sport many trusses with buds/flowers. yellow pear has the least flowers/buds per truss (only 6-8 per truss), while sun sugar has the highest at 14-15 per truss.

One question I have always had is, what to do with the dying flower at the end of the fruit (for a tomato or a cuke ..) Should we remove it or leave it be? Does it have anything to do with the growth/health of the fruit? It feels like the dead flower will be decomposing (especially on rainy days) and it would be better to remove that flower. However, anyone with more than few tomato plants, cannot really be spending time removing flowers and their tomatoes do just fine, so probably it doesn't matter what I do with those flowers ..

[kath]

Originally Posted by tnkrer

One question I have always had is, what to do with the dying flower at the end of the fruit (for a tomato or a cuke ..) Should we remove it or leave it be? Does it have anything to do with the growth/health of the fruit? It feels like the dead flower will be decomposing (especially on rainy days) and it would be better to remove that flower. However, anyone with more than few tomato plants, cannot really be spending time removing flowers and their tomatoes do just fine, so probably it doesn't matter what I do with those flowers ..

Not sure if it's true but after fussing too much with my tomato plants one year and removing some of those still-attached dead blossoms, I read that removing blossoms from tiny fruits can lead to cat-facing. It was a really bad year for cat-faced fruits in my garden so I've let them fall off in their own good time ever since.

[Sharpcheddar]

Originally Posted by kath

It seems to me that it's more difficult to grow tomatoes and quite a few other things in the southern areas of the country and I kind of enjoy the break from gardening that winter provides.

Megablooms sometimes look much more green than yellow- I attached a photo of the largest one I've grown.

It's hard to say what's going on with your Sunsugar especially if your other tomato plants are setting fruits. You can try vibrating the plant a couple times a day by shaking the stake or cage. It won't require special attention, though, and will be producing lots of fruits soon.

kath

Kath - That megabloom looks like some sort of alien monster! Does it produce just a normal tomato though?

[kath]

Originally Posted by Sharpcheddar

Kath - That megabloom looks like some sort of alien monster! Does it produce just a normal tomato though?

The plant this was on was extremely slow growing compared to the rest (over 100) and this bloom just hung on so long without change that I grew impatient and yanked the whole plant out as it wasn't setting other fruits either. Sometimes my curiousity about new varieties loses out to the practicality of giving the healthy, productive neighbors more room. By the end of July, in my garden if a tomato plant isn't doing well while others are already proving themselves to be delicious and productive, each day it's more likely to be pulled before I taste a fruit. Ruthless, I know, but I don't need to taste them all- I'm just looking for the best ones in any given year and earliness, productivity, vigor, disease resistance and appearance are taken into consideration and I'm a fan of pretty and delicious tomatoes, not oddities. Most of the megablooms I've seen don't develop into a "normal" single fruit, though- they're usually an ugly fused combination fruit that can be scarier looking than this bloom.