Are any of these particularly tall plants?

lakelady · November 8, 2011

I'm working on the rest of my tomato plants for next year that won't be in my main garden. Of course i have more seeds than I can fit, so I'm narrowing down the choices at this point for next year, and the rest will have to wait until the following year. I have one more little garden spot I'm saving in case I growout any dwarfs in 2012.

There is one little spot I have that is a strip of soil, 2-3' wide (it varies from one end to the next) and about 16' long. So I am limited to what can go in there and thought I would also build some of Raybo's earthtainers to put on the walkway next to them (it's actually an old concrete shuffleboard court that I've never used and the paint has worn off so it is about 4' wide walkway). In looking at what I'd like to plant, I can fit 7 plants in the ground, and the rest in most likely 7-8 earthtainers. I can't find too much info on which plants tend to grow very tall, as those are the ones I'd like to plant in ground.

So far, I've read the Brandywines grow very tall so I have those designated for in-ground ...

In Ground:
Brandywine Cowlick
Brandywine Sudduth
Brandywine Croatia
Amazon Chocolate
Big Zac OP
?
?

Then the rest on my list for 2012 would have to go in containers, but I'd like to know if any of these typically grow very tall:

BTD Pink
BTD Heart
Black Cherry
Black from Tula
Brads Black Heart
Cherokee Purple
Cherokee Chocolate
Jaune flamme
Gary O Sena
JD Special CTex
Sandul Moldovan
Sungold F1
Paul Robeson
Fishlake Oxheart

My backup list has these also..I think Indian Stripe is one I've read usually grows quite tall
Ukranian Heart
Alice's Egypt
Kosovo
Bloody Butcher
Indian Stripe
Mule Team
Danko
Black and Brown Boar

Thanks for any feedback you can give

kath · November 8, 2011

Amazon Chocolate RL was tall in my garden, but the PL version was shortish.

From your container list, Black Cherry, Gary 'OSena and Sungold F1 are tall for me.

In the backup list, Indian Stripe didn't grow tall for me, but Kosovo was quite tall.

lakelady · November 8, 2011

lol...so you're telling me this isn't as simple as it sounds then

...I thought Kosovo grew to about 5'. It's probably very likely that no matter what I "think" will be good for containers, it very well could not. I think I read that hearts usually do well in containers. I'm just trying to hopefully keep from having a gazzillion cages with tomatoes that grow out of control, I find it easier to control my tomatoes with stakes.

cloz · November 8, 2011

I grew 2 Sungold F1's this year. One in a container and one in the garden. The container one grew to between 5' and 6' and was manageable. I grew it in a 7 gal container and used a 5' high cage for it. The one in the garden grew to between 7' and 8' tall and was much larger in diameter. I only fertilized the container plant 3 times after planting and the one in the garden got the same fertilizer, however, it was planted in very rich soil with lots of composted leaves.
Cowlick, Sudduths, Black Cherry, Ctex and Paul Robeson were all over 6' tall and large plants. They were all planted directly in the ground.

kath · November 8, 2011

The Kosovo plant I grew last year reached the top wire at 6.5' and then I attached the vines as it grew horizontally along the wire in both directions for I'd guess another 2'. I don't know how tall it's "supposed" to get, but it was in the fairly tall group of the 150 or so varieties that were still growing at the end of the season last year.

These results are for single plants grown in the ground and pruned to 1, 2 or 3 vines and either staked or attached to horizontal wires, except for Black Cherry, which wasn't pruned. I don't think tomato plants get as tall when grown in containers, but I could be wrong about that.

You're going to have to provide some kind of support for indeterminates grown in containers, and if the plants grow taller than your support, you can top them

or just let them keep going and they'll eventually fall over and grow back down toward the ground. If there are other variables such as how much sun they'll get in different areas, too, then just make your best guess and go for it. Take notes and make adjustments the next year for any you want to grow again.

Too Tall Toms · November 9, 2011

This is the kind of stuff I LOVE reading about! Tall tomatoes will be my goal for next year!

Mudman · November 9, 2011

For me Sungold F1 is enormous! It was probably 9 ft. in my garden last year. I think the only tomato that I have had grow larger than SG was Yellow Pear. Cherokee Purple has always been the shortest plant that I have grown for an indeterminate.

tgplp · November 9, 2011

This is interesting- sun gold grew about 5 feet in my garden, compared to 7 foot black cherry and supersweet 100. That's weird because everyone else in this thread, their sun golds got huge!

Taryn

**carolyn137** · November 9, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by lakelady

lol...so you're telling me this isn't as simple as it sounds then

...I thought Kosovo grew to about 5'. It's probably very likely that no matter what I "think" will be good for containers, it very well could not. I think I read that hearts usually do well in containers. I'm just trying to hopefully keep from having a gazzillion cages with tomatoes that grow out of control, I find it easier to control my tomatoes with stakes.

No, it really isn't as simple as it sounds, from your comment above.

Send seeds from the same batch to different folks in different parts of the country and it's doubtful that there will be consensus on how tall the plants will be and that's b'c of all the variables like:

If inground, what is the soil like?
What was the weather like in the season they were grown?
What amendments were used and if so how much and how often?
If not inground then how grown, in containers, caging, staking, Florida weave or whatever.

I'm one who sprawls plants so I haven't clue as to how tall the plants might get to. And these days I have to grow them in containers and put in each one one of those cheapie conical supports to get the plants higher before they start cascading down.

I've had to do this container growing since the summer of 2005 but before that it was always in an open field and since being forced to container growing I've grown lots and lots of heart varieties and they've perfomed just as well as the other varieties in the same season.

So I'm not sure about your comment about hearts not growing well in containers. I can't see why they wouldn't, in general.

Looking at your initial post I see you said you were going to grow 7 plants in that narrow area that was only 2-3 ft wide X 16 ft long. That's only 2.3 ft between plants, a bit more if you let the end ones spill over.

At that distance apart what's your game plan as to how you're going to grow them? Caging, staking, etc? I know I'd cage them since the distance for caging and staking is just about the same. But I think you'll get better plants by caging and one reason is the heat of the concrete from the old shuffleboard stressing any plants you put in the area. Just my own opinion here.

lakelady · November 9, 2011

Hi Carolyn,

Well, I'm trying to work up a plan, but don't actually have one yet...I was thinking of staking or trying a florida weave for that strip of soil with the in-ground plants. All summer this past summer I watched and recorded how much sun and where the sun was because I considered putting tomatoes there next year. The strip of land is actually much longer, probably 30' plus, but part of it doesn't get enough sun once it travels across the sky and into the trees in my neighbor's yard. So, the idea was to put containers on the concrete for the rest of the tomatoes.

I just recall reading posts where people had said Brandywines in general grew quite tall, so I came up the idea that possibly some had a tendency to grow taller than others and I could figure out which to grow where based on that. Maybe not. My comment about the hearts...I can't remember where i read it, but I recall reading that hearts did grow quite well in containers.

Between all the massive amounts of information here on TV, and what I've been reading in your book, I'm just trying to see if I can be better prepared for next year by doing this early. I did take your advice and am growing several Brandywines together to see which I like best, as well as growing the Cherokees in the same year as well. Makes a lot of sense because if I have a bad year, at least my comparisons will be based on same weather and treatments I give them.

Regarding your post on the caging vs. staking, do plants actually do better with cages? I never knew that! wow. You know, come to think of it, I ran out of stakes this year as I planted more tomatoes than previous years, so one of my pastes got a cage. Same plant as 8 others, San Marzanos. The caged plant actually DID produce more fruits and I thought it was just a fluke. It was in a small isolated bed with 2 other SM and the caged one just went wild and kept producing all summer with over 80 fruits total. It also had less disease when the septoria hit.

lakelady · November 9, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by kath

The Kosovo plant I grew last year reached the top wire at 6.5' and then I attached the vines as it grew horizontally along the wire in both directions for I'd guess another 2'. I don't know how tall it's "supposed" to get, but it was in the fairly tall group of the 150 or so varieties that were still growing at the end of the season last year.

These results are for single plants grown in the ground and pruned to 1, 2 or 3 vines and either staked or attached to horizontal wires, except for Black Cherry, which wasn't pruned. I don't think tomato plants get as tall when grown in containers, but I could be wrong about that.

You're going to have to provide some kind of support for indeterminates grown in containers, and if the plants grow taller than your support, you can top them

or just let them keep going and they'll eventually fall over and grow back down toward the ground. If there are other variables such as how much sun they'll get in different areas, too, then just make your best guess and go for it. Take notes and make adjustments the next year for any you want to grow again.

Kath, it took me 2 weeks to do 2 of Raybos Inntainers because I became so OCD about it (I was checking my measurements of holes 3 or 4 times each lol....). The thought of going through the instructions for the cages , well, I need to be prepared for that one ...I get very distracted easily.

I was pruning my plants this year to 2 main stalks but eventually towards August when disease hit and all the rains came, I gave up on trying to keep up with pruning half dead plants. It was discouraging.

travis · November 10, 2011

Sungold can get enormous and very long. Well grown, I've had them 9 - 12 feet long when let go to do as they will. Black Cherry can go 8 feet long easy. I've had JD's C-Tex that grew 8 feet long and some that didn't get 6 feet tall. Pink Tie Dye, Black & Brown Boar, and Juane Flamme are very managable, imo, even in containers.

kath · November 10, 2011

Quote:

Originally Posted by lakelady

Kath, it took me 2 weeks to do 2 of Raybos Inntainers because I became so OCD about it (I was checking my measurements of holes 3 or 4 times each lol....). The thought of going through the instructions for the cages , well, I need to be prepared for that one ...I get very distracted easily.

I was pruning my plants this year to 2 main stalks but eventually towards August when disease hit and all the rains came, I gave up on trying to keep up with pruning half dead plants. It was discouraging.

I give you a lot of credit for even attempting to make Inntainer! Not handy and neither is DH- he pounds stakes we get for free after I nail a few tacks in them and that helps the ties not slip down the stakes when the vines get heavy. I use strips of old fabric for ties. It's easy and cheap and does the job. We have a few cages from free/cheap wire but I'm not convinced that I like them yet- I find it very hard to find bugs, spray, prune and keep up with disease as well as with other methods I've tried so far.

I usually maintain the pruning to the end of July/beginning of August and then whatever's still healthy usually gets free reign for the rest of the season. This year was brutal for leaf disease problems here and there wasn't much left to prune by mid-August.

My goal for next year is not to grow more than I can keep up with in terms of spraying for fungal disease.

lakelady · November 10, 2011

Well, it was a horrid year here for leaf diseases, and actually, I'm glad it was because I found tomatoville and just kept coming back looking for advice and help!

It was so bad I thought about asking my witty 18 year old to write a greek tragedy about it lol...

PATM · November 12, 2011

I planted 6 Brandywine tomato plants in my garden this past season, never again!

They are huge plants, that grow to be 12' tall. I ended up using 10' long 2x4s for supports. The plant's leaves and fruit are so large and heavy it will need a cage for support.

Harvest is late summer, with relatively small yields.

Unless you have a big big garden, avoid Brandywine.

November 8, 2011	#1
lakelady Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: northern NJ zone 6b Posts: 1,862	Are any of these particularly tall plants? I'm working on the rest of my tomato plants for next year that won't be in my main garden. Of course i have more seeds than I can fit, so I'm narrowing down the choices at this point for next year, and the rest will have to wait until the following year. I have one more little garden spot I'm saving in case I growout any dwarfs in 2012. There is one little spot I have that is a strip of soil, 2-3' wide (it varies from one end to the next) and about 16' long. So I am limited to what can go in there and thought I would also build some of Raybo's earthtainers to put on the walkway next to them (it's actually an old concrete shuffleboard court that I've never used and the paint has worn off so it is about 4' wide walkway). In looking at what I'd like to plant, I can fit 7 plants in the ground, and the rest in most likely 7-8 earthtainers. I can't find too much info on which plants tend to grow very tall, as those are the ones I'd like to plant in ground. So far, I've read the Brandywines grow very tall so I have those designated for in-ground ... In Ground: Brandywine Cowlick Brandywine Sudduth Brandywine Croatia Amazon Chocolate Big Zac OP ? ? Then the rest on my list for 2012 would have to go in containers, but I'd like to know if any of these typically grow very tall: BTD Pink BTD Heart Black Cherry Black from Tula Brads Black Heart Cherokee Purple Cherokee Chocolate Jaune flamme Gary O Sena JD Special CTex Sandul Moldovan Sungold F1 Paul Robeson Fishlake Oxheart My backup list has these also..I think Indian Stripe is one I've read usually grows quite tall Ukranian Heart Alice's Egypt Kosovo Bloody Butcher Indian Stripe Mule Team Danko Black and Brown Boar Thanks for any feedback you can give __________________ Antoniette

November 8, 2011	#3
lakelady Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: northern NJ zone 6b Posts: 1,862	lol...so you're telling me this isn't as simple as it sounds then ...I thought Kosovo grew to about 5'. It's probably very likely that no matter what I "think" will be good for containers, it very well could not. I think I read that hearts usually do well in containers. I'm just trying to hopefully keep from having a gazzillion cages with tomatoes that grow out of control, I find it easier to control my tomatoes with stakes. __________________ Antoniette

November 8, 2011	#5
kath Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: zone 6b, PA Posts: 5,664	The Kosovo plant I grew last year reached the top wire at 6.5' and then I attached the vines as it grew horizontally along the wire in both directions for I'd guess another 2'. I don't know how tall it's "supposed" to get, but it was in the fairly tall group of the 150 or so varieties that were still growing at the end of the season last year. These results are for single plants grown in the ground and pruned to 1, 2 or 3 vines and either staked or attached to horizontal wires, except for Black Cherry, which wasn't pruned. I don't think tomato plants get as tall when grown in containers, but I could be wrong about that. You're going to have to provide some kind of support for indeterminates grown in containers, and if the plants grow taller than your support, you can top themor just let them keep going and they'll eventually fall over and grow back down toward the ground. If there are other variables such as how much sun they'll get in different areas, too, then just make your best guess and go for it. Take notes and make adjustments the next year for any you want to grow again.

November 9, 2011	#7
Mudman Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: NW Wisconsin Posts: 910	For me Sungold F1 is enormous! It was probably 9 ft. in my garden last year. I think the only tomato that I have had grow larger than SG was Yellow Pear. Cherokee Purple has always been the shortest plant that I have grown for an indeterminate. __________________ Mike

November 9, 2011	#10
lakelady Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: northern NJ zone 6b Posts: 1,862	Hi Carolyn, Well, I'm trying to work up a plan, but don't actually have one yet...I was thinking of staking or trying a florida weave for that strip of soil with the in-ground plants. All summer this past summer I watched and recorded how much sun and where the sun was because I considered putting tomatoes there next year. The strip of land is actually much longer, probably 30' plus, but part of it doesn't get enough sun once it travels across the sky and into the trees in my neighbor's yard. So, the idea was to put containers on the concrete for the rest of the tomatoes. I just recall reading posts where people had said Brandywines in general grew quite tall, so I came up the idea that possibly some had a tendency to grow taller than others and I could figure out which to grow where based on that. Maybe not. My comment about the hearts...I can't remember where i read it, but I recall reading that hearts did grow quite well in containers. Between all the massive amounts of information here on TV, and what I've been reading in your book, I'm just trying to see if I can be better prepared for next year by doing this early. I did take your advice and am growing several Brandywines together to see which I like best, as well as growing the Cherokees in the same year as well. Makes a lot of sense because if I have a bad year, at least my comparisons will be based on same weather and treatments I give them. Regarding your post on the caging vs. staking, do plants actually do better with cages? I never knew that! wow. You know, come to think of it, I ran out of stakes this year as I planted more tomatoes than previous years, so one of my pastes got a cage. Same plant as 8 others, San Marzanos. The caged plant actually DID produce more fruits and I thought it was just a fluke. It was in a small isolated bed with 2 other SM and the caged one just went wild and kept producing all summer with over 80 fruits total. It also had less disease when the septoria hit. __________________ Antoniette

November 8, 2011	#4
cloz Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2010 Location: Southern Connecticut Posts: 435	I grew 2 Sungold F1's this year. One in a container and one in the garden. The container one grew to between 5' and 6' and was manageable. I grew it in a 7 gal container and used a 5' high cage for it. The one in the garden grew to between 7' and 8' tall and was much larger in diameter. I only fertilized the container plant 3 times after planting and the one in the garden got the same fertilizer, however, it was planted in very rich soil with lots of composted leaves. Cowlick, Sudduths, Black Cherry, Ctex and Paul Robeson were all over 6' tall and large plants. They were all planted directly in the ground.

November 9, 2011	#6
Too Tall Toms Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 116	This is the kind of stuff I LOVE reading about! Tall tomatoes will be my goal for next year!

November 9, 2011	#8
tgplp Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Pacific North West, zone 8a Posts: 510	This is interesting- sun gold grew about 5 feet in my garden, compared to 7 foot black cherry and supersweet 100. That's weird because everyone else in this thread, their sun golds got huge! Taryn

November 10, 2011	#12
travis Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Evansville, IN Posts: 2,984	Sungold can get enormous and very long. Well grown, I've had them 9 - 12 feet long when let go to do as they will. Black Cherry can go 8 feet long easy. I've had JD's C-Tex that grew 8 feet long and some that didn't get 6 feet tall. Pink Tie Dye, Black & Brown Boar, and Juane Flamme are very managable, imo, even in containers.

November 12, 2011	#15
PATM Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Williamsburg, VA Posts: 1	Brandywine? Never Again I planted 6 Brandywine tomato plants in my garden this past season, never again! They are huge plants, that grow to be 12' tall. I ended up using 10' long 2x4s for supports. The plant's leaves and fruit are so large and heavy it will need a cage for support. Harvest is late summer, with relatively small yields. Unless you have a big big garden, avoid Brandywine.