Decision of Tomato Plants

Garden Planning Session

Last year I was pretty lucky, my husband made me six raised 3' X 8' X 24" high beds.  I loved them!  I was out in the backyard everyday of the week!  As the temperature drops to -20 below these next couple of days, now is the time to dream of the garden, reflect on what worked and plan for this summer.  Last year's garden had its successes and failures.  I put in a squash arch and it was crazy successful and I will do it again.  But lets be honest here, Tomatoes are the kings of the garden and pepper plants coming in a close second.  So planning you tomato crop is important business.  I planted 30 tomato plants last year all of them indeterminate tomato varieties, some successful some not. Hear is a quick review of last years tomatoes.

• Roma Tomatoes - I grew three different types of Roma tomatoes Speckled Roman, Amish Paste and San Marzano Tomatoes.  
• Oxheart's Tomatoes - I'm not doing any paste tomatoes this coming year as I kind of fell in love with the Oxheart type tomatoes.  The Oxheart Tomatoes I did were the Anna Russian, Japanese Trifele and a Giant Syrian.  All had great flavor for slicing as well for making tomato paste.  So out with the Roma's, if I can get a tomato to do double and triple duty that the tomato I'll grown.  
• Slicing Tomatoes - Slicing tomatoes are essential, there are very few things that taste as good as a BLT sandwich with a fresh sliced tomato on it.  Last year's slicing tomatoes were Defiant, New Girl and a Pink Brandywine all from Johnny Seeds.  The Defiant was a big disappointment as it claim to have a high resistance to late blight and intermediate resistance to early blight.  It missed the early blight but was hit hard with the late blight and was a very late producers.  It promised to be a 70 day tomato plant and with the late snow last year everything ran a bit late, but these tomatoes were the latest to ripen.  As far as taste?  Well they didn't really have any.  They were small tomatoes as well kind of a cross between a cherry and a regular tomato.  For these reasons I'll not be purchasing anymore of these seeds.  I will plant a Brandywine and Early Girl just for those BLT's. 
• Cherry Tomatoes -  I had Bellstar, Alaska, Alaska Fancy, Riesentraube, and Stupice.  This was way too many cherry tomato plants but some of them were gifts and some recommended as "Cold Climate" tomatoes.  The Bellstar ripened first but everyone agree this was a horrible tasting tomato.  It had a tough skin and a nasty point on the end that no one found pleasant.  The Alaska and Alaska Fancy eh, they probably make a great patio cherry plant as they were small and really didn't need any staking what so ever, but again they didn't have much taste.  The Riesentraube and the Stupice are still in the running.    

Now if this sounds like I  grew a lot tomatoes, it wasn't a lot, just 29 plants.  Which may have been caused some of the problems I had last year.  In one raised

Walkway between tomato bed

bed I had eight tomato plants, in the bed next to it I had another six, on one the end of the arch I had five, off to the side in my flowers bed I had three, there were another three in containers and the 10 tomato plants that I thought were Marigolds plants that when I figure out they were tomatoes I whittled them down to four.  Simply put, I had too many tomatoes in the raised beds, and had a hard time turning away a health tomato plant.  As you can see in the picture on the right, these beds were so overgrown it was hard to get between the two beds.  The plan this year is no more than one tomato plant every two feet in the raised beds. Another problem I had was I never seemed to get enough tomatoes to ripen at one time to get 10 pounds of tomatoes for canning.  So this year I need to realistically need to limit the number of tomato plants in a raised bed as well as making sure I plant the right kind of tomato plants for our families needs.

Another factor in this and why I'm thinking about these things now, is I start all my tomato and pepper plants indoors.  For most of my other vegetables and even annual flowers I do a method called winter sowing.  But, I post about seed starting and winter sowing in another article.  Right, now I just need to be decided on what kind of tomato seeds I'm going to purchase.  In the past I've purchased seeds from Johnny Seeds and Tomato Fest.   This year I purchased the "The Whole Seed Catalog" from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds for a whopping $7.95.

At this time I will briefly say something about the GMO issue and organic gardening.  Now, I am not completely an organic gardener as my beds are not old enough as of yet.  I do garden using organic gardening practices.  I've read a lot about GMO, probably enough to be dangerous but here is my opinion on the issue.  It seems to me there are two different things going on with GMO development.  Some GMO development seems to be creating plants that produce sweeter, bigger, natural disease resistant strains.  I'm a little more tolerant of that kind of manipulation.  On the other hand there the manipulation of plant DNA to make it more resistant to pesticides, in order to spray products like Round-up, I have a serious concerns with .  Because the companies producing the GMO seeds are not telling us what is and isn't GMO and what they have and haven't done to the seeds/plants.  I don't use GMO seeds, nor do I support GMO seeds companies.  Having said all of that, because our government refuses to implement a labeling program I maybe eating and serving GMO products to my family.  Which bothers me but also encourages me to grow more of my families own food.  Until there is labeling, explanation of what has been done to the plants I will not use GMO seeds.  The excuse that it is a too complicated issue for the general public to understand is kind of insulting as well.

So given what I think about GMO products that leaves me to purchase my seeds from Tomatofest, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company and Johnny Seed Select in that order.  Here are the seeds packet's I'll be ordering
1.  Sudduth Strain Brandywine from Tomatofest - it's a indeterminate tomato, 85 days which is a bit long for Minnesota but well worth the wait as this is the best tasting tomato every in my opinion.
2. Marglobe Supreme from Baker's Creek - its a determinate tomato, 73-77 days.  This is a new tomato for me but has received excellent reviews.
3.  Pantano Romanesco Tomato from Baker's Creek - (but also at Tomatofest) it's a indeterminate tomato, 70 days.  Again this will be a new tomato for me and from the reviews and descriptions should be an excellent canning and slicing tomato.
4.  Anna Russian Tomato from Tomatofest - This is a indeterminate oxheart, 70 days.  I grew this one last year and was very impressed with it.
5.  Italian Tree Tomato from Tomatofest - this is a indeterminate taking 85 days.  I grew this last year as well, it has great taste and canned up well.  Again the only problem I have with it is the 85 days, but worth the wait.
6. New Girl from Johnny seeds - this is a indeterminate taking 62 days.  I've grow this tomato for last few years, it replace the Early Girl tomato plant I grew up with.  When this tomato ripens you know summer is here.
7.  Fargo Tomato Seeds - this is a Semi-Determinate taking 70 days.  It will be the first yellow pear type tomato I've grown.
8.  Valley Girl from Johnny Seeds - this is a determinate taking 65 days.  This too will be a new variety.  Sounds to be very similar to the Early Girl but handles the temperature swings we get here in the north better.  I'll be interested to compare the production of the two plants.
9.  Super Sweet 100 by Johnny Seeds - it's an indeterminate taking 60 days.  The great thing about this plant you really don't need another cherry tomato plant in the garden if you have this baby.  I've grown this tomato plant before and don't remember why I stopped but I'm going back to it.
10.  Chocolate Cherry Tomato from Baker's Creek - this is a indeterminate taking 70 days.  This is the only purple tomato I'm growing.  It's new for me but I'm looking forward to this tasting it.  It does say chocolate in the title so its gotta taste good, right.

These are the ten different varieties I'm going to grow.  Now the question is how many plants am I going to plant.  Well, I'm only going to do one plant of the three different types of cherry tomato plants.  I'd like to do at least three plants of the remaining seven plants.  For a total of twenty four tomato plants.  Which is less than last year.  But remember I wasn't going to plant them so close this year, hmm. Well the good news is Jim as said he would build me an additional two bed each being 3' X 13' X 24".  Which I'm thinking I can get twelve plants into, I'm half way there.  I do straw bale gardening I will have 12-14 bales.  Each bale usually can handle two tomato plants.  Now I didn't do my tomatoes in the bales last year because of sun issues, but I think this year I've figure a way around that.  So realistically I'll do six tomato plants in the bales, that leaves with just six more to find places for.  Three in containers, three in the flowers.  Ta Da looks like I'll have room for them all!  

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