attempting new world record

[pete092775]

carolyn that is why i ask why trellis a vine when his was on the ground and if you read alot of gardening books they all say that caging and staking will reduce the yield.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by pete092775

carolyn that is why i ask why trellis a vine when his was on the ground and if you read alot of gardening books they all say that caging and staking will reduce the yield.

And if you read a lot of gardening books they will tell you many other things that aren't so here in Texas.

The authors of these books are many times from zone 5 or so and have no idea of the growing conditions here.

Here are a few things I can think of just from the top of my head that are wrong for here and some that is wrong anywhere.

Start seeds in April. (wrong for any place in Texas).

Only plant hybrids because they are disease resistant. (gives people the idea they wont get diseases from them and Heirlooms are inferior.) Wrong.

Use a spray to prevent blossom drop. (Total BS for bloom drop from heat)

Heirlooms are less productive. (they haven't seen my plants for sure).

And if I may I will enlighten folks about my ideas on sprawling tomatoes.
yes tomatoes will put out roots and yes in nature they sprawl.
BUT if I,m right the first tomatoes were small and they didn't weight much.

I wouldn't bother supporting wild cherry as the things are like a bush and just dont need it.

Man in the last few thousand years through breeding and so forth have developed tomatoes that have huge fruits and aren't anything like the first wild tomatoes.

This has been done with just about every domesticated plant we have.

The first wheat and other grains naturaly shattered their seeds, the wheat we have today doesn't so we can harvest it.

The first apples were small and the tree could support the fruit. we have to thin and prune today with our apples and other fruits.

Corn has been developed to the point it cant reproduce on its own do to the husk.
No way could a modern corn plant (modern as in the last few thousand years) reproduce its self on its own ans survive many years it would die out in a short time.
It took thousands of years to develop corn that would grow in north America.
The growing season was too short for Nebraska for sure.

So when a person thinks they can let a so called modern food crop just go naturally it just isn't so.
They aren't natural.

So in short, well not so short.
Any book that said caging tomatoes reduces yield I would burn or give to my enemy.
PS if you can find it you should get Carolyn's book, "100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden".
Sadly it is out of print at this time.

Worth

[travis]

Gordon Graham's world record tomato resulting from a toppled plant left in a sprawl is a fluke.

Besides that, we do not have any other details such as when the plant was toppled. Right? We don't know at what stage of development that record tomato was when the plant toppled over. We are lacking too much info to assume that growing plants in a sprawl, start to finish, will yield a higher percentage of giant tomatoes than growing the vines in cages or staked and pruned to one or two stems with all surplus blossoms and fruit pruned off other than the one or two largest developing fruit.

Besides that, most of what we are talking about is conjecture anyway.

If you really want to grow giant tomatoes, your best bet is to consult Meissner at one of the message sites he uses, or read his book and follow his directions. He has proven results even if not yet up to the 7-something pound record. I believe he is getting 5 and 6 pounders out of his current gardens. And he doesn't grow his vines in a sprawl. Rather he follows a very regimented pruning, feeding, and irrigation regimen.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by pete092775

carolyn that is why i ask why trellis a vine when his was on the ground and if you read alot of gardening books they all say that caging and staking will reduce the yield.

PEte, I don't read that many gardening books, but I was raised on a farm where we had acres and acres of tomatoes, I have grown about 3,000 varieties to date and while most of the time I grow mine by sprawling, I have grown some by caging and sometimes I've grown the same variety in the same season both by sprawling and caging. Never by staking b/c the distance required for caging is about the same as for staking and no way am I going to prune staked tomatoes to two leader stems.

All to say that I've not seen reduced yield when growing the same variety in the same season by both sprawling and caging. And why would I even do that? Because I grew plants at a couple of different places and one was better for sprawling and the other for caging and at the latter place the owner already had made lots of cages, although when I used to live in Denver I made my own and still have the scars from doing so.

[carolyn137]

If you really want to grow giant tomatoes, your best bet is to consult Meissner at one of the message sites he uses, or read his book and follow his directions. He has proven results even if not yet up to the 7-something pound record. I believe he is getting 5 and 6 pounders out of his current gardens. And he doesn't grow his vines in a sprawl. Rather he follows a very regimented pruning, feeding, and irrigation regimen.

*****

Travis, in my post #14 here I linked PEte to a thread started by Seamafaster here at Tville and said at the end Marv posted, as always, as lubadub and I think said that Marv Meissner is the one who wrote that book on how to grow large tomatoes.

So I suppose PEte could PM him here or at the pumpkin site and a link was also given to there, I think by Seamfaster in a post above as well.