Saturday, November 6, 2010
Fall Planting
It's November 6th and I'm just getting the fall garden started. Late as usual.
I have some transplants that I started from seed in August that needed to go into the garden last month but they never quite got into the ground. Some fell and were damaged and the ones that did survive have been in the small pots and cells so long they are stunted. But since I try not to go to the nursery to buy transplants I'll use these and hopefully a few will survive.
In this garden you can't really see much in the photo.
In the upper left there is a tomato that was a volunteer from another part of the yard. I have no idea what the variety might be because I had never grown tomatoes in that area before so I'm not sure where that seed came from. I'm pretty sure that whatever the variety is it's not one that will appreciate the fact that I'll be trying to make it grow during the winter.
In the upper right is a Cherry tomato that is on its last leg and will get pulled out within the next few weeks or however long it wants to hang around since I'm not hurting for space right now.
In about the center of the picture is a Oregon Spring V tomato. I'll really wanted to try this variety out as a winter tomato, but it is so small you can't even see it in the picture. I don't think this one has much of a chance to survive.
To the left of that is an Early Golden Acre cabbage. That one should have a chance.
Labels: Cherry Tomato, Early Golden Acre, Oregon Spring V, Winter Tomato
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Winter Tomatoes
Well once again another summer as come and gone without me ordering the winter tomato seeds that I needed. I need to have them in hand by July so that I can get the transplants in the ground by sometime in September. So I'm going with the trustworthy Early Girl. Now this is not my favorite tomato and it it is not what one would consider a winter tomato but it has done quite well under both warm and cold conditions for me in the past.
It was planted in early September and has grown quite nicely so far. The soil in this particular garden is heavy clay so this area has always been a problem. I have been adding compost and manure, but never enough. Also the level of this garden is low, so when we do get rain this garden can flood out for days resulting in plants being lost because they are just sitting in water for 3 or 4 days. I've got the soil level raised right now with a mixture of compost, steer manure and chicken manure. This should go a long ways to improve the soil and the flooding problem.
The Early Girl does have blossoms on it right now but no fruit yet. I'm not worried about that right now. It will produce fruit when the conditions are right, or better. Yesterday the high was 99 and the low was 55, so all of the plants in the yard are trying to figure out what to do with these temperatures at this time of year.
The other plants in this garden are snow peas. They have been a little slow getting started but even with this heat they seem to be waking up now.
I have some seedlings of lettuce and other greens in seed trays and when they are ready to transplant they will go here also to fill in this garden.
Labels: Winter Tomato
Monday, November 27, 2006
Winter Tomato Trials
I have to admit that this is the first time that I have had tomatoes fresh from the garden as we go into December. Now these are not tomato plants that happen to have hung on from the summer, but plants that are just now coming into their prime.I have four different varieties that I am trying out. Jetsetter, Glacier, Manitoba and Taxi. These varieties and other are able to set blossoms even when the temperate hits 40. Since the area I'm in almost never gets frost, things should be ok.
I have two of each variety. I like growing everything from seed, but was not able to get them in time. All I could find were started plants in 6" containers. This was bad from the start because all of the plants had been in the containers far too log and already had tomatoes on them. his is a no-no, but I really wanted to try them out.
I planted one from each variety in a newly prepared garden on the side of the garage. The other four plants went into other beds in the backyard.
Of the four plants on the side of the garage, they took off well. The tomatoes that were on the plants when I got them didn't seen to be doing anything after sometime, so I picked them so the plants could get on to new business. The tomatoes that I picked were small and not that exciting on flavor. Didn't really care much about those.
The next tomatoes that these plants produced were much better tasting. Right now there are plenty of blossoms on all of the plants.
The four plants that I put in the backyard have not done quite as well. All of them have produced fruit however.
The Glacier and the Manitoba are now both history. The Taxi suffered a traumatic injury by getting in the way of my foot. This damaged the main stem which I eventually had to cut off. The remainder of the Taxi plant I'm going to transplant into another garden bed to try an experiment and will let you know more about that later.
The last plant in the backyard, Jetsetter, is doing great. It's about 5 feet tall now and has been producing decent fruit although not allot.
These tomato varieties produce smaller fruit than most other tomatoes.
Jetsetter / 8oz - Indeterminate
Glacier / 3 to 4oz - Semi-determinate
Manitoba / 6oz - Determinate
Taxi / 4 to 6oz - Determinate
Labels: Glacier, Jetsetter, Manitoba, Taxi, Winter Tomato
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