Looking for a better tomato
Well, my tomato season is basically over, and I have to say it was pretty disappointing. I've been gardening in the same place for 25ish years, and the microclimate has definitely changed. More heat, more humidity, more rain when we get it but less rain overall.
I've been growing my tomatoes in 20 gallon metal trashcans for various reasons, and that had been working great, but in the past two years the heat has wreaked havoc on them.
Last year was basically total failure. This year I had 1 sort of success-- Rosella Purple grew, gave me a few delicious fruits early, shut down all summer but stayed alive, and then gave me a couple more in the last few weeks. I grew Floridade on someone's recommendation for it's heat tolerance and it did produce all summer but I really didn't like anything about it. I grew a cherry tomato I thought was Black Cherry (which I really enjoy) but turned out to be some other, red cherry that was OK but nothing special.
I'm hoping there are people on this site who have some recommendations? I'm supposed to be US Zone 7, but it is really pushing zone 8. I'm looking for complex flavors, lowish acid and the ability to pollinate in 90-105 degrees.
I prefer beefsteak-style or at least low acid. I prefer "black" varieties for the depth of flavor. I prefer open-pollinated for the politics.
Or maybe you could share some tricks you've discovered to help tomatoes deal with the heat?
I'm hoping to get a head start on planning for next year.
Unfortunately, I think you might need to practice some crop rotation. If you grow related crops in the same growing medium repeatedly, diseases build up and can devastate your yield. Nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, etc.) are particularly susceptible to this.
As a general rule of thumb, you should wait 3–5 years before growing tomatoes in the same spot again. You could grow other plants in the space in the meantime (although I would avoid strawberries; tomatoes and strawberries do not always play nice with each other).
Alternatively, you could fully replace the planting medium. I would also recommend washing down the planters themselves (not just rinsing them, but washing them with soap or disinfectant to kill/remove any lingering viruses, bacteria, and fungal pathogens).
As for varieties, I personally love Amish Paste the best.
If you have limited growing space, you can get away with a three year rotation cycle - plant leafy greens for one year, then legumes, before planting tomatoes/potatoes again. Mycorrhizae additives also help.
But there are climates where you'll always encounter early or late blight and viruses. You can mulch to prevent contaminated soil from splashing on vulnerable leaves, but the only strategy for high yields is to go with resistant hybrids that generally don't taste as good.
What can I grow in the spot that tomatoes once were?
When I was rotating I had a bed for tomatoes, peppers and basil, a bed for corn and squash, a bed greens and beans (the beans fix nitrogen for the greens) and a 4th bed I would use for composting/resting. Ideally you want to follow plants with a crop that feeds more heavily on other nutrients than what was planted there last, and has a different set of potential diseases/pests.
Anything that isn't a nightshade (other than strawberries due to the high risk of verticillium wilt).
You could grow legumes (peas, beans), alliums (onions, garlic, leeks), cucurbits (squash, cucumber, melon, etc.), brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, kale, etc.), Apiaceae (carrots, celery, etc.), and plenty of others. Just make sure to rotate them out, too; you don't want closely related annuals growing in the same location year after year.
Alternatively, you could grow perennial fruits and vegetables (such as raspberries or asparagus). They don't require crop rotation.
Yeah, I set up the pots with fresh potting soil each year, add yum-yum mix, rock phosphate, and then fish emulsion throughout the growing season. It's not a problem with the soil, it's the heat. My plants were green, they put out flowers throughout July and August but they just wouldn't set fruit til it got cooler again. Thanks though, I definitely agree your methods are correct--when I was planting in beds I used a 3-year rotation.
That is very good to hear! Once disease builds up, it's tricky to deal with.
I hybridized tomatoes on a commercial farm for two years, and we used a simple trick to induce them to flower and fruit reliably: Each "stalk" of the tomato plant (which in our case was always two) could only have 10–12 leaves. Every time a new leaf matured at the top of the plant, we cut off the lowest leaf to maintain that exact number of leaves at all times.
This has two benefits:
One, it maintains a good balance between vegetative growth and reproductive growth (if tomatoes have too many leaves, they get stuck in vegetative mode and don't fruit well).
Two, it greatly improves air flow around the stem and roots, which is especially important in humid conditions (tomatoes evolved in a dry, desert-like climate and do not tolerate excess moisture very well).
Very interesting. My father has raised tomatoes for the better part of of his life but I’m not sure he was ever made aware of the leaf trick! I wonder how common that nugget of knowledge is.
Huh, that's really interesting! I'm gonna give that a try on one of my plants next year. Thanks!
I had a lot of "success" this year with my Cherokee Purple variety. Granted, I'm far from an experienced tomato grower and I feel if I used larger planters I would have gotten more fruit. That being said, I was able to enjoy a few salads/tomato sandwiches this summer. In SW Ohio and the summer here was pretty brutal in the back-half but my plants are still producing. I did not get to enjoy them much since squirrels and a wiener dog with an appreciation for the finer varieties of tomato ate most of them. I bought some netting and it has certainly helped.
I also tried growing some beefmaster variety, but they did not do as well as my Cherokee Purples. But again, I feel like bigger pots, more fertilizer and netting would have helped.
Thank you! I think there are a few different Cherokee purples--do you happen to know which you had?
Your dog story made me laugh. I had a monster dog that once created a tunnel through a huge cherry tomato plant so she could lie belly-up in the shade and gently pluck cherry tomatoes with her lips.
That's adorable. Dogs are great. Unfortunately, I don't, I purchased them from my local greenhouse and it was labeled a generic Cherokee Purple.
Thanks!
I had success with the following varieties in Michigan Zone 6b (but really Zone 7 the last few years).
Cherry/Grape tomatoes:
Brad's Atomic Grape - on the larger side, crazy stripes of green, purple, red, and yellow. Excellent flavor, relatively high yielding, and slow to develop late blight if it gets enough sun and heat.
Riesentraube - old red heirloom that tastes terrific. High-yielding and blight tolerant.
Black Cherry - Popular, flavorful purple cherry. Some years it performs well, but cracking in heavy rain is a problem.
Super Snacks Mix - This is an F3 multi-variety cross that produces vari-colored, flavorful cherry to saladette-sized tomatoes. I don't recall any purple ones, though. The plants are vigorous, high-yielding, and have some disease resistance.
Tiger Cherry Roma (any Cherry Roma variety) - large, stripy, elongated fruit with the characteristic Roma beak. Thicker skinned to resist cracking, these were super prolific in my garden, and had a distinctive flavor. The vines grew all over the place, needs taller support than most tomato cages provide. Kept producing well into October.
Sweet 100 F1 - lots of smallish red cherry fruit. The stems hang on in an annoying way, but they keep well and maintain a good cherry tomato flavor.
I don't love yellow cherry tomatoes. Haven't had great luck with anything but Yellow Pear, and that's relatively bland. The Bumblebee varieties are highly rated, but the only one which survived early blight, the Purple Bumblebee, didn't yield well.
Slicing tomatoes:
Thorburn's Terracotta - heirloom sunrise orange and brown-purple fist-sized fruit. Not much scabbing, relatively disease and insect-resistant, not a heavy producer, but the flavor is excellent.
Early Girl F1 - determinate bush-type, disease and insect resistant. Heavy crop of decent tasting baseball-sized fruit.
Cherokee Purple - I don't get high yields from this one, but the flavor is excellent.
Paul Robeson - not high-yielding, great flavor.
Ukrainian Purple - delicious, but not as heat-tolerant as others.
Amish Paste - it's good, but I didn't get much yield.
Stupice - best yield this year with heavy rains. Good salad tomato flavor, very clean fruit with no scabbing or bug damage.
Most of the same varieties did well in South Florida, just didn't need the 6 - 8 week indoor head start. I'd recommend Southern Exposure Seed Exchange for a selection of higher heat tolerance varieties. I'm looking forward to trying their Eva Purple Ball slicer next year.
That is a great list, thank you so much for taking the time to share it!
I've tried Paul Robeson but every time (even a decade ago) it barely produced and never seemed happy. I've never heard of the Terracotta, I'm going to check that one out. Brads Atomic grape also looks really fun. And with your second vote, I'm going to try Cherokee purple finally--it's been on my list forever but for some reason I just haven't tried it. Well, there you've got me covered for winter seed shopping! Thanks again!
I don't know where you are, but my selections of necessity are mainly early/mid-season due to daylight length in Northern Michigan. You may have success with late season varieties as well.
I'm in the high desert west, though so it's kind of a crap shoot. Some years I've been able to keep a garden going into December, sometimes we get hard frosts in September, so I tend to go for the early-mids, too.
If you're in a desert climate, the best thing you can do for your tomatoes is to set up drip irrigation, preferably with a humidity or soil moisture sensor to control an automatic valve. Let the soil go dry periodically, but not past the point where leaves are curling. You'll get good control of fungal diseases, and richer-tasting tomatoes.
I'm good with moisture regulation--i used to do drip and thick mulch with my beds when I had them, but I am now using 20 gallon containers, as I wrote earlier. I monitior water and they have netting to keep out leafhoppers (curlytop is a big problem here) and squirrels, which also helps with moisture and temperature regulation. I'm not having problems with fungal or viral diseases, but the heat is preventing pollination all through July and much of August (though not in the Floridades and whatever cherry tomato I ended up with, unfortunately I really don't like the taste of those.) That's why I am searching for varieties that can pollinate in high heat.
Edit: The list you gave me was exactly what I was hoping for, thanks!