Troublesome Cherokee Purple ;-)
 

I have a beautiful cherokee purple growing in my rain gutter system. However, in the past week, the top of the plant divided into four "main" branches! And here I was, preparing to keep my indet. plants all nicely pruned this time. I've never seen this before. (But, I've only grown tomatoes for a few years now, and only a few a year at that. This is my first year of planting MANY.) Is this common? I'm thinking I'll just let the plant have 4 main stalks, at least for now. :?

Freya

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/picture.php?albumid=127&pictureid=711[/IMG]

Freya,

I had a Cherokee Purple that divide into two main branches, That thing grew to be a monster, I wonder how yours going to be.

[QUOTE=OddBall;309891]Freya,

I had a Cherokee Purple that divide into two main branches, That thing grew to be a monster, I wonder how yours going to be.[/QUOTE]
Yikes! I hope it's happy and healthy and produces lots but, a monster? Maybe my placement of it in a narrower spot between the screen and the pool might have been been a mistake. Hmmm.... I just started rooting 3 suckers, I may have to warn whoever I give them to, or maybe not. ;)

Suckers? Looks like suckers were not taken off early? Just cut of off.

Mhm, it was a happy kind of monster, but also I left the suckers so it branched a lot, and it produced a lot of tomatoes :)

The suckers might surprise them, hope they get planted in a bit spacious place :)

This happens some times in pots, i cut the 2-3 stems out for the 2-4 weeks only 1 stems.

[QUOTE=FILMNET;309901]This happens some times in pots, i cut the 2-3 stems out for the 2-4 weeks only 1 stems.[/QUOTE]
I don't think these are suckers, not with the way the stem looks. (I could be wrong.) So, Filmnet, you'd just cut 2 or 3 of the stems?! (I'm going to hyperventilate.) I can't pinch a sucker without rooting it. (GUILT!) Not sure I'm capable of this one. :?: LOL!

Those are very early suckers, possibly near the bottom looks like 1 stem.

Not that this answers your question, but out of curiosity, what size of a container are they in? Do your gutters grow algae?

[QUOTE=FILMNET;310324]Those are very early suckers, possibly near the bottom looks like 1 stem.[/QUOTE]
Huh. Well, that could be. It's totally fused now, though, if it was. (So far, I'm just letting it go. I'll regret this later, I'm sure. LOL)

[QUOTE=Cole_Robbie;310327]Not that this answers your question, but out of curiosity, what size of a container are they in? Do your gutters grow algae?[/QUOTE]
They're all in 5 gallon buckets. (I've been assured by people who have used this over the summer up north that this will work out fine. Some awesome videos by "Nikki Counts" on YouTube showing her dozens of very productive tomato plants growing and producing amazingly.)

As far as algae goes, when I first set it up, yes, it grew algae but I didn't have all the buckets on for another week, so it was getting quite a bit of light. In a week or so, I had all the buckets on, covering it pretty well. Now, 24 days since I set it up, no algae at all. I'm thinking that when I first set up a bucket/plant, because I top water for a day or two, the fertilizer from the potting mix along with the excessive light caused the algae growth. Now I don't top water at all and there isn't any algae.

This is how my purple cherokee is doing on my rain gutter system. For some reason I've been taking pictures every 6 days. The first is after transplanting on 10/18 the last is 24 days later on 11/10. (The water is a little brown because I just put mulch on the tops of many of these and was a bit messy about it.)

As a note of interest, it took the seeds 7 days to germinate and I planted it in the bucket 20 days after germination. So, the last picture is of a plant, 44 days from germination. I've no idea if this is good or not. Seems pretty amazing to me though.8-)

Looks like a healthy plant to me.

I grow in 5-gallon buckets, too, but not indeterminates. Even with semi-indeterminate Early Girl, it worked great at first for me, but as the plant kept setting more and more blooms, it seemed like each tomato got smaller and smaller. The fruit went from tennis ball to golf ball-sized. I hope it goes better for you, but I'm sticking to determinates.

[QUOTE=Cole_Robbie;310351]I grow in 5-gallon buckets, too, but not indeterminates. Even with semi-indeterminate Early Girl, it worked great at first for me, but as the plant kept setting more and more blooms, it seemed like each tomato got smaller and smaller. The fruit went from tennis ball to golf ball-sized. I hope it goes better for you, but I'm sticking to determinates.[/QUOTE]
Maybe this is why the advice is to always prune/pinch out the suckers. (I'm not very good at this yet.) Maybe I should experiment and grow two of the same variety, pinching the one viciously, and not so much with the other. Maybe something for next year? (Has anyone done this?)

I have noticed two of my chocolate cherry plants seem to have twin stems of equal height and vitality, with leaves running perpendicularly across... a perfect split and not a sucker beneath the main stem. They are just five weeks old. I was wondering how to ask if they were prone to twinning, before I found this topic. (I'll have to get some photos.)

The rest of the chocs and the other varieties are normal single-stem. It's the Mexico Midgets which seem to be suckering feverishly at this stage. Didn't expect that till they were bigger. It's not too early to pinch those little things off, is it?

Got some photos of the chocs yesterday. Not great pics, but hope you can see, they seem like twin stems and not a sucker off the main.

Sent from my HTC VLE_U using Tapatalk 2

That's really cool! Great pictures.

Oh, thanks! Here's the unscientific truth: I think those are photos of the two different plants doing that, but I'm not 100% sure. I took a few bad shots one-handed while attempting to hold them against the almost-white stucco wall. By the leaves of the top-view one being a little droopy compared to the other two, and the marker writing on the straws appearing to be different depths, I assume they are different. By the way, this was just before they all got their drinkie; thus the leaf droop, I hope.

I attempted to photograph the one other abnormality I have: one of my four Super Italian Pastes appears to be a (ahem) gelding, in that it does not have a stem at all. It is one small seedling sharing a pot with a healthy, thriving, single-stem one. I couldn't bring myself to jettison it, so I'm giving it some time. Maybe it's just waiting for the right moment. I don't see any sign that it was damaged. This first-timer is fascinated with the individual temperaments of these plants: both different varieties, and different seeds of the same planted together.

Have decided I will let the twins just be twins. Chang and Eng.

So here's the latest on my Purple Cherokee. Two weeks later, all four of the splits have split again into two stems. Here's a picture of one of them. I wonder if I should make certain to save seeds from this or definitely NOT save seeds. LOL

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/picture.php?albumid=127&pictureid=725[/IMG]

Wow! That is intriguing. I'd wait to see how the fruit comes out (size, quantity, flavor) and maybe this is a strong-as-ox plant with wonderful fruit, worth saving, or perhaps not.

any update on how the fruit turned out?

Remember, this is the first time I've grown a Purple Cherokee tomato plant, so I've no past experience to compare it to. But, here's what is and what I think. 8-)

What is... It didn't get huge. It stayed at about 4 feet tall and about as wide (except I've constantly tied and retied it up so it's only about 2-3 feet wide atm. I really, really need to figure out a good way to do this!) So far, I've I've picked (because I was keeping track) 15 tomatoes that average between 10-11 ozs and total to 9.5 lbs of tomatoes. There are currently another 6 large tomatoes nearly ripe. (So that'll be 21 for a total of 13-14 lbs.) I've no idea if this is normal, but there were three near freezes here and about the time the third one hit, the plant started putting out more flowers. So, there are LOTS of little greenies on it now, 10-20 range. (The plant is looking a little bedraggled, but I trimmed about a medium tomato plant's worth of old leaves off it yesterday and it's looking much healthier today.) Like I said, I've nothing to compare this to, but this seems like a lot of tomatoes to me!

As for what I "think", this is, absolutely, my family's favorite tomato. If the other blacks I'm growing are anywhere near as luscious as these, I may only grow blacks from now on. (Well, except for the Hssiao His Hung Shih. My daughter and I love snacking on these.) Anyway, I'm going to have to figure out how to save seeds with these. There are very few per tomato.

Anyway, thank you for asking! :)

[QUOTE=FreyaFL;320915]
So far, I've I've picked (because I was keeping track) 15 tomatoes that average between 10-11 ozs and total to 9.5 lbs of tomatoes. There are currently another 6 large tomatoes nearly ripe. (So that'll be 21 for a total of 13-14 lbs.) [/QUOTE]

Sounds like it's a happy plant! I'm growing it this year for the first time and if it does any where near as well for me up here, I'll be very happy!

I think I am going to add it to my wish list for next year. It seems to have deserved a popularity with many here. Thanks for the update!

All my plants (except lettuce) seem to have slowed their growth and/or had some setbacks with the few days of cold weather we had just before and after Christmas. In the past two weeks with the realy warm weather, everything seems to have jumped in height. Hopefully your Cherokee will just keep going.

here's a pic of mine this AM.
 

[IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/picture.php?albumid=143&pictureid=782[/IMG]

"I think I am going to add it to my wish list for next year. It seems to have deserved a popularity with many here."

Kilroy, Why not just save the seeds then you won't have to put it on a 'wish list' ?

Now I've a question! My purple cherokee set a lot of fruit and then all seemed to start ripening. Now, all the original ones are picked. These seemed to take quite some time from flowering to ripening. They all got pretty big, imo. Now, the second set of fruit from the very recent flowering (within the last month) are already beginning to start ripening. This seems like a very short amount of time, comparatively. They're also about half the size of the original ones. Is this common? I've another tomato plant (Tropic) that has been growing and flowering and fruiting and ripening pretty steadily for almost 2 months. Some tomatoes are quite large, some much smaller. Until it started flowering again, I was thinking that the purple cherokee was a determinate, considering it's smallish, contained size and one flush fruiting. Do I just have an odd PC?

[QUOTE=matereater;321563]"I think I am going to add it to my wish list for next year. It seems to have deserved a popularity with many here."

Kilroy, Why not just save the seeds then you won't have to put it on a 'wish list' ?[/QUOTE]

Because I'm not the one growing it now, Mater. I am growing a chocolate cherry, which I showed above has some of the "twinning" tendencies that Freya's Cherokee displayed. Our posts probably got jumbled up as talking about the same variety in one reading.