Reaver_G's Journal

Amana Orange was my best summer tomato this year and there are still many to be harvested too. But the flowers are runts about the size of two flea beetles so I’ve counted these out for the rest of the year. Fruits were nice sized, fairly uniform, could be grown as a market tomato. The fruits were either uniform and 8 ounces [~227grams] or flattened with tall shoulders weighing in at between 12 and 14 ounces [~340-397grams] and sometimes the shoulders never ripened.

Taste was average, I’ll have to grow it next to Kelloggs Breakfast next year but here are a few pictures of the most recent ones on the scale. Harvest started one month ago, August 25.

This has been a confusing set of plants. I’ve harvested six fruit so far and they’ve had four different shapes.
There have been two beefsteaks that were slightly flattened with big shoulder.
Also two oblong, egg, almost gourd shaped tomatoes (photographed on scale).
Then one heart shaped (photographed on the dehydrator) and one globe-shaped fruit.
Absolutely beautiful fruit, ribbon winners maybe, but each one has had a different taste so I can’t give a taste review yet. Maybe after the second batch.

The temperatures let up three weeks ago and the flowers have started to pollinate again and there are plenty of little ones and thick new vines. Anyway, I’ll have a better idea of how they taste raw, toasted, and dehydrated after being soaked in triple sec in another month and by then I’ll have harvested enough seed for trade. Hope you enjoy the photos.

This variety has been somewhat of a disappointment for me, before I ever got a ripe fruit. All six started out growing faster and healthier than my other two varieties but after getting to about a meter tall around day 45 they stopped getting taller. Even now, they still haven’t snapped out of it. I started harvesting fruit around the 14th (day 60 (or so) for a variety listed as 95 days). The fruits weighed between 6-11oz (170-310gr) and were yellow skinned with peach flesh.

Raw I found them mild and bland. I added some creole seasoning and like them this way. But when I put a slice of ham on white bread with the tomato, basil, and mozzarella then toasted it until the cheese was finished melting. Delicious. It may have been the yellow fruit combined with the mozzarella and ham but I almost forgot I was eating tomato, my mind thought pineapple! Very sweet when cooked.

Would I recommend it?
Not for the South East and not as a main crop. Maybe worth trying it out if you like sweet tomatoes for cooking recipes. But I am sure there are larger and more productive bi-colored tomatoes available that may taste better.
Will I grow it again?
Likely not. Though I plan on having an acre next year it’s not a long keeper, a drying tomato, or a market tomato so I don’t think I’ll find the room for it. Seeds are being put on my swap list.

This morning I continued my morning routine of checking on my tomatoes and after the first few minutes of fawning over my tiny green fruit I noticed something slightly out of place on one of my plants. It was the head of a cricket strewn out on display as a warning; like a head on a pike declaring my plants to be their property. This doesn’t fly as long as I’m in charge here.

So now I have to find an inexpensive way to protect its fruit before I let the birds warning go unheeded. I don’t want to but I guess I’ll go and pick up some pantyhose at the store, thank goodness they have self-checkout these days. Then put new use to those old AOL trial cds I’ve been saving for when I run out of coasters and hang them from the cages I installed this week.

I also found an inexpensive, nearly free, supply of tomato props until November costing me only gas to pick them up. What happened was last week I sent an email to a candidate for Congress in my district and asked if I could get some signs. Sure enough I was invited to pick up what I needed, the fools! Ha ha! Anyway, these will come in handy because the vines are just starting to tip over with fruit. Plus if I could give just one politician/attorney false hope it would make my day.

Stay safe everyone; It’s hot out here.

Today I saw how tall they were, picked off pests, and fussed at them while taking pictures. They’ve grown another 4+ inches on average this week and are thicker and greener than ever. Except for plant 1. I sprayed #1 with fish emulsion Thursday morning in attempt to get it caught up. The straw mulch I added two weeks ago has been great; So I’ve done the same for the other two varieties and will see if it helps any next week. This week I’ve given up counting individual flowers because of ridiculous failure rates on the other plants so instead I’ve counted the number of flower clusters.

• Plant 1: 27’’ tall – 2 flower clusters on 4 different shoots
• Plant 2: 30’’ tall – 3 flower clusters on 3 different shoots
• Plant 3: 29’’ tall – 4 flower clusters on 4 different shoots
• Plant 4: 29’’ tall – 4 flower clusters on 4 different shoots
• Plant 5: 25’’ tall – 2 flower clusters on 4 different shoots

The first picture is of fruit on plant 4, second picture is of flea beetle damage, and picture three is of the average leaf formation on the Amana Orange plants.

Today, I added a 1" layer of straw beneath my BWPS like I did with the Amana Orange about two weeks ago, hopefully cooler roots will help the plant retain water. They are all getting tall enough to try and sprawl and since I can’t afford any real support today they are leaning a little to the left.
High heat and humidity has taken a toll on BWPS. Blossom drop is above 70% and blossom end rot claimed the earliest fruit on plant 6 so I sprayed the smaller ones with ‘stop rot’ calcium spray hoping that it will keep the other fruits from following the lemming. I also sprayed the leaves with fish emulsion two mornings ago, they’ve been producing small leaves so hopefully the added nitrogen will help the next few leaves a little.
The flea beetles have been getting worse so I added Sevin dust on these six plants with little results past day two, product returned; The aphids still showed up but flea beetles moved to the other plants to protest, unfortunately they held no hunger strikes.
Here are this weeks measurements for the BWPS, they’ve grown about 2+ inches last week. I’ve abandoned the old ‘XYZ’ formula and made a Reaves-like move to something new. The decision came ultimately came because of massive blossom drop and how much unfair attention it gave to suckers. Now I’m only including the height, number of flower clusters, and shoots with flower clusters on them.

• Plant 1: 30’’ tall – 4 flower clusters on 3 different shoots
• Plant 2: 26’’ tall – 2 flower clusters on 2 different shoots
• Plant 3: 30’’ tall – 3 flower clusters on 2 different shoots
• Plant 4: 27’’ tall – 2 flower clusters on 2 different shoots
• Plant 5: 33’’ tall – 3 flower clusters on 2 different shoots
• Plant 6: 32’’ tall – 4 flower clusters on 3 different shoots

The first two pictures are of slightly catfaced fruit. The third is of the tomato I pulled because of blossom end rot.

Today I added straw underneath my Hawaiian Pineapples to keep the soil from splashing onto the leaves when it rains next time. So far I’ve had many problems with these plants like deformed flowers that always fall off or develop wrong, transplant shock, high temperatures, pests, and now I believe a fungus is among us. I believe it’s late blight coming to steal my harvest so I’m trying a fungicide in an attempt to get at least a little fruit.
Some of the ones closer to the house are also growing real thin and skipping their first set of flowers because they get shadowed by the cedars more than the others. Since blossom drop is such a large problem I’m only going to list their height, number of flowering shoots, and number of flower clusters.

• Plant 1: 25’’ tall – 2 flower clusters on 2 different shoots
• Plant 2: 23’’ tall – 0 flower clusters on 3 different shoots
• Plant 3: 22’’ tall – 1 flower cluster on 2 different shoots
• Plant 4: 24’’ tall – 2 flower clusters on 3 different shoots
• Plant 5: 16’’ tall – 0 flower clusters on 2 different shoots
• Plant 6: 26’’ tall – 6 flower clusters on 6 different shoots
• Plant 7: 24’’ tall – 6 flower clusters on 6 different shoots
• Plant 8: 29’’ tall – 4 flower clusters on 2 different shoots

The first picture is a double flower, second picture is of abnormal stem growth, third picture is of even more abnormal stem growth.

I added straw for mulch after doing the head count last week since it was collecting crickets in the garage. This of course led to the cat collecting crickets to bring in the house, it’s better than birds I suppose.
Here is how they look this week: X is the number of 3’’+ shoots I can expect flowers from. Y is the number of suckers that I don’t expect flowers on, yet. Z is the approximate number of flowers that may still produce fruit.

• Plant 1: 24’’ tall 4×5y3z
• Plant 2: 24’’ tall 3×6y6z
• Plant 3: 24’’ tall 3×6y9z
• Plant 4: 24’’ tall 5×4y8z
• Plant 5: 18’’ tall 2×6y7z

Each and every plant has grown 5 inches or more in the past seven days and is looking healthy. If I can get enough extra straw for the others I’ll see if I can duplicate the growth on the others in time for next weeks checkup.

I charted new growth and flower development to compare to last weeks results. Here X represents the number of 3’’+ shoots that I can expect flowers to form on. Y is the number of suckers that I’m not expecting flowers on yet. Z is the number of flowers and does not count unopened, yellowing, or deformed flowers.

• Plant 1: 28’’ tall 4×1y12z
• Plant 2: 26’’ tall 2×0y2z
• Plant 3: 27’’ tall 2×1y17z
• Plant 4: 26’’ tall 2×4y17z
• Plant 5: 29’’ tall 2×1y17z
• Plant 6: 30’’ tall 2×4y17z

Plant 6 had the best week out of this group. Looks like almost 30 fruit are just about to start slow development. Yay!

Today makes seven days since I’ve last charted growth and it marks about one month since I’ve transplanted these guys. To chart the growth I’ve assigned letters to parts of the plant. X represents the number of 3’’ or longer shoots that I can expect flowers to form on. Y is the number of suckers I don’t expect flowers to form on yet. Z is the number of current viable flowers; I did not count flowers that have not opened up or have turned yellow and look like they’re going to drop.

• Plant 1: 21’’ tall 2×2y1z

• Plant 2: 20’’ tall 3×1y0z
• Plant 3: 17’’ tall 2×1y0z
• Plant 4: 19’’ tall 2×2y4z
• Plant 5: 13’’ tall 1×1y1z
• Plant 6: 22’’ tall 5×3y6z
• Plant 7: 23’’ tall 2×6y8z
• Plant 8: 20’’ tall 6×0y12z

Plants 6,7, and 8 are planted closest together and are doing much better than the rest. None of the flowers have dropped to show a future fruit yet; most have just aborted. I blame the 15th day of 90+ temperatures.