2016 Alameda, CA, Container Garden

[Shrinkrap]

Thanks all!

Garyc1234 do you EVER get frost where you are? When do you put your plants out? As you know, I am not too far from you, but my weather is about the opposite of yours, at least as far as California is concerned. We are expecting triple digits for the next week, and I look for afternoon shade for my plants.

[garyc1234]

Shrinkrap, your plants look awesome! As far as putting plants outside, I'm not really a good example. I sowed my seeds really late this year, and probably didn't put the first batch out until May. We really never hit the triple digits where I am at. Even temperatures in the 90s are a rarity. Next year, I'd like to try to sow seeds in late Jan/early Feb, and put them out in March. We really never get frost there. However, in the wintertime, we do receive days of torrential rains, which would basically wipe anything you have out in the garden.

[Shrinkrap]

I garden here year round, and in fact find November to April easier. I do sweet peas, sugar snaps, favas, garlic, kale, shallots, etc.

I put my tomatoes out on May first becuase the night time temps are still below 55 so presumably the soil temps are too.

[garyc1234]

Just wanted to give a quick update. I'm starting to see some small tomatoes on my plants now. The cherry tomatoes definitely have more than the larger ones. I believe the tomatoes in the first picture are Carbon and second are Pink Brandywine.

[MajorTom]

Excellent! The leaves certainly look like brandywine. (Potato leaf)

[Shrinkrap]

They're so cute at that age!

[garyc1234]

Just giving another update. The plants are now truly a jungle compared to a month ago. A lot of green tomatoes everywhere, but I've only picked a few Golden Nugget cherry tomatoes (last picture). (I'd say Golden Nugget are decent cherry tomatoes and pretty productive. I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars. It's on the borderline on whether I'll grow it next year depending on how the other tomatoes turn out and what new seed I decide to get.)

I'm still dealing with powdery mildew issues. I haven't had time to prune the lower branches, and unfortunately, may backyard is too crammed with plants now to be able to give them any more space. Spraying with neem oil hasn't really solved the problem, but at least it seems to have prevented things from getting out of control, at least for now.

[Gerardo]

Cool jungle, time to machete your way in there.

[JosephineRose]

Hi there garyc1234, how did you plants fare these last two months? I have a community plot in Oakland and a container garden at my work in Hayward.

The Oakland location has the same weather as you and is plagued by powdery mildew every year. Planting out in May was actually the solution recommended to me, in order to catch the heat of September and October.

Would love to know which plants fared best for you.

[garyc1234]

Hi Josephine, sorry for the slow reply. I've been getting a lot of tomatoes every day. Here's a picture of the number of tomatoes that I pick every couple of days. Again with so many plants, there are a lot of tomatoes no matter how much of an idiot that you can be (like me!) planting tomatoes. The picture of the plants is from right before the rainstorm this previous weekend.

[JosephineRose]

Those look amazing!

How did the following fare for you in Alameda?

1884
Brandywine
Carbon
Kellogs Breakfast

[garyc1234]

As you can see, a lot of my tomato plants aren't doing too well. I attribute that more to powdery mildew and lack of supplement with fertilizer more than anything.

As mentioned before, I tried spraying with neem oil, but that didn't work out too well. The problem is that it's really hard to cover all of the leaves and stems with the spray. I think I'll try something else next year. (I think Linda recommended organic sulfur or something like that.)

I still had a lot of tomatoes because basically, the plants outgrew the mildew somewhat. That is, even though most of the bottom of the plant died, the tops still had green leaves and survived enough to still have a decent crop of tomatoes. Not that great, of course, but still a decent amount.

Can't really say which tomatoes did better since they were all affected by the mildew. I'll say that it is super easy to grow cherry tomatoes even despite the mildew or any other problem. The beefsteaks had issues w/ BER, hornworms, birds, etc, but the cherries were great. (I really liked Supersweet.)

Of the beefsteaks, I remember that Brandywine (both pink and yellow) did well. Better Boy had tons of tomatoes although the taste wasn't that great. I had a lot of trouble with BER for Carbon (may be due to container growing.) Even though I labeled all of the pots with the variety, after a while, I was just picking and throwing in the box, so I had no idea which varieties that I was picking, to be honest.

Other than the heavy rain this past weekend, the weather is still pretty good here (high 60s), so I'll try to keep better track of the tomatoes that are still coming out.

[garyc1234]

Originally Posted by JosephineRose

Those look amazing!

How did the following fare for you in Alameda?

1884
Brandywine
Carbon
Kellogs Breakfast

Honest, not sure how 1884 did for me. Brandywine did really well, and tasted great. Carbon had a lot of fruit and tasted good too, but also a lot of BER. Kellogg's Breakfast didn't do too well with powdery mildew. I had a couple of plants, and one died really quickly. The other one had about 3-4 tomatoes, but then pretty much went under also. I thought the tomatoes were okay, but somewhat bland for me. Not sure if I'll grow it next year or not.

[garyc1234]

Like practically everyone else on this board, I've been making and eating a lot of BLT's these days. Here's a Black Krim (I think!), which makes a particularly nice looking slicer.

[garyc1234]

I decided to give another update since we are now into November here in Northern California. These photos are from early this week, so the tomatoes shown are basically from last week. However, although as seen in the pictures a lot of plants have died off, there are still quite a few still going that were planted late in the season. I am still getting a decent box full every week, and will just see how long this lasts.

The weather here in the Bay area is still pretty good. It is the rainy season now, so there are a lot more showers, so I haven't needed to water my plants in nearly a month. There have been some splitting of the tomatoes, but nothing horribly bad. I have tried to be proactive when I can also. When I see in the forecast that showers are coming I try to pick all of the tomatoes that even have a hint of blush on them before the rains hit. The daytime temperatures are still averaging the mid-60s and the night time are mid 50s or so.

The "jungle" is ugly, and I've just started the process of clearing out the dead plants and preparing for next year.