View Single Post
Old June 15, 2016   #31
Cole_Robbie
Tomatovillian™
 
Cole_Robbie's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Illinois, zone 6
Posts: 8,407
Default

I thought I caught them early, but I am still picking a lot of damaged fruit that are not marketable.

My first set of plants that I started for the high tunnel got sick and died from the early spring cold weather, so what's in there now is my "B-Team." And it's showing. My determinates, almost 2/3 of the high tunnel, are looking like one big flop. I should have been at market the past two weeks, but I still haven't gone. If I had planted the Taxi I originally planned on, I would be picking fruit by the bushel right now.

I had very cold, wet weather in May. I'm sure that didn't help. Sol Gold, which by the way is an extremely compact plant, like Cole, caught blight or something fungal. I never did spray them. The plants are most of the way to being dead now.

Productive from Altai has nice big plants, but fruitset is spotty. I see a lot of catfacing as well. That might be from the cold May, but it doesn't matter. Catfaced fruit are unmarketable.

My first big red tomatoes have been Agatha. Along with the saladette Aura, those two are my best reds out of the determinates, at least with the plan of early tomatoes. They both taste very good, too. Titan Red is not even close to being ripe.

There's a Buckbee's New 50 Day ripening on my counter right now. It looks more pink than red. It's a tomato that needs a new name - it's not 50 day and it's not new. Production looks decent on my one plant. Flavor test pending.

My indeterminates are my best high tunnel plants. Nothing is ripe quite yet, but I have some huge green tomatoes. Tarasenko 6 looks to be stealing the show. It grows like a modern hybrid. I think I stunted my Cosmonaut Volkov by injecting too strong of a fertilizer mix into the drip. I've quit chem salt nutes in the injector, and now I just use molasses.

I'm thinking about taking the plastic off the high tunnel this week. It's supposed to be 96 tomorrow. Plus, I would like it to rain on my whiteflies.
Cole_Robbie is offline   Reply With Quote