1884 Tomato
 

Hi Everyone!

I'm thinking of trying to grow out the Tomato 1884 this year. I'm just looking for other people's opinions and experiences with it. I live in Connecticut on the coast so I think I am in zone 6b. What are your opinions on this tomato? Thank you for your time :)

-Jennifer

I've never grown that one, Jennifer. Here's a good bit of info on it, if you haven't already looked at it :)

[URL]http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/1884[/URL]

Thank you so much for your reply! Tatiana's is such a great wealth of info, I should have looked there before. But you know there is a part of me that wonders about the story- how factual it is, but who knows?

I like the story behind the tomato because I am going to grow it with my class (I am a teacher) and I can use this as an opportunity to teach the kids about tomatoes and history. I just hope it tastes OK. I want the kids to try "real" tomatoes because I teach in a large city where they usually do not have space or time to garden. This tomato has to taste better than the genetically modified
hard-as-rock tomatoes in the supermarket.

Sounds like an excellent plan! I should grow this tomato myself, being from WV and all. My friend has seeds for it so maybe i'll give it a go.

My hat's off to you for introducing gardening to the youth!

Jennifer,

How are you going to carry the growing over the summer? Summer holidays seem to be an impedement to getting students to grow things and I think you're done in May.

Hi there

Our school year starts in mid August and then goes until mid to late June, depending on how many snow days there are. The school is also open for summer school during the summer. It is a grade K-8 school. So, different groups of students and some parent volunteers work on the garden at different times of the year. Over the summer, summer school students work on it. Since the kids who don't have summer school come back in August, they can have their share of tomatoes and other crops then. We also do cold season crops like lettuce, asparagus, and beets so we grow things out there until nothing will grow anymore.

Wow that is very cool. How large is this garden?

Hi there :)
Thank you for responding to my thread!

It is about an acre of raised beds. It's not huge but we make very good use of the space. We also have containers in every classroom except for about 10, because of the light and temperatures in those ten classrooms.

We had to do all raised beds for several reasons, but the primary reason is that we are growing in a large city that has an industrial background so you just don't know about what could be in the soil. We had people come and test the soil and it was decided that raised beds were the way to go. There are about 700 kids in the school where I teach. Most of them have family incomes at or below the poverty line and 100% receive free breakfast, lunch, and snack. Since it is a city container growing is an important skill for the kids to learn so they can grow some food in containers at home. In my personal life I got into gardening when I was about 6-7 yrs old because one of our neighbors was a master gardener. I can say that the time she spent with me really changed my life for the better and I hope to do that for other people, too.

Jennifer

Excellent I am so proud of you. Wow that is what we need to be doing more of in schools. great job...

1884 is a very good tomato. I would rank it in my top 25 varieties overall. Flavor is rich and intense and production is respectable. Disease tolerance is relatively low but not a problem unless you get hit hard with a hot humid summer.

DarJones

In colder climates with a Sept-June schedule Micro Toms make a good mater to grow with a class. They don't need a huge amount of light and they only grow 5-8" tall so can be grown on the windowsill in 4" pots. The fruit taste isn't great (its really a decoration tomato) but the process is fun. There is a recipe online somewhere for making jam with tomatoes and raspberry jello so they could be processed in class into that type of jam making the planting/harvest/processing portion of the unit complete. Just my 2 cents, lol! Pete :)