What's Your Tallest Plant?

[Jaysan]

Planted Big Beefs and Black Krims at the end of April, pruning to two stems. The BBeefs are at 6.5 feet and the Krims are coming on strong.
Looks like I will have a jungle by the end of the season.

[Keger]

Yellow pear, 3 of them over 14ft or so. My season is pretty much done. They thought the storm in the gulf might head this way but no, we we get a dome of high preassure and days over 100 degreees.

I thinned out a lot today, pour water to whats left, and see if they make it another week.

[bower]

Black Cherry is the giant here at 12+ ft long. It hit the ceiling and then came down, so I'm training it horizontally on ropes nailed to the wall.
Violet Jasper is second largest, 9 or 10 ft.
All of my plants are over 6 ft tall now, and mostly loaded with green fruit. I started early, and it's shaping up to be a very good year. Sunny!

[kurt]

I am glad to hear that others are going" horizontal" During my season with the cherrys they can get 15-20 ft.Sometimes up to 25.I thought I was doing something special but now I see others are getting large and long cherrys.

[Mojave]

Black cherry is my tallest so far, followed closely by Giant Syrian. Last year I had to train my BC's to grow horizontally along an adjacent fence after they outgrew their cage. This is the first time I've grown Giant Syrian, it's an odd plant (with many giant, but still green toms), I'm pretty sure it will pass up the BC's in a couple of weeks.

[NGGrant]

15 to 20 feet? That's incredible, I need to try that next year on my fence.

[camochef]

For the past 4-5 years now, Tarasenko6 has been the tallest plant in my gardens. It still is, but both Barlow Jap and Brandywine-Sudduth's are only an inch or two behind. Cowlick's Brandywine about two inches behind them.
All are full of good sized greenies but nothing ripe yet.
The biggest surprise this year is the grafted Dana's Dusky Rose which I received from Dana and was grafted to rootstock from Johnny's. Its been growing like crazy and has caught up to all the much larger plants and looks like it will surpass them within a week or two.
Enjoy!
Camo

[tedln]

Camo,

I haven't grown Dana's Dusky Rose, but I have understood it to be a very good tomato. What advantage does it receive by being grafted to a different root stock? Is there a list of preferred root stocks for grafting? Has anyone made a list of varieties which can be improved by grafting a different root stock on?

I've noticed in the past that if I somehow break the main stem or side stem of a plant and graft it back together, it sometimes out performs the unbroken stems.

Ted

[kurt]

How tall is tall?

[zabby17]

Originally Posted by kurt

How tall is tall?

So far, I my Sweet 100 is the tallest, at about 4 feet (ah, life in the True North Strong and Free). Sungold and Snow White Cherry are not far behind, however.

It'll clearly be a while yet before I get to celebrate Tomato Zabby Day, when the first plant becomes taller than I am.

For once, it looks like I'll probably have ripe fruit BEFORE that day---the first truss of fruits on a Stupice is starting to deepen in that way that isn't really even a hint of red yet but maybe just the barest first hint of "not green".... (Or maybe I'm just imagining it in hopeful desperation....)

Z, who thought the fact she usually needs ten-foot stakes for cherries was impressive, but bows in awe of the tales of 16-footers....

[tedln]

Originally Posted by kurt

I am glad to hear that others are going" horizontal" During my season with the cherrys they can get 15-20 ft.Sometimes up to 25.I thought I was doing something special but now I see others are getting large and long cherrys.

Two years ago, I allowed four Juliet cherry volunteer plants to grow at one end of my fence. They sprouted within inches of each other. Other than being left alone, they received no care while my actual garden was manicured. By the end of summer, they had totally covered about twenty five feet of my fence. I did occasionally use a plastic/wire tye to train a stray sucker back on the fence. The vines produced huge plum shaped tomatoes that had absolutely no taste. They were F1 hybrids from a hybrid tomato, so I didn't really expect good tomatoes to come from the plants.

Ted

[camochef]

Originally Posted by tedln

Camo,

I haven't grown Dana's Dusky Rose, but I have understood it to be a very good tomato. What advantage does it receive by being grafted to a different root stock? Is there a list of preferred root stocks for grafting? Has anyone made a list of varieties which can be improved by grafting a different root stock on?

I've noticed in the past that if I somehow break the main stem or side stem of a plant and graft it back together, it sometimes out performs the unbroken stems.

Ted

Ted,
Let me start by singing the praises for DDR. After having spent years growing every "black" tomato I could find, I have to say that DDR is one of my top three favorites. Amazon Chocolate and Bear Creek are the other two. If I had to pick another it would be Blackmaster. They are all great tasting Dark tomatoes.
Now comes the rough part.
I was given the Grafted DDR by Dana when I had gone to her place in searc of something I just had to have. Was thinking herbs at the time.
When presented with the little guy in a small plastic 4X4 pot I had many questions. The first being what type of tomato?
When she told me DDR, I simply said, Well, you can't beat that!
I asked about the rootstock and she said it was from Johnny's Seeds along with the plastic clip that holds them together.
My first thought was why would you graft tomatoes instead of just planting the seed. What could be the advantages. The little guy she gave me wasn't even lined up properly.
Well I purchased some herbs and was soon on my way back home. I immediately watered the guy as he was pretty well dried out. I then placed him under my flourescent lights along with my remaining Kumato. who was also too small to be planted out.
In the morning, I found the plastic clip had popped off and I figured I'd better plant him out in the garden before he fell apart.
Now my largest plants were put out on 18 May (14 of them); the second planting was on the 20 th of May and contained 7 more that were started a month later. So on the 25th of May I planted the runt kumato and the grafted DDR.
We had some heavy rains that really put down the water and flooded my garden especially along the sand mound area which is normally considered prime real estate for my tomatoes. Well the floods nearly killed all my first row of tomatoes. Actually, i only lost one, Ashleigh but the Purple Dog Creeks, Liz Birt, and Cowlicks suffered and eventually recovered but probably a couple weeks behind. As was the Delicious and Brandywine Glicks in the second row.
The grafted DDR was at the opposite end of the garden and it flourished.
Within a couple weeks it surpassed the regular DDR and many other varieties.
I was impressed with it's growth rate. While not as tall as the larger tomatoes which were started much earlier, it was certainly outgrowing those planted later. As a matter of fact its much larger than those that were stunted by the severe rains.
While I cannot give you answers to your questions as I just don't know, I can record what I observe in my own garden. Which right now is impressive growth rate and higher production so far, when compared to the other DDR.
Everything in the garden is slicers and includes:

(2) Purple Dog Creeks, which were last years best tomato here.
(2) Liz Birts which were the next best
(2) Tarasenko6, which were the best red tomato
Cowlick-Brandywine original P.L.
Cowlick-Brandywine-R.L. from Jon in Alabama
Brandywine-Glicks
Brandywine-Sudduth's
Barlow Jap
Earl's Faux
Dana's German Johnson
Amazon Chocolate
Bear Creek
Delicious
Pink Sweet
DDRXBW-C
Daniels
Terhune
DDR
Kumato
Grafted DDR

Wishing you much luck in your gardens and hope you find the answers to your questions. So far, I'm impressed with the results I'm seeing, but I just don't know if it justifies the extra effort or if its just a passing fancy. Time might tell.
Enjoy!
Camo

[Tormato]

My tallest one is at about 14-15...


































... inches.

I always start seedlings late, and outdoors. The weather has been a bit "off". I'm looking at my first ripe beafsteak happening about September 1st.

Tormato

[OmahaJB]

Don't feel bad 'Tormato', my tallest are around 9". Although I did just plant the seeds between three and four weeks ago. This warm weather seems to make them grow much faster than when I start seeds in February/March timeframe for outdoor planting. All four varieties I planted are ready to be transplanted already, including the two dwarf varieties, along with Buckeye State and Kellogg's Breakfast. Normally my seedlings don't look this good until between 8-10 weeks. These are for my indoor garden I'm growing to 'try' to make crosses for the dwarf project.

I do have tomato plants that are in my mother's garden, but she's taking care of those for me. Already lost one to an animal, probably a squirrel, as they like to pull them out of the ground and destroy the plant. Not sure exactly how tall the rest are, but was over there today and just looking out the window they seem to be growing slow.

[Worth1]

Greenhouse plants don't count.

Worth