My first taste of Brandywine and fall garden results

[mikej]

Hello All, Yeah I know I have not been on here in a while.

My Ferry Morse brandywine seed (potato leaf) turned out to be pinks. They are delicious. Of course that is relative. The only tomatoes I have eaten in my life have come from the store or commercial farms. These tomatoes are huge and the plants are 8' tall. I have 16 plants and have had very few insect problems. A little blight has started showing up, but I have sprayed them with Copper that seems to be keeping it in check. I do have quite a few tomatoes on them varying from pea size to a little larger than softball size. I had many blossoms, but not all produced fruit. I am chalking it up to the natural plant's ability to abort to keep it form being overloaded with the huge fruit. I also had some deformed tomatoes. I think that it is referred to "cat facing" and also to "superblooms". My wife, neighbors, and I love the flavor of these tomatoes. They have thin skins and once picked do not have a long shelf life at all.

I still have three grape plant, one Better boy, one Tasti-Lee, and one German Giant that have not produced any fruit yet. I also have 6 Grape plants that I started from the seed of a commercially grown grape that I was curious as to what I would get. They are loaded down with tomatoes and taste good, but not as sweet as their parents did.

I harvested many conk peas and placed them in the freezer. Since it has cooled off a little they slowed down production. The fungal diseases also hit them pretty hard. I pulled the plants today.

My okra is still doing pretty good. Picking about every 4 days. I have Emerald this time, but will go back to Clemson Spineless next season.

Merry Christmas!!!!!

[Alpinejs]

You don't have to continually pick that Okra. I have found that Round-up does
a job on eradicating that stuff. BTW, it does an excellant job on eradicating
rhubarb also!!

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by mikej

Hello All, Yeah I know I have not been on here in a while.

My Ferry Morse brandywine seed (potato leaf) turned out to be pinks. They are delicious. Of course that is relative. The only tomatoes I have eaten in my life have come from the store or commercial farms. These tomatoes are huge and the plants are 8' tall. I have 16 plants and have had very few insect problems. A little blight has started showing up, but I have sprayed them with Copper that seems to be keeping it in check. I do have quite a few tomatoes on them varying from pea size to a little larger than softball size. I had many blossoms, but not all produced fruit. I am chalking it up to the natural plant's ability to abort to keep it form being overloaded with the huge fruit. I also had some deformed tomatoes. I think that it is referred to "cat facing" and also to "superblooms". My wife, neighbors, and I love the flavor of these tomatoes. They have thin skins and once picked do not have a long shelf life at all.

I still have three grape plant, one Better boy, one Tasti-Lee, and one German Giant that have not produced any fruit yet. I also have 6 Grape plants that I started from the seed of a commercially grown grape that I was curious as to what I would get. They are loaded down with tomatoes and taste good, but not as sweet as their parents did.

I harvested many conk peas and placed them in the freezer. Since it has cooled off a little they slowed down production. The fungal diseases also hit them pretty hard. I pulled the plants today.

My okra is still doing pretty good. Picking about every 4 days. I have Emerald this time, but will go back to Clemson Spineless next season.

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Mike,
We had about 4 weeks of overnight temps at 74-76 here in Plantation. Plus the dew point was so near the overnight "low" that the leaves on my plants were dripping wet for about 3 days in a row in the AM. The disease stress was higher than I have ever seen it, and i got Septoria and Bacterial Speck worse and earlier than i have ever seen it.
I had to bring out the big guns.... Daconil , then copper spray the next day, which left my plants in very dilapidated condition. I was sure that I "killed em with kindness" but after one week the leaves are beginning to grow well again, and it seem s that I have gotten a handle on the diseases. WHEW!!!
I got some yellow sticky traps online , about $5 for 5 of them, so I bought twenty because the shipping was same for 5 or 20, and I haven't had a problem since with leaf miners, thrips, or whiteflies. Those things are a miracle! You should see how many hundreds of bugs are stuck to them.
I just might get a crop after all, if the overnight temps will just stay below 70 degrees.
The first one to get sick was Brandywine yellow so I know it doesn't do well in my part of Florida.
Good luck with the rest of the season, to both of us,
-Marsha

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by mikej

Hello All, Yeah I know I have not been on here in a while.

My Ferry Morse brandywine seed (potato leaf) turned out to be pinks. They are delicious. Of course that is relative. The only tomatoes I have eaten in my life have come from the store or commercial farms. These tomatoes are huge and the plants are 8' tall. I have 16 plants and have had very few insect problems. A little blight has started showing up, but I have sprayed them with Copper that seems to be keeping it in check. I do have quite a few tomatoes on them varying from pea size to a little larger than softball size. I had many blossoms, but not all produced fruit. I am chalking it up to the natural plant's ability to abort to keep it form being overloaded with the huge fruit. I also had some deformed tomatoes. I think that it is referred to "cat facing" and also to "superblooms". My wife, neighbors, and I love the flavor of these tomatoes. They have thin skins and once picked do not have a long shelf life at all.

I still have three grape plant, one Better boy, one Tasti-Lee, and one German Giant that have not produced any fruit yet. I also have 6 Grape plants that I started from the seed of a commercially grown grape that I was curious as to what I would get. They are loaded down with tomatoes and taste good, but not as sweet as their parents did.

I harvested many conk peas and placed them in the freezer. Since it has cooled off a little they slowed down production. The fungal diseases also hit them pretty hard. I pulled the plants today.

My okra is still doing pretty good. Picking about every 4 days. I have Emerald this time, but will go back to Clemson Spineless next season.

Merry Christmas!!!!!

Where are your famous pictures! I would like to see the progress!

[mikej]

Sorry guys, I haven't been on the computer much. It has been so slow that it just annoyed me every time I got on it. Did some maintenance, clean up, uninstalling then reinstalling and it is much better now.

Yea those foggy mornings with the high humidity has been rough. I had to use Daconil and copper also. But the insects have not been bad at all here. A few every now and then. As soon as my tomatoes start to turn, I have to pull them now or the birds will eat them up. I had a good size tomato on a plant that about 20 tomatoes on it, so I wanted to let it ripen more on the vine to save the seed. Dang it if the next morning birds to poked holes on it. That warm spell we had caused alot of new blossoms.

Dang these Brandywine plants are huge. My top row of string is 6.5 ft high and the plants grew way past that. They were falling over and one of the strings broke. If I had higher stakes, I bet these plant would have been 10' tall. All of the plants were getting so top heavy I had to cut the tops back. Now I can't decide whether to pull them up or not. Still alot of green tomatoes on them though they are small. When they were not looking too good I started new seed of Cherokee Purple January 2nd. Another couple of weeks, I need to transplant them and don't have a place for them until I remove the Brandywine. I also have some corn seed that I want to plant the second week in February.

Here are a few pics that I took the first part of December.






These tomatoes are delicious.

[Alpinejs]

MikeJ.....thanks for the great pictures.

I had my first ripe Brandywine OTV today and I think it moved to the top of the
list. My favorites were: 1) Sudduth 2) Cherokee Green 3) Marianna's Peace but
we now have a newcomer to the winner's circle. I just couldn't believe how
good it was. I am hoping that I wasn't just swayed due to the dirth of
heirlooms for quite some months. I have had some non-competitors ripen
recently like Stupice, but none that are serious challengers for the greatness
awards.

[Redbaron]

Wow Mike! I wondered what happened to you. That is some beautiful looking tomatoes! I may have to find a bus ticket to Florida!

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Alpinejs

MikeJ.....thanks for the great pictures.

I had my first ripe Brandywine OTV today and I think it moved to the top of the
list. My favorites were: 1) Sudduth 2) Cherokee Green 3) Marianna's Peace but
we now have a newcomer to the winner's circle. I just couldn't believe how
good it was. I am hoping that I wasn't just swayed due to the dirth of
heirlooms for quite some months. I have had some non-competitors ripen
recently like Stupice, but none that are serious challengers for the greatness
awards.

It may be listed as Brandywine, OTV in catalog lists but Craig ( nctomatoman) and I named it OTV Brandywine. The OTV stands for Off the Vine, which was an international newesletter about mainly heirloom varieties that Craig and I co published for several years.

Craig had sent out seeds for Yellow Brandywine and got back a picture of a large red with seeds of it to boot. I had lots of room to grow plants, Craig didn't, so he sent me the seeds and I dehybridized it and made selections, and it took me out to the F5 before it was stable.

So it isn't pure Brandywine, we'll never know what the pollen parent was, but it does set fruits in many areas, especially the hot areas of south where true Brandywine has problems doing so.

And in my unbiased opinion,, the taste and production are wonderful.

Carolyn

[mikej]

Thanks for the info Carolyn! I did not know what OTV meant when Alpine posted it. My Brandywine seeds came from a Ferry Morse package that I had found. Large pink fruits that did not produce many tomatoes on every plant at first. I have 16 plants and some have very few tomatoes, some have none, and some have about 20 on it right now. I have been saving the seed from the tomatoes that came off the plants with many tomatoes on it, so hopefully next fall, all my plants will have plenty fruit. One thing for sure that I have already mentioned many times are that they are the best tasting tomato I have ever eaten. My neighbors agree! They can go from green and tart to overripe in a matter of days. The window of perfect ripeness for me is small.

[Cole_Robbie]

How was the tasti-lee?

[mikej]

The tasti-lees are not ready yet. I planted them much later. The plant is about 3' tall and I have some that are a little larger than bbs. I am anxious to find out though.