Tomato Review 2009

It was a tricky tomato year locally. The old adage of plant on Memorial Day just didn’t give tomatoes enough time. I purchased small starts in early April – 3 different tomatoes, one Celebrity, one Early Girl and one Better Boy.

They were all hybrid and all indeterminate. I transplanted them into 5 gallon buckets on April 8th. They grew nicely and I kept trimming any flowers, wild growth for some weeks inside. Hardened them off a bit, but transplanted them into the raised beds on April 29th. I used Wallo-Water growing covers. The tomatoes were growing well within the wallo’s, but it was consistently cold. Noted in my journal that we had 4″ of rain in early june – kept night time temps in the 50′s. Tough for things trying to sprout…like cucumbers. Some plants, like the snow peas had a banner year because of the cold temps , but the garlic was smaller than usual and the beans were slow to start. Will have to feed both cukes and beans more next year. Ultimately, we didn’t hit the 80′s until June 30th.
The tomato plants each had a different MO this year. The celebrity was an easy to manage (pruning wise) and produced nice firm large to medium solo’s and duo’s. However, come end of August it quit producing flowers (like a determinate tomato) but then kept ripening slowly. Good flavor, good for slicing or cooking. The early girl, was as the name indicates the first to produce ripe fruit, July 26th we picked our first totally ripe Early Girl. The growth on this bush is more compact than the celebrity, so its not quite as easy to prune, but tends to produce fruit in “sets” – it does better if you reduce the sets to two fruit instead of five. Nice large to compact slicing tomato with bright flavor. The Better Boy, what you say “OverAchiever?” – This bush required serious pruning from the start. It’s bushy growth pattern will have you checking it every other day for new sets. It produced the biggest tomatoes of all – wonderfully chambered, juicy…. hmm the kind you take the salt shaker to the garden for tomatoes… It will get quite rangy if you do not prune it… I was absolutely “haircutting” it daily by the end of august (Otherwise it will keep setting flowers that take energy away from ripening). It still had tons of fruit on it when it came out. It grew almost two feet higher than my early girl – despite haircuts!
I know that there was no difference in soil as this was a first year in new raised beds – they each got the same amount of soaker hose applied and were fertilized ditto. Each had marigolds and borage planted around them for pest management and beauty. The borage starting blooming in late May, its still blooming in late October – talk about attracting pollinators! I did notice that honey bee’s and bumble bees in particular swarmed the borage – wasps don’t have much to do with it. Works for me!
The Weber County Fair had more ripe tomato entries this year than last despite growing conditions. The tomatoes in the State Fair were generally sorry looking, the exception was the larger heirloom varieties that looked like they had a great growing year.
Pretty sure that I am going to repeat the varieties next year. I’ve tried some green zebra’s – they grew well but my hubby wouldn’t have anything to do with them because they were not red. The sweet sungold (a very orange sweet) tomato is grown by a friend of mine and they are lovely, would be a nice change on the salad plate, although the color would be interesting in sauce, eh? I tried a heirloom beefsteak a couple of years ago – nice flavored tomato, but their size makes them ripen later than sooner and with our silly fall season. Remember, we had our first snow 9/30 this year…..