I don’t grow many tomatoes anymore. I use to put in 20+ plants and then i realized that they all ripen about the same time. I was giving away 5 gallon pails full and i still had a ton of waste. Now i usuall stick to 2 or 3 plants. If i had more time and or help i’d do more.
Yeah you need ways to preserve any harvest. Just about everything is like tomatoes. I have pounds of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries. My freezer right now is filled to the very top! I will use much of the stash in canning too. A lot easier to store. Drying too. I just dried about 30 jalapenos for jalapeno powder. Man it came out excellent! Forget cayenne, this is tasty powder! I will pickle the next flush of jalapenos. I might make some jelly too. I like hotter peppers for jelly. I use it as a glaze on chicken.
Wow, you all are so lucky! I have had enough tomatoes for one small pan of sauce so far. More on the way but they are all green. I should have purchased a Brandywine! I do love that tomato. I planted 16 plants. Not a good area for tomatoes. Inland is much better.
This is my first year growing Margaret Curtain, and it is definitely a winner for me. It was the first to blossom and set fruit, and the first to give me nice ripe sandwich tomatoes. It is still pumping out the fruit and blossoms. It should be noted that I start my seed indoors at least eight weeks before our last frost date. I am in zone 4…
Ginny
Here are what I picked today: 3 Druzba on the left, an Opalka on top, an unknown rogue I’m calling Striped Mystery Beast on the top right, a Prudence Purple (which is actually pink) bottom right and a handful of Black Cherries in the middle.
The Druzba are a really good medium sized tomato from Bulgaria. They have a great flavor and a nice mix of gel/seeds and flesh that make them refreshing in salads, etc.
The Opalka in the picture is one of the smaller ones. People say these are a Roma type, but with the shape and the fact that I’ve had them up to 8 inches long and weighing as much as some beefstakes, they’re different than any Roma I ever bought at the store. I have 3 plants of this one and it is the only variety showing blossom end rot and it is pretty pervasive. I might be loosing 2/3 to BER. I don’t have enough, or enough time to make sauce, so I was hoping for using them for fresh eating and they have a very good flavor (like great tomato sauce), but I definitely prefer the Druzbas for salads and the beefstakes for slicing and in sandwiches so I’ll drop this next year. I’d grow one plant if I was getting full output, but the BER is too much.
When we harvested the first Prudence Purple my daughter who really likes fresh tomatoes said it was the best tomato she’d ever had. Really meaty, with a flavor and texture I’d call luscious since it is almost smooth. Not a lot of acid, but enough for a great flavor. Some people call this a Pink Brandywine, but apparently there is actually no brandywine in the parentage, or at least that is the story I’ve read. It is a potato leaf variety. I’ll definitely grow this again. It is supposed to be pretty productive, but a deer ate almost all of the green tomatoes off my plants about a month ago, so I’m only getting a few and can’t really say what I should be getting.
Black Cherry is great, even though the skin is a little thicker than I would normally like, but for some reason the texture mixed with the size of the fruit makes it seem just right. It gives is a little bit of chew. I also grew Sweet Million and Matt’s Wild Cherry, but won’t bother with either of those again since they were just too sweet without enough real tomato flavor for me. I will grow the Black Cherry again and probably add Sunglow as a nice color/flavor counterpoint. The only thing with these is with the color and the fact that many seem to keep green shoulders it is hard for me to tell when they are at the best for picking.
The Striped Mystery Beast is a real delight - at least the first one we got. It was like Prudence in texture, but had a little more acid and zip. My daughter tasted this a few days after proclaiming Prudence the best she’d tasted and then said this one was even better. I haven’t tasted the one in the picture yet, but will tomorrow so we’ll see it it holds up to the first we ate. This one is much smaller than the first. It is a bit hard to see in the photo, but it is red with light yellow stripes. The stripes are very narrow and less distinct than most striped varieties and this seed came out of the Prudence Purple packet so it is probably a chance cross pollinated seed. I knew it was different because it has regular tomato leaves, so I decided to grow it out and am very happy I did. I sent Remy at SampleSeeds.com pictures and she couldn’t figure out what it was so it probably is just a random cross. I’ll definitely save seed and see what I get next year.
Here’s a closer shot of the big ones with Prudence left and Mystery Striped Beast right.
And here is the first striped beast we picked. It is solid red inside.
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Nice photos. I myself never had BER with Opalka. I’m growing Romeo and Polish Linguisa which have a similar shape (and are just as big).
I’m going to give up on the Roma types, and move more towards bigger heart shaped meaty tomatoes, BER has been a pita this year in particular.
Yes Roma types do tend to get BER, but it is also due to conditions. It tells you you have a problem.
A better draining soil if too wet. The BER I got was on two German Strawberry fruits. Some consider these heart shaped fruits paste tomatoes. Usually when I get it, it is only the first few fruits only.
i have Black Icicle (Eastern European bred Roma) plants in a very loose potting/compost mix in a raised planter as well as 2 plants in the ground, regardless both are exhibiting BER on about 40% of the fruits. Now they are out producing most of my other tomatoes which is nice, but I have to check every couple of days and remove the new BER tomatoes as I spot them.
The soil is healthy I feed with tomato tone and water directly on the soil with downward firing 24" radius sprinklers, for reference.
Do you use these for sauce? I guess you should switch, or maybe just a bad year?
The Costoluto varieties make good sauce.
Some more photos to stay on subject.
Speak of the devil Opalka
German Red Strawberry. Many are strawberry shaped, this one is not.
No BER anymore!
Polish Linguisa is a late variety. None ripe yet. Tomatoes look interresting
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@Drew51, don’t know, that second Opalka in from the left looks a little funky on the end… lol
For me it is only on the Opalka with not a spec of it on the others. I’ve read similar reports from others, so I know it (and some other heirloom roma types) are just more susceptible.
From my understanding BER usually results from a lack of available calcium in the soil. If you have calcium you need to make sure it is actually available to the plant so sometimes you’ll need to raise the pH a little to make the calcium available to the plants. Since I used some peat in my mix, I knew it was probably a little low on pH even though I had added lime when I created my mix, so I added a big handful of fast acting lime to the top of the soil around one of my Opalka when we were having rain practically every day. The lime adds some more calcium and raises the pH so it is a pretty good way to attack the issue. That actually seemed to work for a while, but now that the rain has basically stopped and I expect the plant is feeding from lower in the soil where the lime may not have reached, it has sparked back up again. If I was going to grow them again next year, I would be sure to dig in plenty of lime nice and deep from the start. I’ll add more lime next year regardless at least for the tomatoes.
I think the Opalka would make amazing sauce and they are good for fresh eating, but fresh I don’t enjoy them as much as the other types so I’m just taking the easy out and dropping them and my BER worries from the grow list for next year. I’ll probably only have 6-8 plants (at least that’s what I’m telling myself now) next year due to limited space and there are a few others I’d like to try.
One I’m eagerly awaiting to fruit is St. Colombe, which I think had a few ripe when I was away on vacation and my neighbors enjoyed. There is one starting to color, so we’ll see if it gets one of those 6-8 slots. I gave seedlings of all my varieties to my father-in-law and he says the St. Colombe was definitely his favorite. We’ll see if it can beat the Striped Mystery Beast.
That is believed by some, other think it is when the plant is stressed it cannot uptake the calcium. Most all soils are loaded with calcium. I do think Opalka is probably one to avoid. Again though I’m not having any issues with it. Also if you’re having problems with all pastes, well it’s an environmental problem. Remember too dry can cause it too.
http://www.aces.edu/dept/extcomm/specialty/ber.html
As stated Blossom-end rot is a physiological disorder, not a disease.
All of mine are grown with peat in the mix, I do have pine, and compost in the mix too, plus perlite and diatomaceous earth (same size as perlite). Lime is added and once a month i hit them with calcium nitrate. I had 3 BER tomatoes this year. And all were tiny, the tomato was not ruined on any of the three.
That spot is brown and hard btw, caused by rubbing against the cage.
So add calcium, right? And if the soil is too acidic they probably couldn’t pick it up very well, but I know you’re very careful with your soil and amendments so I’m sure your pH is good. Obviously you need to make sure you’re giving the plant everything it needs for health and keeping it away from stressful situations (good for us bipeds as well), but in the end (ha ha) isn’t getting rid of BER a matter of getting calcium into the plant.
Thanks for noting the Calcium Nitrate, I’ll try that since I still have the Opalka setting fruit and I might as well try to get all I can out of them.
By the way, I don’t want to push anyone away from giving Opalka a shot if they want a great paste sensation. If I was going to grow a paste next year I’d stick with it since it has good flavor and if I tamed the BER production would be very good for a heirloom.
We use egg shells and gypsum(calcium) for BER which is a problem on Big Mama, can be as bad 80%. Last 3 yrs we haven’t had too much except on the first flush.
Yes I have a pH meter so can monitor all soils. I use the calcium nitrate to load up the calcium, that way I may possibly avoid BER if the plant becomes stressed.
I’m not sure how effective? I have noticed many commercial operations use it.
Still I would avoid BER prone tomatoes as your conditions seem to lead to it. Here sometimes conditions can favor BER, although this year the weather has been good.
I live in the suburbs and the city water is very basic and filled with calcium. Another reason why the lack of calcium is not an issue here, ever. I try to limit using city water and use rain water when possible.
If you’re using city water you’re adding calcium every time you water.
For cherry type Sungold is better than anything I have tried. They beat jelly bean and chocolate cherry by a mile in terms of taste and production
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This year I grew Sungold as I heard how good it was. I would agree. Nice yield and
flavor. I would like to grow chocolate cherry too but I could not find the seed from the sources I buy from.
As far as a larger tomato for slicing, I tried Cherokee purple a few years ago. Wonderful flavor but the yield in my climate was poor. I now grow Reif’s Red Heart
that I picked up from Sandhill Preservation. Good yield, no green shoulders or blossom end rot, not cracking ect and very nice flavor. I just save my own seed each year since open pollinated. I do not ferment them although I suppose I should. I just take them out of a tomato that was good size, good color and very
riipe and dry them on paper towel. I never had a problem with not enough germinating the following year.
Just an FYI to all who save heirloom seeds. Do so every year as a backup. I once had a unknown oxheart type from an Italian immigrant that was fantastic. I saved seed only every other year. One year my seeds that I was drying were thrown out by accident by a repair man as they were drying on top of the refrigerator. By the time I found that out, my plants were done so I could get no more seed. The variety was lost forever. I now always save plenty of seeds each year to prevent the issue again.