Your Hardiest Varieties?

[Tormato]

Originally Posted by Labradors2

Very interesting Tormato! I can't say that I've tasted very many apple varieties beyond the grocery store ones and those that they grow at the orchard near here. It's fortunate that I love the Macs from my own tree which are a little sweeter than our Liberty apples. I'm so disappointed in our Courtland tree as I used to love that variety. I will look out for Reine des Reinettes!

Pink Lady is a favourite of mine when I have to buy them .

Linda

Trying to find one rare heirloom apple is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. An online search for vendors or tastings in your area (if there are any) might be the only way to discover these apples.


Sweetango is the best I've tried for new varieties, but it hasn't been available, around here, for a few years.

[Greatgardens]

One last thing. I cleaned up most all of my plants and put the Earth Boxes and cages to bed for the winter. And picked everything worth picking. I got one or two from several other plants, but picked about 20 from my one Stellar plant. Many are small (cocktail size) and probably will not ripen, but I got at least a half-dozen large tomatoes that are likely to make it. We have had 4 good frosts thus far, and the only plants left with any life in them were Orange Wellington, Honey Delight, Stellar, and Sunorange cherry. OW and HD 100% cracked/split now, but Stellar had 1 cracked fruit that I found. And I really have pretty much totally neglected all of them in October. So it will be interesting to see how many of them ripen vs rotting. I think that in Nov/Dec, I won't care if it doesn't have much sweetness, considering my alternatives then.

[bower]

This is the first year in quite a few that I had anything to say about hardiness late in the season. But since I started really late my plants are not done. I've picked a few bad leaves off but not enough to fill a small bucket, the whole summer has been very lazy low maintenance. I didn't feed since planting and there are a few deficiency signs but nothing major. Have cut back on watering now too. We are very close to the end of season - will drop below 10 hours of daylight about Halloween. Greenhouse is drafty so nights in the 40's and some days in the 50's if we don't get sun. The Skippers made a sib cross in the F3 so still getting lots of variety in F5 both brown and purple. They're all very sweet and tasty, very similar to one another, and I'm really enjoying them now that I have more than I can eat. Picked yesterday and lots of blushing still on the vine, looks like they will just finish up before it's too late!

[Nan_PA_6b]

Bower, they're still ripening in this weather?

[bower]

Nan, so far so good. It gets nice and warm if we have a sunny day (in the 70's yesterday), and they are not complaining much about the cold days in between. We had maybe 15-30 minutes of sun today, and might have gotten to 60 F for an hour or two at most. I had some trees cut that were blocking the light even in September, so I definitely credit the bit of sunshine for the ripening going on.



There is some kind of general rule, that tomatoes don't make lycopene etc below a certain temperature. I used to look for the 60 F mark, as a 'tomato degree day' for growing and setting fruit, but it's been a while since I was trying to ripen toms later in the season, so I've forgotten what the "no lycopene" cutoff temp is.

[Worth1]

Black Plum.
A much under appreciated tomato.

[Father'sDaughter]

Over the past month we've had multiple light frosts and most nights in the upper 30's and low 40's, day time highs anywhere between 50 and 70.

The last three plants still alive, thriving, flowering, and setting new fruit are a Serrano Pepper and two tomatoes - Sungold and Chapman's. Before today's heavy rain I filled a one gallon tub with ripe to blushing tomatoes off the two plants. Both still had dozens of greenies and multiple flower trusses in full bloom. And this year none of my grafts survived so these are on their own roots. I'm impressed!

Worth,

Black Plum definitely has potential, IMO. Have you tried Chocolate Pear?

[clkeiper]

I am shocked at the number of survivors in my garden. after tonight and this coming weekend weather probably nothing left even in the high tunnel, but I still have green tomato plants out in the garden. giant garden paste, sweet ozark orange, Wins All, and a few others but those are the nicest.
in my high tunnel I just picked the last bushel of pink and green tomatoes and the valentine grape tomatoes have been spitting out the tomatoes all summer and Fall. I wish I could have recorded just how many cherry and grape tomatoes I picked off of the dozen or so plants I have out there. hundreds of pounds I am sure. I picked 40 pounds the second week of October alone.
there were mostly valentine and the volunteer cherry tomatoes that grow every year out there. nice flavor and dont split much... no idea what they are.

[tryno12]

Yo GG, here is my harvest from today just as the cold front passed through - barely got in garage before they froze - really an experiment although there a quite a few nice tomatoes that have blushed so I will take into house @ 70 degrees and see what happens to those in the garage @ 60 degrees.
Pete