Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[yarrow@sfo.com]

Title: Re: [Livingontheland] Tomatoes

At 9:38 PM -0600 1/5/10, Emery Mitchamore wrote:

I've tried various "regular" and cherry Tomatoes with little luck.  Mostly, it gets too hot too quickly for large Tomatoes, and Cherries are just not very fulfilling.  I really like the golf ball-sized Campari, but seeds or plants don't seem to be available.  Is there another mid-sized variety with the same qualities?

>>

Many greenhouse-grown commercial hybrids are "exclusives" and not available to the public or to other growers.

What qualities are you seeking? At least 4000 varieties of tomatoes exist. Google Tatiana's Tomatobase for one good list of hundreds of open-pollinated varieties with photos and some provenance. I've grown only around a hundred or so varieties. You get the best varieties if you can grow from seed, and I've grown many varieties that are wonderful.

Lots of Texans grow large tomatoes. They start very early in the spring, then grow a second crop in the fall. See the forums at tomatoville.com.

Or you can start with early (short-season) tomatoes. One that gets recommended a lot is Sophie's Choice.

Another idea is to save the Campari seeds and plant them. The fruits are F1, which means it's a hybrid and won't breed true, but in fact some people have planted the seeds (which are the F2 generation) and have harvested fruits that are close to Campari. It's the F3 generation where a lot more segregation happens, so you can select the best ones each year and by the F6 you may have a stable variety that will produce a predictable fruit. I've grown F2 plants of Russo Bruno and Momotaro with good results, but a fellow gardener has tried Sungold F2 seeds with very poor results -- blah cherry tomatoes nothing like the F1.