FarmerDill"s Fav Tomatoes

FarmerDill which varieties are your favourites for growing in Georgia?

Lily, I am the worst person to ask about tomatoes. Firstly neither I nor anyone in my family eats cherry tomatoes. I grow them, but for other folks. My personal tastes run to the big flat tomatoes sometimes categorize as beefsteaks. Secondly, this area is infested with Southern Blight, which reduces my choices considerably. We also have some serious outbreaks of Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus.

That said. All the cherry tomatoes that I have tried grow and produce well here. Best producer to date has been Jenny.

Beefsteak types. The older commercial varieties have been the most consistent producers. Henderson Ponderosa's in purple, red or gold. Note that many companies sell the red Ponderosa as Beefsteak, or the Burpee selected strain of Red Ponderosa, Delicious. All perform reasonably well here. Pruden's Purple, Dixie Golden Giant, Giant Belgium (both pink and gold) are good for me. Cherokee Purple is a good producer, but few folks here will eat them. The Brandywines (pink and golden) are tough enough to grow here but are very poor producers. For me the Ponderosa's have better flavor, even if they are more catfaced and contorted. Amana Gold also does well, but seems to be the same as Golden Ponderosa.

Canning tomatoes. Best performer with taste has been the Fantastics. Super Fantastic is a little larger than the regular Fantastic. Have had success with Park's Whopper in good years. Jetsetter for an early tomato. Because of the Tomato Spotted Wilt problem, I always plant one of the resistant varieties. Best of these to date has been Top Gun, with Amelia a close second.

Don't do the overgrown cherries or sauce tomatoes.

Thanks FarmerDill........I knew you wouldn't like this question but on another gardening site there is a person (newbie tomato grower from Georgia) who is asking which varieties, of the ones he listed, that he should grow. I gave him Plantfile links to just about every variety he listed and asked him to watch for where you had reported (not the neutral ones.......but your actual growing reports).

You have dmail.

Farmerdill - our tomatoes always seem to die back in the middle of summer. Do you do a second planting? If so, when do you start seeds and transplant in the garden. I'm thinking we have the blight & wilt thing going on here, too. Thanks, Joe

I do a second planting, Starting plants in June and setting at the beginning of August. I usually have a few plants that make it all the way from April to November. They shut down in July -August and bounce back in late September. Tomatoes hate 100+ heat and zero rain, which we get a lot of here. Southern Blight and Nematodes take out or stunt the plants early. There are cultivars which never get to set a tomato. Others just get to scrubby plants with maybe one or two inferior tomatoes. Many areas have early blight and fusarium, which curtails the crop, but seldom takes the plants out before cropping. Those have the yellowing from the base maybe acompannied by wilting symptoms. Not sure where Acton is located, but east Tennessee is great tomato growing country.

Thanks Dill! - I'm in West Tennessee, just across the stateline from Corinth, MS. Near Pickwick Dam and 90 miles east of Memphis. Do you do any treatment for blight or nematodes? Come visit us in the Mid-south Forum sometime if you have time: http://davesgarden.com/forums/f/region_mids/all/ "We ain't right".

Not really, using a winter crop of rye and using nematode resistant cultivars helps with problem. As for southern blight, I am still working on it, but some cultivars seems to tolerate it while other turn up their toes at the first sign, There are a half dozen or so cultivars with some resistance to TSW. Trying a new one, Bella Rosa, this year. I don't have much problem with the standard foliar diseases, that fungicides work on.

Hi Lilypon:

I am in Northeast Georgia and just about all of my tomatoes did well.

I grew:

Mortgage Lifter
Cherokee Purple
Rutgers
Pineapple
Koralik
Orange Oxheart
Brandywine and a few others.

Aside from a bed that had problems with BER, I didn't have any disease issues to speak of.

FarmerDill:

What exactly causes Southern Blight and how does it become localized?

BB

http://www.extension.umn.edu/projects/yardandgarden/ygbriefs/p152southernblight.html
http://msucares.com/newsletters/pests/infobytes/19961004.htm
www.plantpath.wisc.edu/pddc/factsheets/SouthernBlightLC.pdf
http://plantpathology.tamu.edu/Texlab/Multicrop/sb.html
http://www.ento.okstate.edu/ddd/diseases/southernblight.htm

This is a fungi that loves rich organic soil. Rotating with corn and using rye as a cover crop helps. Have not had any luck with fungicides, and Yes I even tried Terrachlor on an experimental planting.

Here is picture of base on a tomato (Box Car Willie, a very suceptible cultivar). Note the outer layer just rots off choking the plant.

Thanks

looks like a very nasty customer. From reading some of the links, it appears that having decaying matter in your beds can lead to the problem. Should I avoid amending my beds with things like leaves and straw in the fall?

BB

if you have not had a problem, don't worry about it. Becareful tho, if you mulch your plants. I collect grass clippings and I am pretty sure I brought it in that way.Did not observe it for the first couple of years. But lot of folks in this area have given up growing tomatoes because of it. It has a lot of hosts among the weeds, but it really does not like grass. Unfortunately lots of the lawns here including mine are full of the host weeds.

OK

Composting the grass doesn't help?

BB

May help, but it is difficult to get a large compost pile to a high temperature ovaral. If a few spores linger on the fringes, It may take hold again. remeMber it really likes to snuggle in decaying organic matter. I was not using compost but sheet mulching. Deep plowing is also supposed to help as it only grows on the surface where it can get air. Usually attacks right on the soil line.