Days elapsed since April 16 2026:

• 60 days: Monday, June 15, 2026
• 70 days: Thursday, June 25, 2026
• 80 days: Sunday, July 5, 2026
• 90 days: Wednesday, July 15, 2026 

 June 13:  Plants are growing vigorously with many fruit.   Several > 6 ft.  Already picked a few Sun Gold.  Disease seems very minimal.   A few plants have some yellowing and browning on the bottom branches:  notably the two HC, although not a lot and they have set a bunch of fruit.   Also:  the OS at the back left corner of the main plot has severe browning and wilting at the top of the plant - less so at bottom branches.  This plant is next to the corner slot that was "unplantable" due to ant nest! that killed two plants, planted successively in same spot, each within 24 hours of planting.  Maybe the ants are impinging on the roots.  

2026 planting map

 

Master list of my tomato variety 2- or 3-letter abbreviations: 2026 update

Full name / Abbreviation
46A2.3 y/y    46

55A7          55

Airyleaf      AL
Ananas Noir.  AN
Basinga       BA
Better Boy  BB (2026)
Better Bush  BB (Pre 2018)
Black Cherry  BC
Black Zebra  BZ
Black from Tula BFT
Brandywine    BW
Carbon        CA
Cherokee Purple   CP
Costoluto Genovese CG
Coyote        CO
Funky Bell   FB
Flamme        FL
Gogoshori Striped GS
Godzilla    GDZ
Green Zebra GZ
Hawaiian Currant HC
Ildi        IL
Indigo Rose IR 
Lucky Cross LC
Kellogg's Breakfast KB
Long Tom     LT
Mortgage Lifter ML
Mr. Stripey  MS
Orange Slicer  OS
Pink Berkeley Tie Die BTD
Pink Ping Pong PPP
Red Pear    RP
Reisetomate RT
Roman Candle RC
Roma        RO
Sunny Butter SB
Sweet Pea Currant SPC
Sun Gold    SG
Supersauce   SS
Tangerine Dream TD
Uluru Ochre UO
White Beauty WB
Zapotec Pink Ribbed ZPT

2026 varieties

2026 varieties

     year = when the seeds were prepared byt me or if purchased, the marketed season on the packet.

46A2.3 y/y F7 2025
55A7 F8 2025
BB = Better Boy, 2026.  Not to be confused with BB = Better Bush from years past.  (I just wanted a simple hybrid red beefsteak that was likely to be disease-resistant.)
BC 2021
SG 2017
OS 2016
SB "Sunny Butter" 2018 - a Kroger heirloom that I can't recall planting? but maybe I did?
GZ 2025
HC 2020
SPC 2021

Germination notes:  All of these germinated pretty well.  Even SG (2017) and OS (2016) both germinated 7/16 seeds and those were the worst rate of all these - the rest were >50% and 2020 or later were 90-100%.  OS is ten years old. !

2026 tomatoes are growing

 This year I am not renting a plot.  I decided to grow as many plants as I could in my backyard - all in the ground.  Because of last year's disastrous results, I planned more carefully!  Or at least, differently.

I sowed on March 12.   This year I decided to use a probiotic approach to thwart off disease.  The products I chose were (1) Hydroguard, a liquid that contains beneficial Bacillus spores, and (2) Mykos, which is a mycorhizzial funus in powder form.  Therefore, I did not add Daconil which is an anti-fungal treatment I have used in previous years.   Following germination, I added Hydroguard to the additional rounds of water when growing the seedlings.  

For transplant, the Mykos is applied by dusting the roots in the powder.   Although I've used Cowpots for several years for the first transplant stage, I always noticed that after a week or two they starting growing slimy pink-orange colonies on the outside of the pots.  Who knows what that was.  This year I just used plastic 4" square pots that come attached together in a 6x3 grid.  My thinking is that the Cowpots might be bringing in bad bacteria.  I brushed the seedling roots in some Mykos powder on a plate then planted in the transplant pots. Transplant soil was a mix of MiracleGrow mostiure control potting soil, leftover seedling started mix and a bit of peat moss.   Transplant was done around April 1-ish.   

Finally, I got the plants in the ground on April 16/17.   No buckets this year! (Except for one, see below.).  Fortunately, my neighbor removed some overhanging trees and now there's more sunlight in my old garden plot again.   I also tilled up two little separated patches of yard to squeeze in a few more plants.   So, I planted 18 in my big patch against the fence, and two little groups of 4 more each.   But one plant in the big patch died due to an ant colony! Never saw that before.  I even put in a replacement plant and they killed that too!  So:  17+4+4 = 25 plants in the ground.   Finally, I threw a few unneeded plants onto my compost heap, then discovered a week later some were still alive!  So I jumbled four of them into one old bucket.  

By 5/17/26 all the in-ground plants are thriving, about 2.5-3 feet tall.   Some of them in the big patch have some curling leaves but no discoloration (yet).     The list of varieties will be in the next post.

2025 thoughts

 2025 has been a weird year.  Including for my gardening.

I sowed about 20 varieties but got a late start, and due to communication errors on my part with my farm rental plot landlords I planted late too.  Did not sow indoors till March 25.  Did not get plants in the farm plot ground till almost May.   I planted about 20 plants at the farm, had 4 in buckets in backyard, and I put a half dozen extra plants in my backyard garden last, and did almost nothing to care for them.

This was way too late - should have been in ground before April 15.  Why does this matter?  For a few reasons .  1. the plants didn't have time to establish well before the warm weather really set in, and a lot of the plants looked fine for the first few weeks, but were hammered by wilt before they got nice and big.  I think having a better root establishment early would have helped.  2.  Consistent rain made for nice plant growth but prob contributed to fungal growth too.  3.  I spread wood chip mulch around the plant becasue it was free there, but I read later that that can spread fungus sometimes.  4.  Fruit set was a couple weeks late.

But mainly the wilt was terrible.  By July, about half the plants at the farm were dying off and were so stunted that they were done for.  They did not make enough leaf growth to shelter the fruit, so the fruit that they tried to make were few, sunscalded, and small.  Then, the heat came in July, and fruit set stopped.  By the third week in July - which is usually the peak of production - it was pathetic.   I'm not sure I picked more tomatoes than the number of plants!  

Some things to fight wilt next year:  1.  Put more anti-fungal in the mix when transplanting to larger pots.  2.  Maybe the cowpots I use are vectors for fungus or bateria that cause wilt.  Hard to know,  I do know that after a few weeks they start to grow colonies of bacteria on the outside - pinkish looking colonies.  Try different pots?  3.  Try adding a beneficial bacteria to the mix.  I did this once before.  4.  Don't use wood chip mulch.  5.  Start everything earlier so plants have time to grow bigger before they get stressed by more heat.