by Leslie Cox; Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Last Sunday was The Day. John and I stripped the last of the green tomatoes off of the plants in the greenhouse. Past time when all the tomatoes and cucumber vines should have been removed, the greenhouse tidied up and the slightly tender plants, the pots that are not frost-resistant and Mom’s driftwood bench were to be moved in for storage over the winter.

Next on the list was to weigh all those tomatoes, by variety, and enter the data onto my spreadsheet. I have been keeping a running total of the tomato harvest all season just to compare which ones ripened first, how much fruit harvested per plant and how long each variety kept up production.

I should note here…we grew a total of fourteen tomato varieties multiplied into forty plants. Twenty-two of the tomato plants (six different varieties) were planted in the greenhouse. (Each planting hole was amended with a generous cup to a cup and a half of my organic fertilizer mix. Recipe is here, if you are interested.)

Sixteen seedlings were planted into two gallon pots that had been filled with equal amounts of potting soil and compost, plus a generous cup of my organic fertilizer…and situated wherever the most sun would hit in my front garden…which is largely shaded by one large chestnut tree and two large maples. So that would have been along the edge of my rose/peony bed and one side of the driveway. (The blacktop on the driveway helped to produce more heat for the plants, even though the total sun amount was as low as six hours per day…on a good day.)

One tomato plant, the lonely single ‘Oxheart’, was generously given a five gallon pot and also placed on the driveway in front of the woodshed where the indeterminate vine could scramble up the suspended baling twine.

And finally, one of the three diminutive ‘Sophie’s Choice’ seedlings was placed in a small hanging basket to monitor its potential growth benefits in this format. ‘Sophie’s Choice’ only gets 12-16 inches (30-40 cm) tall which makes it an ideal selection for growing in small spaces.

So…here are the results, listed alphabetically by variety:

1.  ‘Black Cherry’ (OP) – 2 plants (outside)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 15th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    1 lb 2 oz = 9 oz / plant

2.  ‘Brandywine’ (OP) – 2 plants (outside)

• 1st picking:      Sept. 3rd
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    1 lb 10 oz = 13 oz / plant

3.  ‘Early Girl’ (F1) – 6 plants (greenhouse)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 12th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    34 lb 10 oz = 5 lb 13 oz / plant

4.  ‘Gardener’s Delight’ (OP) – 7 plants (greenhouse)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 5th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    13 lb 8 oz = 1 lb 15 oz / plant

5.  ‘Gold Nugget’ (OP) – 2 plants (outside)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 3rd
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    2 lb 2 oz = 1 lb 1 oz / plant

6.  ‘Harry’s Roma’ (OP) – 2 plants (greenhouse)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 24th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    15 lb 3 oz = 7 lb 10 oz / plant

7.  ‘Mennonite Heritage’ (OP) – 5 plants (3 in greenhouse; 2 outside)

• 1st picking:      Oct. 7th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    5 lb 11 oz = 1 lb 15 oz / 3 plants
• (fruits on the 2 plants outside did not develop into any worthwhile size)

8.  ‘Moneymaker’ (F1) – 1 plant (greenhouse)

• 1st picking:      Sept. 11th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    4 lb 13 oz

9.  ‘Oxheart’ (OP) – 1 plant (outside)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 11th
• last picked:      Sept. 16th
• total weight:    1 lb 8 oz

10.  ‘Silvery Fir Tree’ (OP) – 2 plants (outside)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 9th
• last picked:      Oct. 4th
• total weight:    2 lb 3 oz = 1 lb 2 oz / plant

11.  ‘Snow White’ (OP) – 2 plants (outside)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 4th
• last picked:      Oct. 4th
• total weight:    1 lb 5 oz = 11 oz / plant

12.  ‘Sophie’s Choice’ (OP) – 3 plants (outside; 1 in hanging basket)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 11th
• last picked:      Sept. 21st
• total weight:    2 lb = 1 lb 8 oz / 2 plants in pots; 8 oz from hanging basket

13.  ‘Sweet Million’ (F1) – 3 plants (greenhouse)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 5th
• last picked:      Oct. 26th
• total weight:    16 lb 11 oz = 5 lb 10 oz / plant

14.  ‘Yellow Pear’ (OP) – 2 plants (outside)

• 1st picking:      Aug. 15th
• last picked:      Oct. 4th
• total weight:    1 lb 2 oz = 9 oz / plant

 

To summarize:

1.  First picking of any variety – ‘Gold Nugget’
2.  All plants, both in the greenhouse and in pots, were given 3-4 feedings of liquid fish fertilizer stretched out between early April and early September.
3.  Most fruits per plant:

• ‘Harry’s Roma’ = 7 lb  10 oz
• ‘Early Girl’        = 5 lb  13 oz
• ‘Sweet Million’ = 5 lb  10 oz

4.  Worst varieties:

• ‘Brandywine’
• ‘Mennonite Heritage’
• ‘Moneymaker’

5.  ‘Black Cherry’, ‘Brandywine’, ‘Gold Nugget’ and ‘Yellow Pear’ were shifted further down the driveway to make room for one of John’s carpentry projects. This meant total sun hours dropped for these tomato plants over the course of about one month.

6.  ‘Black Cherry’, ‘Silvery Fir Tree’, ‘Sophie’s Choice’ and ‘Yellow Pear’ are all varieties that have been grown in one or more of my six school gardens over the last four years… along with other tomato varieties. All four of these have always produced extremely well in the raised beds at the school gardens.

And the final wrap-up notes…for my readers…‘Early Girl’, ‘Moneymaker’ and ‘Sweet Million’ are F1 hybrids so I will not be saving any seed. All of the others are open-pollinated varieties.

‘Harry’s Roma’ is so-named because the original seeds came from the friend of a father of a friend of my brother…and that name is way too long to fit on a plant label. We honour the friend by naming this tomato after him and because it is a roma-type tomato, we added that epitaph.

Same is true of ‘Mennonite Heritage’. Our seeds came from a friend who got his original seeds from some Mennonite friends. He was also told this is a heritage variety. Of note: our friend had good success with this variety in 2013 but ours bombed this year. And it was a stellar growing year for tomatoes…even a little better than last year. Likely reasons were his garden patch is more protected…and he may have fertilized differently.

We will not be growing ‘Mennonite Heritage’, ‘Brandywine’ or ‘Moneymaker’ next year as they are late season tomato varieties and our growing season is not long enough to do them justice.

Takes a little bit of extra effort on my part, but I like doing this kind of record keeping. (I was a lab techie, after all, so spreadsheets and data collection are in my blood.) As the results pointed out…we can easily see which varieties are worth growing again, tweaking the number of plants of each to better serve our culinary needs.

The spreadsheet also clearly points out which varieties should definitely be dropped. And it helps with our decision to maybe try changing the growing conditions of one or two of the poorly-performing tomato varieties if they showed really good attributes in the taste and/or disease resistance departments. Perhaps planting those in the greenhouse…or in bigger pots…or increasing the fertilizing regime would achieve higher productivity or an earlier harvest time.

There is always next year!