Best slicing-size tomato for container growing?

Spectacular!

David, yow are you doing? How are you feeling? Getting your strength back since your trip to the hospital? You had a rough time. Hope you are taking it easy and not pushing it too much.

Has your daughter gone back now? I thought you said she was there just for a short time. They are so much help aren't they? My daughter just got here this afternoon and I plan on getting a lot done while she is here. I have a lot of seedlings to repot, mostly in my containers for the decks. That is all I can do right now. The yard is a real mess.and I don't know how it is going to be this summer.

The tomatoes are in the water bottles so am interested to see how they do. We still have another month 'till our last frost date so don't rush them.

Someone sent me a saying:

Plant in May, throw them away. Plant in June and they come up just as soon.

Or something like that. same thing. I suppose it is true.

Doing OK. I'm allowed to bend my knees to 90 degrees. I can't quite get there yet. We are working on that in physical therapy. Next weeK will be the first time for any weight. They will lock my braces straight then hoist me to a vertical position. I'll stay up as long as I can "stand" it. The goal is to teach my muscles to hold my legs straight and regain some strength. Eventually I will start pushing up with bent legs and finally from a sitting position. At some point I will also start moving with braces locked, using a walker. My goal is to be able to walk using a walker with braces unlocked by September.

Boy, you have more stamina than I do. That would drive me wild.

I have my 6 week post- op appt. Monday. X-rays etc. At that time he should let me pout some weight on my leg. Not sure about buying the scooter or not. I would hate to let it go and then need it again. Have to decide where to store it if fI do decide to keep it.

Well, must get busy. Good luck with all your work. The time does go faster than you realize. I guess it is because the older you get the faster it goes.

You guys are amazing! I'm looking at all my seedlings and wondering what I was thinking of when I sowed all the seeds.... Anyways, I wish I had those earthtainers! David, your tomatoes look fantastic! Jeannette, I can't even think about my yard. I could care less. I just have to focus on the tomatoes,not that I will be planting out till the end of the month, if that! And by the way, how are the seeds I sent you? You were going to resow some?
I heard for all this miserable weather we are having, it's going to be a hot summer. Who knows? Haven't seen the sun in a few days.
Sharon

Hi Sharon,

What are earthtainers? The Juanne Flammes are up. The ones I reseeded. Also the EArly Girls which always do well, and neither of them came up the fidrst time. Also have 2 others up and can't remember what they are.

Well, hopefully, we can forget the tomatoes at some time and work on the yards. I do believe this is going to be another year where I don't get anything done in my perennial bed. Just can't get in there to work. Not going to rush the leg.

Hoping for good weather soon. Suppose to be 70 again next week. I was hoping the long cold spell we had would have gotten rid of the Yellow Jackets and Wasps. But, they are back. Bob set the traps out in the trees for them so maybe I will get to at least go out and read on the decks this year.

Jeanette

Hi Jen, earthtainers are like the earth boxes Dave uses. Just different name same idea. Glad the jaune flamme germinated. I only got two, so hopefully they will be delicious. Still cool here. I doubt I'm even going to look at the perennial area of my garden this year. I really have no desire to do it. My back can't handle the contortions anymore. It's taken me two days to recover from cleaning my oven, lol!

Ripe tomatoes on the Gold Nugget. So far, not very impressed with the flavor. There are a huge number of tomatoes on the plant, but the taste (to me) seems to be bland, and the tomatoes a little bit mealy. There is not even a hint of sweetness. The only redeeming factor is that there is a bit of acid tomato flavor.

The Momotaros are close, with two or three tomatoes showing a good blush. I hope to pick a couple ot them this week. Lots of green tomatoes on the Sweet 100, some green on the Isis Candy. Not very many tomatoes on the Sweet Ozark Orange plants yet. Lots of green tomatoes on the dwarf, but none are getting big. I wonder if I was sold seed to dwarf Red Cherry rather than just dwarf Red. I guess I'll know eventually.

At this point, everything is growing really well and seems to be producing okay. No sign of disease, and no sign of bugs after the initial spray to kill the cabbage loopers. I don't think that growing indeterminates is a good choice for someone in a wheelchair, simply because the plants get so large and unwieldy. It is too hard to stake/tie/cage and retain the ability to move the Earthboxes. If the boxes were static, on soil, then it would be possible to use external structure to support the plants well. The limited mobility of the wheelchair make using external structure impossible if I hope to be able to move the boxes and access both sides from the wheelchair. If I had to do again, I might grow only dwarf plants or determinates.

David, why don't you pinch the indeterminates? My sister told me that she pinches them once in a while just to make them bush out more and if she doesn't have any way to contain them. I have a couple that I am going to try that with 'cause they have a long weak growth for a top. I will let you know how they do. But, I would imagine they need to be pinched when they are fairly small. I might plant them in the buckets first and if they don't come out of that weak growth then I will pinch them.

Sharon, you are learning like I did, that there comes a time when we can't do the stuff we used to do. I have a gal come in and clean my house about every 3 weeks or so, the time depends on what needs to be done, and I am cutting way back on even my container growing. Also on the seeds.

I also have a fellow wash my windows once or twice a year. Depending on how bad the weather treats them. A lot of tall ladder work on them.

It's tough to do, but it's either get help, or sell this place. Even if you want to sell, you have to have help getting it in shape to sell..

David, you grew Sweet Ozark Orange last year and I know you like it - but it may not be the easiest variety to grow in your situation. It's a BIG indeterminate, I know I've had branches 8' long trained along the fence!

I've never tried pinching back growth ends to limit the length of branches, but as Jnette says with your movable earthboxes this year, that might be the thing to do.

I'm too late to pinch this year. The plants are a solid mass about four feet around and five feet tall. I would have needed to pinch much earlier. I still have trouble with that, conceptually, though. I mean, every one of those stems pinched off is a potential source of tomatoes. Sam-- it looks like SOO is the worst for my containers. It, and the Sweet 100 are both huge! The Momotaro is a little smaller, so it may do okay. I had two planters blow over today, after writing the message this morning. Luckily, it was the two cherry tomato boxes, so I still have hope for both red and orange full size tomatoes. The others are showing worse for the wear with remnants of baby tomatoes on the concrete where the fall knocked them off the vine. : /

I have never pinched any tomatoes either. But, I know people do, and we pinch other plants so what is our problem with pinching tomatoes? I unintentionally "pinched" "broke" two tomatoes off when preparing for planting. and real bad. Not sure if they will even grow. Might keep them to see what happens.

Last year Momontaro was one of my best producers. We'll see what it does this year. My lants really look not very good for this time of year. Too difficult keeping them going from the hospital, rehab, etc. and then not being able to put any weight on my one leg, well, yours are much better than mine David. Good for you!!

After all the good stuff I gave mine today tho, they should grow like crazy. I hope.

David could you get someone to make a "pen" of sorts with cinder block, around all the boxes? If the cinderblock were on edge I think you'd still be able to reach from your wheels. (I have some experience.) If you did three sides, leaving maybe the house side open, you could still roll them in and out. Heck, if you picked all the lower fruits you could add a second layer of cinderblock and that would make it even easier to reach, I think.

Anyway, I hope you have no more wind damage to your plants.

Turtle

Last year, I had a major, fruit-laden branch break off my cherry, so I took it off the plant and tossed it into a nearby 5 gal bucket. That bucket happened to have about 3 inches of slanting soil in it. I did nothing else to the branch, until I noticed the ripe fruits and the emerging ones. Then I watered! They were every bit as delicious as the cherries from the mother plant. So there's hope.

"Sam-- it looks like SOO is the worst for my containers."
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David, now that I think about it (and as proud as I am of S.O.O.), I know Sweet Ozark Orange is poorly suited for container-growing. The plants are enormous and they've got thick, heavy foliage that needs support. I think they're just meant to be in the ground.

I tilled my tomato patch again today, getting ready to drive T-posts, add tomato cages, lay down soaker hoses, and mulch around the plants. It's only 12 days after transplanting here, and my Sweet Ozark Orange and Big Beef Hybrid plants are already much taller than the other varieties. S.O.O. has a lot thicker foliage than B.B., though - and that surprises me because the great-grandparent German Red Strawberry has such a thin and wispy growth habit. Just the way the genes lined up, I guess.

In these pictures, a Big Beef plant is pictured by itself and a S.O.O. plant with the tiller, both 12 days after transplanting to the garden. Sweet Ozark Orange will have a lot more leaves and better protection for the fruit, later on.

A really good determinate variety is Estiva from Johnny's. My favorite is Indian Stripe but like Sweet Ozark Orange, it's a very rowdy growing plant. I use concrete reinforcing wire formed into a cylinder as a homemade tomato cage. I just place that cylinder around the earthbox, drive a length of rebar into the ground right next to it, and tie it to the cage with wire. A little tip on how to calculate the length of wire needed to form the cylinder is something you learned (and maybe forgot) back in high school. Multiply the desired diameter by 3.1416 and maybe add a few inches for good measure since it can always be shortened. About 84 inches works for me We ate our first fruit May 22 but an earlier one picked May 18 had a huge green caterpillar inside and had to be discarded. I don't know what kind of worm it was but since I didn't see the distinctive red horn on the end before my wife tossed it , I'm pretty sure it wasn't a tomato hornworm. Do hornworms burrow into the fruit? I know I've never seen one do that in my many years of growing tomatoes. I've always thought they were only interested in the foliage. As to earthboxes, that's the only way I've grown tomatoes for the last 6 or 7years. 2 gallons of water added once a day keeps 2 tomato plants alive and thriving even in the heat of August.

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David is using the EBs on a solid surface, bc he is in a wheelchair ATM so no driving rebar into the ground. That's the reason he is using EBs to begin with, I think. Lol

The worm that was in your tomato was probably a tomato fruit worm and I wouldn't recommend eating a tomato that this worm has lived in bc it actually lives there and thus performs all it's bodily functions in the fruit. Cough!

I'm using EBs for the first time this year, and I'm planting plants from the Tomato Dwarf Project in them. I've grown these plants before and I love them bc they produce regular size fruit on small plants.

Mine are way behind yours and they still don't have the root development they usually have by this time of year. Crazy weather!

I picked two Momotaro tomatoes today, and more from the plants should be ripe in the next few days. I haven't sliced the new tomatoes, just waiting on the counter top for a bacon or tuna salad sandwich! I did slice a large batch of the Gold Nugget cherry tomatoes in half and eat them with cottage cheese. They were decent there, though still don't have "pop them in your mouth" flavor.

As Lisa said, I'm growing the tomatoes on the driveway for access with my wheelchair, so no stakes. As you described Cactusman, I think I will use the EBs with concrete wire cages and T-posts in the future. So far, I'm really impressed by the plants growth even if I do have to water every day.

I can't wait for the Husky Red to start bearing ripe fruit. It is covered with small fruit at the moment. It seems like every bloom so far has actually set a tomato. Not quite as lucky on the Sweet Ozark Orange. It has some fruit set, but not as much as it did in the garden last year. I don't know if temperatures or movement has been a problem, but there have been a lot of blooms on it that didn't make tomatoes. The two plants are huge, about 5 feet tall and five feet wide at the moment.

Lisa, believe me when I say that there's no way that tomato was going to be eaten. That caterpillar got to experience the thrill of flight before becoming whatever he was to be. My wife has a pretty good arm so he went almost as far as Wilbur Wright did on his first flight. Seriously though, I had never heard of a tomato fruit worm until today. Like my granddad used to say, "If you don't learn something every day, then you ain't paying attention."

I'm just glad you noticed it before you took a bite!

Picked some of the Sweet Ozark Orange yesterday and picked a few more of the Momotaro. I'm really surprised by the radial cracking in the Momotaro. I thought it was known for being smooth and blemish-free. Also surprised that there could be cracking in an Earthbox, where there is supposed to be water all the time. I don't know how it would be possible to water any more evenly! Taste was good on the Momotaro picked last week. Days to maturity for the Mommtaro was about 68. The Sweet Ozark Orange is about 78 days.

David

Boy David for looks you sure can't beat those. Now work on the flavor. grin. They would beat anything we can get for another month or 3 anyway. Please enjoy them. You know, besides the water, the space in those earthboxes for oxygen is important too. Do you use peroxide? I use it in every water I mix for any of the plants. Will all summer.

One more issue on the Earthboxes that surprises me. There have been several of the large tomatoes, Momotaro and Sweet Ozark Orange, that have had had blossom end rot. I know that's normally the result of a calcium problem... but I thought it had most to do with uneven water. As I said above, with the radial cracks on the Momotaro, I don't know how it is possible for the plants in EBs to have uneven water. : (

Anyone have any suggestions?

There is a section in the EB directions that addresses BER and what to do about it. I'm hoping that the Dolomite will elevate that problem.

I'm adding the hydrated lime to the water reservoir as suggest on the Earthbox website. Seems weird that the dolomite lime in the soil isn't enough. Oh well, at this point I'm getting to temperatures where the tomatoes won't set anyway...

An easy source of hydrated lime is the preserving section of the grocery store. Pickling lime is a food-grade source of lime. It's easier than managing a 50-lb bag from the hardware store and less expensive than mail-order or organic supply store.

I wasn't even able to find dolomite locally I had to order it from EB. I really think the wind caused the plants to dry out more then we realized.

I thought the Epsom Salts would help with the BER. Don't know why I thought that.

BEM results from Calcium deficiency. Many ways to quickly remedy it. Easiest may be bone meal. Workit in around feeder roots and it should stop BEM from developing on fruits not already affected!

Bob

My Sweet Ozark Orange plants are not taking the heat well in the Earthboxes. Many of the blooms are dropping, most of the fruit that is forming has blossom end rot, and the plants, though big and bushy, are wilting in the heat. The Momotaro is faring only slightly better. Isis Candy is also not taking the heat very well. The Sweet 100 and the Husky Red (Cherry, it turns out) are still going gang-busters and don't appear to be suffering in the heat, so far.

S.O.O. is so big, I think it's not a good variety for growing in containers of any kind. Other varieties will be better suited for that, hopefully including some you have planted this year.

Here, Sweet Ozark Orange is doing real well - big, healthy-looking plants with shoulders on 'em. Different places, different conditions.

Gosh David, so sorry you are having trouble with your tomatoes after all the work you did on them. And this is only early June. Can you make a shade of some kind over them? Might help. Jen

No criticism of the variety, Sam. It was my favorite tomato in the garden last year. I've just concluded it isn't a container tomato. The few I have picked have been delicious!

Oh, I know - I just wish S.O.O. was better suited for the way you have to garden this year.

We're in a tropical rain forest weather pattern here. Half an inch of rain yesterday, an inch this morning, more predicted tonight, tomorrow, and every day for the next week or so. In between thunderstorms we're getting sunshine with near 100% humidity and high temps in the low 80's. Pretty nice really, compared to the hot weather that's bound to follow.

I think I can HEAR plants growing. I planted sweet corn yesterday morning (two storms ago), and some of is up in one day! My pole beans climbed 9 inches in 24 hours.

Hi. What do you mean by a plant having shoulders on it?

Turtles, Ozark just means they are big, burly, plants. If they were a cartoon character, they would be Brutus, not Popeye. The original image is from:

http://www.cartoonshdwallpaper.com/popeye-cartoon/brutus-and-bluto-by-requin-on-deviantart/

DR

"Hi. What do you mean by a plant having shoulders on it?"
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Exceptionally vigorous, healthy, strong.

The phrase came from my fishing partner/best friend who died two years ago - I sure miss him. When one of us would get ahold of a big fish, rod bent double, taking the fisherman around the boat a couple of times, and there being a real question as to whether we could get it in or not, he'd say "Boy, he's got some shoulders on him!"

Fish, of course, have exactly as many shoulders as do tomato plants (none). :>)

** Edited to add: That's the perfect explanation, David. Brutus / Bluto. lol

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Ah, got it. Got the visual too, so I won't forget.

Nice way to remember your friend Ozark, using his phrase.