Alaska- greenhouse tomatoes 2014

[Heritage]

Great job, Mark... both with the growing and the documentation!

I think I asked before, but can't find it: At what temperature do you keep your greenhouse? I'm especially interested in the night temps.

Thanks
Steve

[AKmark]

Steve, early in the season I try to keep it at 60 F at night, plant growth is insane, production heavy on most varieties. My friends who cannot add heat, fall way behind in just a couple of weeks. I do everything I can to keep roots warm, heat, warm water, big black containers that absorb heat from the sun and do not cool down as fast,, and I do not set them on the cold ground.

[bower]

Mark, I also did the warm water trick this year but only around planting time. It made a big difference to the level of transplant stress, cw other years when I really subjected them to cold roots. But I think it may be worth doing more of that, your results have been so amazing.

Only wish I could control the night temps too.

[Dewayne mater]

Truly one of if not the most impressive thread ever on Tville. You've taken a tough situation and turned it into a positive. Thanks for the hard work of sharing it all with everyone while you were surely slammed taking care of all of those tomatoes!

Dewayne Mater

[AKmark]

Here's a pic of Hillbilly, Paul Robeson, and Blk Prince, they are still cranking out the tomatoes. Thanks Dewayne Mater it is fun.

[AKmark]

Must have been a good year, I sold lots of tomatoes, ate too many, gave them away, begged family to take more, collected seeds, canned tomatoes, and these bloody, Bloody Butchers, and Matina still produced more than was consumed. If you can't grow tomatoes, or cannot get ripe ones, try again with these. It's ridiculous how many tomatoes they actually produce. Taste good too.

[AKmark]

Here's a pic of Hillbilly plants, and Yellow Brandywine. The YB plants has produced 4-5 really nice tomatoes already, a couple were pretty good size with no cracks at all, good flavor also. The hillbilly plants I let sprawl on a bench, they are really producing well and are loaded. The bright orange round tomato was supposed to be Hillbilly, it is more tart sweet, good flavor, and not Hillbilly taste at all. Sorry pics below. oops

[AKmark]

Sorry here's pics

[efisakov]

Mark, how about fermenting? This round orange once looks to be good candidates. Matina as well.

[AKmark]

Trust me tomatoes, or any food, seems to taste even better after a hike through the woods. Kyle and I walked to a river we kayak sometimes to see if there were any salmon jumping up the small falls. For a snack, we took some SunGold and Snow White, they sure tasted great.
We are still getting quite a few tomatoes, fired up the wood stove though, fall is here.

[efisakov]

We like fishing as well. Just yesterday we were catching porgies. You have to post picture of salmon when you get one. Do you salt caviar?

[AKmark]

The Early Girls are out producing others now, they are still producing like crazy. All in all everything is still tasting pretty good, I am pretty darn happy with the season overall.

I have been throwing some wood in the furnace at night to keep the temps up, it hit 30 the other night, but days have been sunny, and in the 50's outside, which makes for a nice upper 80's day in the greenhouse. We also just dipped under 12 hours of daylight, it is on its way to 5 + in December.
I will post a few totals from Brandywine Cowlick's and Bear Creek, BC is still cranking out beefsteaks.
Ella, you would have to tie me up and sedate me to get fish eggs in my mouth. lol

[AKmark]

I went ahead and added up some numbers since the season is so close to ending, and will share some observation too.

I only tracked two plants yields this year.
Brandywine Cowlick's (39.27lbs total yield) 67 tomatoes ripe, (.58lbs average tomato) transplanted March 3rd. The plant was in a 20 gallon container that was 3/4 full, and had four branches. The plant probably reached 10 feet in length.

Bear Creek (21.46lbs ripe fruit) 40 tomatoes picked (.53lbs, average size tomato) transplanted June 4th, much later than Cowlick's. The plant was in a 10 gallon container, the plant had two branches, and reached a length of about 7 feet.

Delicious was not tracked, but I am certain it outproduced both, bigger tomatoes too, and they were good.

Marianne's Peace only produced four very ugly tomatoes for me, but they were excellent. I will try this one again next year, if I have similar results I will use it in a breeding program instead of just growing it.

Caspian Pink is getting bagged next year because the fruits seem to go from good to mushy to fast, and I hate mushy tomatoes regardless of the taste. Brandywine, Limbaugh's, Stump of the World, go from ripe, to over ripe juicy slop, but don't seem to get mushy, I like that Early Wonder is the mushiest tomato I've grown to date, even my 86 year old grandmother, who eats anything commented.

The upside surprises of the season; a very sweet New Big Dwarf plant, it was so good, a tomato lollipop. We also enjoyed the great taste of Crnkovic Yugoslavian, Bear Creek, Momotaro, Snow White, a Chocolate Stripes that lost its stripes, German Johnson. The hybrid tomato Trust, also surprised us, it was very sweet when fall came around. Fred Limbaugh LPT just did great for me again, it produces well, and the taste is excellent from the first tomato, to the last one picked. It is good slightly under ripe, as well as slightly over ripe. They will crack if watering is an issue, and I assume during rainy weather outside too, but they can be picked when they blush and can be ripened inside with very little affect on taste, if any at all. Yellow Brandywine, once it started producing, produced quite a few large, non cracked tomatoes that were a good yellow-ish tomato.

There were several ok varieties as well this season, but it may be my area, or my growing technique that made them ho hum, so I will just leave that be.

For far north, northern gardeners, who want to grow late season varieties, (you must use large starts at the beginning of your season to get good results, around 2 ft tall plants with blooms or tomatoes on it will work, give up on the scrawny little plants) I set up a few of my friends unheated small hobby greenhouses with some late season goodies, and they got to grow their own classics. They actually got pretty decent yields off of most varieties they tried, and they were happy, so that's most important.

I figure I can string this season along for about two more weeks, if anything worth noting pops up I'll post what I see. Have a good winter tomato peeps,
Mark in the frozen north

[Barb_FL]

Thank you for keeping us updated.

So it that it for the greenhouse until next spring?

[efisakov]

Mark, great suggestions for any tomato growers. I just picked first Cowlick, 14.9 ounces . Reason being that it did not germinate. I hoped for 3 weeks that it will, finally started another batch and so on. It was the last one to go in to the garden and it was small plant. I should know better, all pinks (most beef once) need more time. My mistake, I should have started it earlier. You are absolutely right, we are afraid to plant out tomatoes that are already blooming, well... they grow no matter what we do WRONG!
Pinks need more time. I am changing my seed growing pattern for PINKS.
thank you

Last year Cowlick was not productive for me, I probably made some mistakes as well. Keep on with suggestions. Your productivity rocks.
thank you for sharing