ZPR

At last a decent Zapotec pink ribbed.

More fruits of the season

7/30/13

Tips for cross-pollinating tomatoes

1. Tag the flower first, otherwise tagging might inadvertently damage the fragile pistil.

2. Emasculate: choose a flower that had not yet opened, with slightly immature coloring.  Then with tweezers, remove sepals, then petals, then carefully remove anther cone; note,  pulling it all off intact may pull off the pistil.   Therefore I like to pick off individual anthers.  If you pull off a whole anther down to the base, it can break the "ring" attaching the anther cone to the base,  and may make it easier to remove the rest of the cone.

3. Pollinate with pollen from the male parent.

Update 7/29/13

It's the peak of harvesting and it's been fun to have up to a dozen different types of tomatoes in the kitchen at the same time.  Made some very good sauces by roasting tomatoes.

My attempts to do crosses have been failures, though I only tried a few.  By now some varieties have few or no flowers.  Unfortunately Indigo Rose has stopped, and I really needed that pollen.   I'll try one more BFT X IR today since I found a good-stage BFT flower and I dissected it well; trying IR pollen I saved previously.  Hope it's still good.

Update, and enjoying harvest

Well we have been picking some of almost every variety now.  Got a few ripe  Black from Tulas that were big and odd shaped, but meaty and flavorful.  Flamme is I think my favorite so far.   Black Cherry was very good but only had a few so far.  Still waiting on Airyleaf and Kellogs breakfast but it won be long.  There is an Airyleaf that is huge, just now turning color. Prob 5" long x 2.5 " wide. And wonder of wonders, a Zapotec finally set a fruit.

Top row L to R: HCs, coyotes, red pear, Ildi, black cherry, red ping pong, Indigo rose, Flamme.

Bottom row: green zebra, gogoshari, better boy, black from Tula.

Taste the rainbow

From top, clockwise: Indigo Rose, Green Zebra, Coyote (two of 'em), Ildi, Flamme, Pink Ping Pong, Hawaiian Currant, Red Pear.

2nd crosspollination attempt

I tried using anthers from a fresh Indigo rose, along with an old anther cone I saved last month. Recipient female: Black fom Tula, a full sized young flower still unopened with still-green anther cone.  I hope I did not damage the pistil, but it looks ok as far as I can see.  Not covering the pistil this time as my muslin covering sort of damaged the last attempts.  

 Looks like the heat and humidity are reducing fruit set on some varieties.

7/13/13: harvesting

Lots of HC and coyotes, which are both very sweet.  Definitely will replant them next year.  We've also picked Flamme, Ildi and Red Pear.    Flammes are very good flavor, juicy and a great apricot color.  Ildi an Red pear are OK, nothing spectacular.   Coming soon: indigo rose, black from Tula, pink ping pong, green zebra, better boy.

First tomatoes

We began harvesting Coyote and Hawaiian Currant cherries (pictured).  Nice sweetness and they are a hit with our kids.  A few more Flammes, Ildi are coloring up.   The Airyleafs are looking like very nice smooth, large pointy plum shapes.  Red Pear looks very prolific, while Ildi had poor fruit set despite the knockout flower trusses.  The first Flamme and Black from Tulas had a little blossom end rot.  However it seemed to be a limited problem.  Interestingly I've read that BER tends to manifest on the first fruit.  Let's hope it stays that way.  

Try, try again

The first attempts at cross-pollination were a bust, though I really didn't try many.  The IRs didn't take and fell off. One of the KBs might have been developing but broke off at the base of the stigma.  Note to self: They are fragile, dummy.

Learning

Things to improve on next year:

1. Stake higher

2. Prune suckers

3. More space between rows.

The plants are getting big.

Cross-pollination attempts

Today I tried cross-pollination for the first time, between Indigo Rose and Kellogg's Breakfast.  The problem with IR Is that it's got small flowers that yielded little pollen, and had small stamens and anther cones' so I had trouble emasculating them without damaging the stigma.   KB was much easier as it's got large stigmas (stigmae?) and it was easy to peel away the anthers.  

Update 6/22/13

Indigo Rose is a wow.  Also Coyote is coloring up! (shown) as is HC.  Here also is a big Airyleaf, and some great Gogosharis.

Physalis

Ok, this isn't a tomato but it's a cousin.  This is growing as a weed near my front steps.  It's a Physalis species, in the nightshade family like the tomato.  This genus includes the ground cherry and tomatillo, which are edible , and some that are not.  I may keep it going till I can identify it for sure though I don't think I'll take a chance on eating the fruit.

Mixup??

Well, now one of the KBs looks like it is setting beefsteaks,  while the other "KB" has the pear shape fruit. E.g red pear. So maybe I did mislabel one of 'em.

In other news, one of the Airyleaf fruit looks full size.  It's sort of in between a Roma shape and an oxheart.

Whatsit

So the Kellog's Breakfast, which is supposed to be a big yellow beefsteak, ain't lookin like no beefsteak.  They look like small pear shape fruit to me.   I'm bummed as I was really looking forward to the KBs, but they are probably really a yellow or red pear.  
I do have a red pear plant but I'm pretty darn sure I didn't mix the seeds up...

Recent photos

Indigo Rose coloring up nicely; prolific flower truss on Ildi.  

Update 6-13-13

Fruit set on gogoshari; flowers on Zapotec, which are also quite big plants now - ~5 ft - but no fruit set yet.  Black cherry has some flower buds finally.

Update

Fruit set on Airyleaf and PPP.  Black Cherry may be a bust - no flowers, and (my bad) I didn't string them up in time, they flopped over and have such weak stems that they bent when I tried to get some string on them for support.   Hmm.   

This is cool - Indigo Rose is showing purple where the sunlight hits. Same fruit as the photo from a few days ago.

More fruit set

On Better Boy, Black from Tula, kellogs, flamme, green zebra, Hawaiian currant.  

About those aphids

A follow-up to the aphid situation: Not too long after I noticed the aphids, I spotted many tan/brown aphidy-looking things among the live aphids.  I'd assumed these were some sort of normally empty skins cast off at a late stage molt, but actually they were aphid mummies.  These are aphids that have been parasitized by wasp larvae that kill 'em, eat them from the inside out, then "hatch" out a small hole in the dead aphid's husky skin. !

Well, after about a week, there really were plenty of these aphid mummies to be seen and the aphid numbers seemed to be diminishing noticeably.  Score one for biological control.  Thank you, unknown parasitic wasps!

First fruit set

 Coyote and all three Indigo Rose plants have some fruit setting.  The IR flowers have very noticeably purplish stems.  I have been late in stringing up all the plants properly, so several are flopping over a bit. Oddly the better boy plants are among the shortest of the lot, but are quite sturdy.   The ~80 degree weather for the past few weeks has really helped growth.  Also, I set up a soaker hose which seems to work well, though we've had quite good periodic rain showers so it's been hardly necessary.  

This is fruit on Indigo Rose, 6/4/13.   Note the dark stems.

Warm weather, first buds and aphids

With some warm weather over the last 2 weeks, the plants are finally taking off.  Today I noticed buds on the Black from Tulas, and a couple others.  On the other hand...aphids have colonized a few plants in a big way.   I've started spraying with diluted dishwash soap, which is reported to irritate/kill aphids. I'm trying to avoid non-organic pestidicides if possible - not that I'm really philosophically opposed to them, but I do have small kids that play in the backyard and I'd just rather not if I don't have to.  

Another tactic is to buy & release insect control species, like ladybugs (their true name is ladybird beetles), but this has some pros and cons.  e.g.:

http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/why-you-shouldnt-buy-ladybugs-natural-pest-control-your-garden.html

http://voices.yahoo.com/guidelines-attracting-purchasing-ladybugs-436922.html

Although purchased ladybird beetles can carry parasites, it's probably likely that the native ladybirds in one's garden probably carry a fair parasite load too - most wild insects will.  So I believe the concern over introducing parasites that will affect other "good" insects might be overblown relative to simply attracting more ladybirds.

Green lacewings are apparently a good alternative.

Biobest produces Adalia bipunctata ladybird larvae ; distributed by International Technology Services in the USA.  

>90˚?

I've been reading that tomato plants have trouble setting fruit if the daytime temps are over 90 degrees.   We have a name for that weather in Tennessee - it's called "Summer".  If this is true I'm screwed.  But if it is, how does anybody grow them around here?

Destroying a pallet/Chicken farm smell

Over the last week I pulled apart the pallet on which they delivered all the dirt etc.  I recycled the boards as edging for the garden.  It's a "faux raised" bed!   On Tuesday I had a day at home, so I leveled out the plot with more dirt etc.   The garden surface was still an inch or two below the surrounding yard, and it pooled a lot of water (briefly) in the heavy rain last weekend.  So I added a mix of: 40 lbs cheapo topsoil + 1 lg. bag name-brand topsoil (miracle gro) + 1 smaller bag miracle gro potting mix, + ~ 3 lbs Tomato tone.  The tomato tone smells exactly like a chicken farm.   I mixed this in the wheelbarrow, applied it and then mixed a second batch, and applied that too.  Looks pretty good so far.  Note = about 6 lbs tomato tone across the entire garden, ~ 100 sq ft.   I totally eyeballed the amount based on the 20 lb bag...

So far all the plants are doing OK.  Next up:  Weed control/plastic mulch, and fencing the garden...to prevent the little ones from accidentally stomping on my plants.

Planting!

Finally, the plants are in the ground.  I'm so anally organized about this that I made a map ahead of time  to keep it all straight. (see Map page).

Prepping the garden

This past week I dug up a 7x12 foot plot in the backyard, about 4 inches deep.  To do that I had to cut up dense bermudagrass sod (but that means it's a sunny spot).  It was sort of good and bad;  I didn't want to just till up the grass because it grows so aggressively from the roots, so I cut out the sod and got rid of it (mainly dumped in the way-back part of the yard out of sight).   At least that should reduce the rate of grass growing back up. 

So in the end I had Lowes deliver 10 bags Black Kow 50 lb bags, 3 cu ft peat moss, and 3 large bags of garden soil.  I estimated this to be about 20 cu ft total.  This wound up being slightly less than optimal to fill the 7x12 space I dug out, but workable.  25-30 cu ft would have been just about right!     Thee peat moss should acidify the soil a bit, which tomatoes are actually supposed to like.    This was probably about 700 pounds of material.   The neighbors' hand power tiller was useful to break up the soil before adding the stuff, and then to mix it up some more.

Transplants be growin'

By about 2 weeks ago, I have transplanted about 30-40 seedlings into 5 inch biodegradeable fiber pots.  Around this time I treated the plants with Actinovate.  I set up a growlight after they had germinated, but now I have about 5 trays of stuff crowded around the light!

Most are now growing nicely to a few inches tall.  I put several of the trays of pots outside for a few days this week to harden off.    

Secondary leaves

All varieties now have secondary leaves and are 1.5-3 inches tall mostly. Ready to transplant to larger pots. I will do 5 inch pots.

All varieties have germinated

All varieties have multiple sprouts.  Coyote now has 2.

It will probably be an other week or two till true leaves appear - then they can be moved to 3 inch pots.  plant up to the cotyledon leaves.  ~april 1?

More sowing

I planted a few more seeds for the varieties that seemed to have few sprouts. All heirlooms were sowed at ~2 seeds per cup; a few were reseeded when they failed to germinate well.  Better boy is a hybrid sowed at 1 seed per well, but seemed to have about 100% germination.    Also, a few seedlings were killed by joshua stomping into my trays, and a couple by mildew, but overall mildewing was not much of a problem.

Heirlooms germinating

All heirlooms already germinating except Coyote.   Note how much faster they germinate with the heat pad - 4 days, while the previous Better Boy seeds took 2 weeks without the heat pad.

Planted heirloom seeds

Today I planted 14 varieties of heirloom tomato seeds in tray format, 2 seeds per cup. (or pot or well or whatever you wanna call them).  About 4 to 8 cups dedicated to each variety.  I started using a heat mat  and kept the tray cover on.

Better boy sprouts emerging.

15 days after sowing.

Better Boy

Planted Better Boy hybrid seeds today.