Anne's Fall Tomato Garden 9-10-13

[aclum]

Hi,

Houseguests now having left, I finally got some time to pick up the garden a bit and get some photos of some transplants I put in a week or two ago.

First photo is a view of the tomato beds from the back patio
Next photo shows some of my older plants that I had topped and lowered and leaned
After that an overview of the prepared beds looking east taken on 8-8-13 and then a view of the same beds planted looking west this morning.
Finally a bunch of semi-closeups so you can see what I've got planted. For reference, the lettering on the labels is 3/8" tall.

I've got 4 sets of grafts (Marvel Stripe, Fish Lake Oxheart, Red Barn, and Liz Birt) on RST-04-105-T rootstock. When they were much smaller it appeared that the ungrafted Liz Birt was regular leaf and the grafted version was potato leaf - so I assumed that I'd messed up somewhere. However as they get larger the leaves are looking more alike, so I'm hoping that they both really are Liz Birt.

All the plants in the narrower bed are from seed as is the cuostralee in the wide bed. Others in the front row of the wide bed are from spring (Prue) or from cuttings from spring plants (Indian stripe, Momotaro, Wes, Dona).

The plants are about 18" apart and this has worked fine for me with trellising to 2 or 3 stems.

I'm getting a late start on a fall garden, but it's been a records 50 consecutive days of 100+ temps, with the hot weather continuing for a while. So I hope we get a late freeze this year and I'll actually get some ripe fruit from these plants. Most of them are new to me and I can't wait to try them!! (As well as seeing how the new roostock turn out).

Anne

[Delerium]

Love your setup and all the varieties your growing Anne! Your super organized.

[MissS]

Originally Posted by Delerium

Love your setup and all the varieties your growing Anne! Your super organized.

I agree. What a great setup! You sure have put forth a lot of time and effort in your setup alone. Your plants look great and I am sure that they will do well in that home you have made for them.

You have chosen some nice varieties. I do hope that you get to taste each and every one of them.

Patti

[newatthiskat]

Really nice setup! Lots of work but I bet you get lots of produce

[Alfredo]

Those are some pretty big raised garden beds aclum, very nice! Nice varied selection of tomatoes too. Love me some Virginia Sweets and African Queen tomatoes. Kosovo is a beautiful tomato too.

[aclum]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the kind words! Yes, I'm really happy with the set-up I have now (it's evolved gradually over the past 5 or 6 years or so - starting with an area of Bermuda grass lawn). I've had my best production year ever (including gardening in San Jose before moving to Merced), and I attribute most of my success to the set-up: shade cloth, silver mulch, drip/soaker irrigation, string trellising limiting number of leaders, etc.. It's also really easy for me to maintain once it's set up.

I'm glad you like my selections - always hard trying to decide what to plant! In other beds, I've still got quite a few of my original spring plantings and cutting going strong - including:

Opalka grafted onto Ping-Tung Eggplant
Opalka grafted onto Katana Tomato
2 KBX (ungrafted)
KBX grafted onto Ping-Tung Eggplant
Lucky Cross
Hillbilly
Goose Creek on Katana
Santa Clara Canner
Brandywine OTV
Purple Dog Creek
Gary'O Sena on Katana
Black Krim
Carbon
Vorlon


I hope they'll keep on producing long enough so that I can compare them to the new plants in similar categories.

I also have a total of 18 seedlings of two leaf types from seeds labeled Noir De Crimee, that are definitely NOT. I bagged and saved seeds from the two ty;pes I ended up with - one a mediocre red or pink (forgot to check, but I think pink) plum and the other a large, delicious, pink beefsteak. (Will post more on this later on another thread).

Anyway, hope to post some more photos of the remaining beds once I get them all cleaned up and planted. My beds are not normally as organized looking as the new seedling bed - it takes me a while to get things "ready for their close-up."

Anne

PS - Alfredo, I just LOVE all the flowers in your garden. I have absolutely no talent with flowers, so I really admire anyone who does!

[aclum]

Hi,

Looks like the new transplants are happy in their new bed !

I'm attaching one of the photos posted above taken 9-9-13 and then one with a similar view taken today, 9-14-13. In today's photo, it's a little hard to make out the top of the NAR and the Marvel Stripe behind it, but the top of the NAR is a couple of inches above the top of its label. I didn't move the plant labels at all, so you can see how much the plants have grown in 4 days!

I think finally the weather's cooling back down to low to mid-90's so great weather for the tomatoes.

Anne

[aclum]

Hi Again,

For anyone who might be interested....

Here are a few pics of my main fall tomato bed this morning about 8 am (hence they're still a bit in the shade and the pics are a bit dark).

So far, so good - although I'm disappointed to see that the ungrafted "Liz Birt" at the far east end of the bed has the incorrect leaf type. The grafted version fortunately has the correct potato leaf - so I should get taste of the "real thing."

As you can see, I've had to stake some of the plants on small bamboo stakes so they don't get knocked over in heavy wind or whatever and I'll probably begin pruning and trellising some of them soon.

Anne

[Delerium]

Everything looks great Anne!

[Heritage]

Anne, nice job! Your passion is showing...

Steve

[Salsacharley]

I'm amazed you can plant a fall tomato garden. What fun to be anticipating instead of grieving over your tomatoes.

Very nice!

Charley

[aclum]

Hi Again,

I guess it's about time for a fall garden update. It's been about a month since plant out (which I think was Sept 3) and 2 weeks since my last set of photos to this thread. Also, everything's looking pretty good right now so I wanted gto get some photos before they're stricken by some calamity or another !

We're getting into nights in the low 50's but nice days in the 80's. I think the aluminet shade cloth and silver plastic mulch mitigates the cooler temps somewhat, but I plan to put some water jugs in the bed as heat sinks for the cooler spells when the temps dip down into the 40's for short periods.

I hung some new sticky traps - yellow on one side and blue on the other - and both sides are loading up with various bugs, including an unfortunate bee or two ! Most of the bugs are tiny white flying insects like the whiteflies I'm used to only somewhat smaller. Maybe just a different type of whitefly than I'm used to or perhaps thrips??

I've begun doing some pruning and trellising and using the electric toothbrush on the blossoms.

Anyway, here are the photos. The plants are getting to a size where the the foliage of the various plants seems to blend together, so you'll no doubt have to zoom in on some of them to figure out what's what.

The first 4 photos are of my main fall bed, east end, west end, mid-bed, and mid-bed to east end.

The next photo should be a sort of close-up of 2 NAR crowns (on same plant). I thought they were interesting as the fused crown stems seem almost like broccoli head stems.

Then I have a partial photo of my big bed with a cuostralee from seed, a Wes, Indian Stripe, and Momotaro from Spring cuttings, and a leftover Prue on Momotaro are rootstock leftover from Spring that I've sort of done an espalier on.

Then a photo of a leftover Spring Black Krim I've sort of espalied on the other side of the big bed.

And, finally a photo of a red barn on the left next to a red barn grafted onto RST-04-105-T rootstock. If you look closely and can make out the red barns from the plants behind it, you'll see that the grafted version is starting to "outpace" the ungrafted version.

Enjoy!

Anne

[b54red]

Anne that is one beautiful setup and the plants look great. I wish my fall plants looked half that good; but since I have to set them out in July and August they suffer greatly from foliage diseases and insects before the cooler weather sets in. I now have some plants with some nice fruits on them but it will be a race to see if they can ripen nicely before it gets too cold this year. I fear we will have an early fall since the summer was so much cooler and wetter than normal.

Let me know which scions produce well with normal size fruit from your grafting with the RST-04-105-T rootstock. I am planning on getting some of them to try next season and would appreciate any information on which grafts work best with them. I have had no luck with grafts of NAR scions so far and it is one of my favorite red tomatoes to grow. I only had one with it as the scion that took last summer and the plant died soon after setting out. It just never developed any roots and failed to thrive.

Bill

[peppero]

Great work as well as pictures. I am particularly interested in how your tomato/eggplants grafts are doing as I would like to reduce the effects of tomato disease.

jon

[Salsacharley]

Hi Anne,

Your garden is great! I have a couple of questions for you, if you don't mind.

How long do you leave your shade cover on?

Is your silver mulch Mylar? Where do you get it if you don't mind saying. (I used Mylar mulch this year thinking I was a genius...not knowing it was not uncommon, but it is expensive).

What are the horizontal bars running through your vertical bars for? Don't you ever whack yourself with those protruding ends?

Thanks much and best wishes,

Charley