I listed my Tomatoes earlier in the thread, but on the pepper side, I’m trying several sweet/mildly hot versions of the super hots. I’ve grown Tobago Seasoning for several years and it is a beautiful plant, although a bit hotter than I expected. This year I’m also trying Trinidad Perfume, a sweet orange Habanero from Parks and a Sweet Chocolate Ghost. I’ll be interested to see if the Sweet Chocolate Ghost is really not as very hot, since I’ve never seen a less than scorching Ghost listed anywhere. I found it at Peppers By Mail: http://www.peppersbymail.com/product/ghost-pepper-sweet-chocolate-pbm-seeds/
I’m also trying a few Aji types, but unfortunately they were out of Aji Pineapple that I really wanted to try. I’m trying Aji Mango and Aji Colorado instead.
And also trying a couple types of Fatalii Peppers, but they’ll probably be way too hot for my taste buds.
Thanks for the advice. We have an old chicken coop that we’re cleaning out to maybe use for some new chicks. There’s old manure in there, but it’s at least 10 years old, so it’s probably inert now. What about horse manure? We have a lot of that, its about 3-5 years old.
Of those tomatoes you listed, we grown Jaune Flamme every year, it’s been a reliable somewhat disease resistant producer for us. We tried Boxcar Willie last year for the first time, it was pretty productive as well.
CEC has stayed around 11. BTW, the latest % Base Sat was 48, % H was 52. These tests were done on a plot about 800 sqft. Tests don’t check any other nutrient other than Zn, no S.
To get the pH up, I’ve added about 80lb of dolomite, and 50lb of ag lime. I also added maybe 30lb of triple 10.
The plots further up the hill, close to where we live were very poor and acidic. There are two plots down the hill that are much richer, one is an old garden spot that may have accumulated a lot fertilizer from years past, and may have had wood ash dumped onto it. The other plot was old cow/horse pasture land.
Maybe it’s acidic just because of the low CEC that enables the leaching of nutrients, which with our 40+ inches of rain a year doesn’t help.
Looking at this thread is hard as I have to go lean this year! I love trying new ones. I have so much seed yet to try I don’t even have to order any!
On cherry tomatoes a lot of people like Black Cherry. I grew it along side Carbon Copy, which was discovered/developed by someone on the tomatoville forum. I grew it along side Black Cherry and looked alike! CC maybe slightly bigger. Then I tasted them and Carbon Copy was noticeably sweeter. Many heirloom tomatoes are good, but lack the sweetness of some hybrids. This one did not. A very nice cherry. or possibly salad, it is rather big.
I’m growing my usual blacks , and a paste or two. About it. I won’t be around much in the summer, so only in ground or very large containers. i have a couple 35 gallon I will use.
I usually grow some in 20 gallon root pouches, but I won’t be around to water, so not this year.
Hearing many raving reviews about the hybrid cherry tomato called ‘sungold’. Many people claim it beats other cherry tomatoes flavor hands down. I’ve grown much better tomatoes than any others i’ve tasted and question if sungold could be that much better. If anyone has grown them can you tell us are they that much better? Like to save my own seed so I prefer not to grow to many hybrids long term. I do enjoy several hybrids and love how easy they are to grow. Sungold ive been told are highly susceptible to cracking. Several people have told me black cherry heirloom is not as productive as sungold but that it has an exceptional flavor. Black cherry and sungold tomatoes are supposed to be good regardless of the growing conditions.i like that black cherry seeds can be saved and come back true to type.
I grew Sungold for the first time last year and I really liked it. You’re correct in that it cracks readily. I don’t generally enjoy a sweet tomato, but did like Sungold enough that I’ll include it in my garden again this year. I had 8 plants which provided more than I could utilize. I have no experience with any of the black varieties. In general I grow all hybrid varieties with disease resistance. I can say I would grow Sungold over Yellow Pear.
I grow sungold for many years. it’s so sweet，I have not had another (any color) tomatoes to compare with. It grows very vigorous,( need give it more space for vine to spread ) and very productive. The only complain is it cracks easy.
Sungold is delicious! I swear sometimes I think I’m eating a citrus fruit rather than a tomato with this one. I wish I could find a local seed source, because that’s the only seed I need to buy this year, but I will always grow it.
Add some bone meal and they will flower like crazy. In my area large semi trucks haul bulk bone meal so it’s available sometimes for free where the semi’s park. You can buy it at any farm store as well but it can be pricey because flower gardeners use large quantities of bone meal.
Another cherry tomato I wonder about is the Wild Galapagos Tomato. Anyone grow it?
Well, our soil tests costs $3 a sample at the county ag office, and gives me the basic nutrient and pH info I need. I don’t know what a $130 soil test includes, but that sounds outrageous.
Thanks. Sounds like I’m needing some more P in that plot. I grew orange beefsteaks in this and the really rich plot down the hill and got much more production from those plants, and they were smaller.
The P levels in that plot was >500, way high, probably excessively so. Maybe they had dumped some chicken, turkey and other type bones there over the years. Otherwise I don’t know why P would be that high. But, I know that P doesn’t leach out like other nutes, so maybe it was also from years of over-fertilizing.
First year I sent in eight, I think. For each plot, I take a bucket and shovel, and dig up a bit of dirt from various places in the plot. Then all the soil in the bucket is mixed up, and it goes into the sample bag, about a pound’s worth. My plots range from about 700 to 1500 sqft. I did five samples last year, so total cost was $15.
I don’t know how many samples you had tested for $130, so maybe price per sample isn’t that high.
Richard is in an area with naturally high PH soils while here in the SouthEast excess rainfall plus soil type leads to extremely acidic soils. As noted, heavy liming can raise the PH but at the expense of pushing CA to very high levels. With very low PH soil, I prefer to use wood ashes. This increases K (which can leach out of the soil) while increasing other soil nutrients.
clarkinks, there are several desirable cherry tomatoes that are worth growing. Wild Galapagos is IMO run of the mill. Here is a list of cherry and saladette tomatoes that are worth growing.
Dr. Carolyn (white)
Dr. Carolyn Pink
Chadwick Cherry (red)
Black Cherry
Sungold
Orange Potato Leaf
Thompson Seedless Green Grape (usually known as Green Grape)
Catherine Simms (yellow)
Green Zebra Cherry
Green Doctors Frosted
Hibor
Maglia Rosa
Blush
I could name quite a few more that are well above average, but the list above gives a good sampling of varieties that have produced good results over several years.
Thanks @Fusion_power that’s a nice looking list. Green zebra is another I ordered. I’m going to make some crosses this year and then try to stabilize them. Here is an example of a method very similar to what I use https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hK01Joh70kY. @subdood_ky_z6b the problem is people don’t live long enough to get the answers you need about why soils differ so much at that location. Sometimes the answers are obvious and naturally we deduce that valley land is better than hilltop due to erosion but its seldom that easy. Close friends once had a great garden area but the older generation told me that 100 years earlier the old house had it’s outhouse in that spot. Sometimes they cleared a field and burned all the trees in a certain spot. There can be lots of factors that can concentrate nutrients. Sometimes they had a cattle lot or chicken pen in a certain area. The reasons for concentrated nutrients are not always straight forward and it can be an area they cracked their clams or mullesks open etc. Or like you said dumped poultry bones after butchering. The small mollusks get in some ponds here and when ponds are scraped out after filling up guess what that old pond muck is full of…yep and it’s usable in about 3-5 years. Creek dirt does the same thing and creeks change channels from time to time during a major flood.
As I will be moving in the middle of the season, I won’t grow my usual number of varieties, so I will be much more picky this year. So the list looks as follows:
Lucid Gem
Bibbi (family heirloom, cherry, ~11 brix)
Pink Berkeley Tie Dye
Box Car Willie
Blush
Carbon
I’ll probably add some late season plants once I’ve moved, all new varieties for me.
My main crop this year will be peppers.
Sungold does crack a fair bit after rain, so if that will be a problem in your area you might want to consider Sun Sugar, a related hybrid that I think is from the same breeder. It has a very similar flavor, but doesn’t seem to crack as much. It is actually usually a little bigger than Sungold and a little more orangish. The skin is slightly thicker, which is probably the reason for less cracking.
@zendog that sounds like a good one. Here is an article that discusses the new dirty girl tomato One Farmer Is Making a Monsanto Hybrid, Early Girl Tomatoes, His Own which may someday be a stabilized cultivar. I would like to see that happen with all the hybrids such as sungold that are exceptional once the patent expires.