Slicing Tomatoes (8/4/23)

[lynnee]

Aug 26, 2023 16:38:51 GMT -5 scarfguy said:

Well crap!   The lovely double flower I just posted a picture of may not be as cool as I thought.

Read about tomato catfacing!

www.tomatobible.com/tomato-catfacing/

It is quite likely to produce a very deformed tomato.

Yep. My Black Beauty did that with a double flower. You gotta take what you get, though.

[lynnee]

The plants in the Slicing Tomatoes project are teenagers now. There were five varieties in one Farm, and things were quite crowded. I moved two to another Farm today.

It was late to be relocating the plants from one AG to another, so I'm not sure that they'll survive or do well. I got interrupted before I could get them "trellised", and two plants were lying almost flat when I got back. Fingers crossed about those two!

Two of three plants moved to different holes in the grow deck, for spacing:



Two plants that were lying flat after relocation to another Farm 12XL:

[slw]

I spy a tiny little seedling in my Dwarf Awesome pod!!  It's still under the label, though. 

[lynnee]

The slicing tomato varieties are all about 24" high, and there are flowers or flower buds on Galahad, Emmylou, and Bobcat.

The Dwarf Awesomes, started much later, are small seedlings. They will need larger quarters soon.

[scarfguy]

AWESOME! lynnee!

BTW, "dwarf" is a matter of opinion.  Mine are now 32 inches.  

They are very handsome, stocky plants. They should hold their large fruit without any additional support.

[scarfguy]

UPDATE: 57 Days

My "Dwarf Awesome" is no longer dwarf.  The literature said it grows 2-3 feet. Mine just hit 36 inches.

It needs to stop now!  It's about to outgrow the space it's been allocated. 

I haven't pruned it yet but I may soon need to take the top off.

I can't get over how nice a plant it is. It's like a tree.  I've got a couple of tomatoes coming at the bottom and lots of flowers towards the top.

[lynnee]

All five of my slicing tomato plants are still alive, but all were gangly and had unhealthy-looking foliage. ("Galahad" was the worst, with curled leaves and some leaves with severe edema.)

Today, I did R&Rs on both Farms with slicing tomato plants, and took off the curled and yellowed leaves. From here on, my focus will be to see whether I can get the plants to bush out. It may be too late, as all the plants are already at maximum height for the Farms.

The "container plants" are behaving like indeterminate tomatoes, with flower development mostly happening at the tops of the tallest vines. Bobcat and

Galahad and Emmylou (a few flowers)



Bobcat (a few flowers), Mountain Merit, and Tasti-Lee (a few flowers)

[lynnee]

The indoor Dwarf Awesome is about 11" tall, and has developed a flower cluster! The outdoor plant is healthy, about 9" tall, and has no flowers yet.

[scarfguy]

Today my dwarf awesome is not so awesome.  I have a cluster of 3 tomatoes at the bottom and a bunch of flowers at the top.  All of the flowers at the top are wilting and dropping. They look dry. None are producing fruit. 

This plant has grown into the light. The light is a 250 watt grow light with a large power supply bolted to the top.  It generates quite a bit of heat.  I've been thinking for some time that I have a heat problem. The room is small (8x8). It is a breakfast nook.  It has windows on 3 sides and a lot of sunlight comes in. PLUS, I have almost 1000 watts of grow lights for the melons and the tomatoes.  The temperature runs about 80-82 degrees at the grow deck.  I'm sure it's higher close to the grow light.

SO... I topped the dwarf this morning.  I took about 6 inches off of it which included quite a few flower clumps.

I'm hoping it will develop new flowers a little lower where it's a little bit cooler.

[slw]

I always wonder about room temperature issues, particularly heat since tomatoes growing outside have no issue with higher temps.  I know that lettuces and some other plants don't like heat, but it seems to me that a tomato or pepper plant should do fine in an 80 degree environment.  

[lynnee]

scarfguy, your tomato should produce new leaves and flowers quickly, at least if it performs like all of my cherry tomatoes. FWIW, my AG tomatoes grow more slowly in temps above 75 degrees.

[lynnee]

Sept 20, 2023 16:54:42 GMT -5 slw said:

I always wonder about room temperature issues, particularly heat since tomatoes growing outside have no issue with higher temps.  I know that lettuces and some other plants don't like heat, but it seems to me that a tomato or pepper plant should do fine in an 80 degree environment.  

My tomatoes don't like temps above 75 degrees, but of course that is the water temp as well as the air temp when you're growing indoors. Tomatoes are supposed to like sun, and in summer the local growers have them in fields that get sun all day. At least I think they do--I haven't ever seen fields of tomatoes.

I need to do some Googling on commercial tomato production! My outdoor tomatoes don't like being in full sun for even half the day.

[scarfguy]

SO... this morning I moved the tomato plant out of the breakfast nook and into the pepper room. 

This room is cooler and the temperature doesn't fluctuate so much. We'll see if he does better.

Plus the pepper plants should welcome Mr. tomato!

[slw]

Sept 21, 2023 10:40:14 GMT -5 lynnee said:

My tomatoes don't like temps above 75 degrees, but of course that is the water temp as well as the air temp when you're growing indoors. Tomatoes are supposed to like sun, and in summer the local growers have them in fields that get sun all day. At least I think they do--I haven't ever seen fields of tomatoes.

I need to do some Googling on commercial tomato production! My outdoor tomatoes don't like being in full sun for even half the day.

I grew up on a farm in south GA, and you are correct that growers have acres of tomato fields in full sun all day.  I don't understand why Aerogarden plants would be so sensitive to slight temperature variations since plants outdoors in their natural environment certainly don't get coddled.   

scarfguy--I hope the move is beneficial to your 'mater. 

[lynnee]

slw, Perhaps the open-field tomatoes put down deep roots that are in cooler soil? Warm hydroponic water temps seem to sort of cook the roots.

[slw]

Beats me, lynnee.  

[lynnee]

Today I terminated the Emmylou and Galahad slicing tomatoes. Both wanted to go higher than the 36" allowed by a Farm 12XL. I now understand that you probably want to top your "container" tomatoes, and encourage any side growth that appears.

Emmylou had some blossoms, but they never set fruit. Nothing was happening on the main stem of either plant.

So today I cleaned the garden (dishwasher as usual). Tomorrow I'll move two Veranda Red seedlings in.

[scarfguy]

SO... with regard to size, I'm finding that you can top a plant that has a growth habit a little larger than your space (maybe 20%)  but if it's really big, it won't be productive to top it.

I've got a san marzano tomato growing that was 56 inches tall when I had to top it.  The plant is not happy. It was just getting started with flowering at the top third of the plant.  It's been producing fruit rather sparcely and the tomatoes are not very large.  It hasn't wanted to grow new growth at a lower level at all.

And it is now quite root bound.  The limiting factor for how big you can grow in an AG, even with unlimited height, seems to be root space.

On the otherhand, I topped my "dwarf awesome" and moved it to a different location and its perking up and starting some new growth lower.   I'm optomistic it will be successful.

I hope we can get some of these varieties from the australian dwarf tomato project to be productive in our AGs.  The available varieties are quite numerous and varied.   Most are about 3 foot plants so we should be able to prune them to fit the farm.

[lynnee]

scarfguy, I think that we can get productive bush tomatoes (e.g., Dwarf Awesome) in a Farm XL (36") or a Bounty if we start topping the plants early. If we wait until the plant has reached the lights, it's kinda too late.

When I ended the Galahad and Emmylou today, the roots took up about one third to one half of the bowl. The roots were also a healthy white. Both observations surprised me, because the plants were moved from one Farm 12XL to another after being heavily pruned.

My mistake was that I forgot that container tomatoes are bushes when pruning. I took off a lot of spindly growth that looked like suckers. Now I think the plants were bushing out with the side growth, so I should have terminated the main stem when the side branches began to show up.

Part of the reason why I terminated Emmylou and Galahad is that I'd already taken off the side growth below the growing top. I couldn't see any nodes that looked like they would produce new growth lower down if I topped the plants.

I still have three slicing tomatoes in the original Farm 12XL. These seem to think that 30" is a fine height to be! One, Bobcat, has several flowers and may even produce a few tomatoes. But for now I want to see how they grow. Then I'll know better how to prune.

For example, cherry tomatoes produce many more flowers if you keep the leaf canopy to a minimum. It still surprises me. I think that judicious pruning of bush tomatoes will increase production and also help keep the root development in check.

[lynnee]

Today I terminated the Mountain Merit and the Tasti-lee. One or both had flowers earlier, but they dropped off. Neither looks like any more flowers will be coming soon.

The Bobcat has two batches of flowers (circled below), and at least one bloom has pollinated. Fingers crossed! The poor thing has an extremely makeshift softwire trellis, but it's all I had time for today.