harveyc

My son Michael is 14 now and by the time I was his age I was selling sweet corn from our farm at a small roadside stand. I suggested to Michael earlier this year that he could raise tomatoes this year and sell them either roadside himself or to two fruit stands down the road from our farm. He liked the idea and has maintained pretty good enthusiasm over it. I'll use this thread to post our progress this year.

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harveyc

Our tomatoes were sowed around 1/31/2012. On 2/9, most of the seeds had germinated and I took the following photo which shows one variety per cell.



(Note: photos take with my cell phone since it's handy and does "good enough")

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harveyc

On 2/15 Michael and I transplanted the seedlings into individual cells. By the way, we're growing 30 fruiting varieties with another 2 varieties (Maxifort and Colosus) grown exclusively as rootstock for grafting later on. We're growing Better Boy both for fruiting and to try as a rootstock candidate based on the suggestion of Richard.

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harveyc

I read quite a bit about potential benefits of using tomatoes grafted onto varieties which produce superior root systems and decided to give it a try. I grafted my first set of tomatoes on 2/25 and another larger set on 3/2 after my first attempt proved successful. These small silicone clips make the job pretty easy. To help the plants during the recovery period after grafting I placed the pots into an opaque tub with a lid in order to maintain high humidity and to diffuse the light.

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harveyc

By the way, I should pause here to say the plants were started and grown for the first six weeks or so in my heated shop on propagation mats set at 85F under a T5 fluorescent light fixture with 8 bulbs. The tomatoes responded well to this treatment.

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harveyc

This photo taken 3/14 shows the light fixture somewhat and also some of my grafted plants while the rest of the large plants have been moved to the greenhouse. To the left are some cape gooseberry plants (Physallis peruviana) I'm also growing.

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harveyc

This photo taken on 3/16 shows plants grafted on 2/25 and also on 3/2. The plant up front grafted on 2/25 has pushed off the silicone clip on its own.

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harveyc

During the coldest of nights my greenhouse (with small heater) gets down into the upper 30s but still warms up nicely during the day when the sun is out This photo taken on 4/4 shows the progress the tomato plants have made in the greenhouse. They would have already been planted by now but we received several rain storms that left field conditions too wet to prepare it for planting.

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harveyc

Our normal last frost date is supposedly something like 3/21. I heard of frosts in April in the 1960s from my dad, though I don't recall it as I didn't pay much attention to such things as a youth. In 2010 we had frost I believe on 4/2 and in 2011 we had frost on 4/8. This year we had frost on 4/5, 4/6, and 4/7 (our 35th day of frost for the season). Based on a consensus of weather forecasts, I was confident we were headed for warmer weather so we began preparing the ground on 4/6 since the soil had dried out sufficiently.

Here's Michael driving our Oliver 1365 with a 5' wide rototiller:



Here's the tomato plot (adjacent to my pomegranate orchard) after being rototilled and after adding between 10 and 15 cubic yards of composted wood chips and horse manure (spread out in rows by shovel):


Here's after the compost was spread and the plot rototilled again:

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harveyc

Mid-day on 4/7 after our last frost, we got busy planting tomatoes. Michael and Linda are busy planting tomatoes while I'm busy shuttling plants from the greenhouse. There are large groves of bamboo growing across the highway from our farm near the Sacramento River so these are our stakes. We get about 100 tomatoes and 16 cape gooseberry planted this day.

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harveyc

On 4/10 we finishing planting our first batch of tomato plants. The first row on the left is about 390' long.

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harveyc

On about 3/5 I had started a second batch of seedlings, all Sungold F1 (a popular cherry tomato bred in Japan). I had included some in my first batch but we decided we would expand their production. On 4/18 I planted another 60 Sungold and will wait a few days before planting the final 50 Sungold.

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momoese

That's a lot of Sungold! He might need help picking all those little guys.

harveyc

Yeah, I imagine I will end up helping some and I also have a quick-working part-time worker that may help. One of the fruit stands down the road is pretty large (part of a regional visitor center still being developed) and they grew some of their own tomatoes last year. I introduced Michael to the president of the organization and I mentioned that we were growing Sungold among our 30 varieties. He indicated they had grown 100 plants last year and that they still didn't have nearly enough. I'm expecting we'll be picking tomatoes two months before they have any ready so that's why we decided to expand our planting of those. I also expect we might abandon the picking of some of our 30 varieties.

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barnetmill

I wonder if grafting could cure the problems I and just about everyone else in my region has with growing tomatoes. In NW Florida it is for some reason(s) very difficult to grow tomatoes and I have only been succesful once in a while. Perhaps finding a good root stock and grafting might be a way of being succesful.

harveyc

If your problems are with nematodes or soil diseases, than a different rootstock might help. I'm not an expert in the humid climates but have heard from others in humid states about problems with a blight disease, etc. that I'm unfamiliar with. There is good information at the forums at Tomatoville® Gardening Forums with folks all over the world posting there. Good luck!

The Maxifort is the most popular rootstock variety and also the most expensive!!! Seeds cost me something like $.50 each but if I bought something like 200 the price comes down a little.

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barnetmill

Thanks HarveyC for that link.

momoese

Does the Maxifort grow true to seed?

harveyc

I don't believe so, it's probably an unstable hybrid. But there's a chance the seedlings will be similar, better, or worse! We'll see.....

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sunfish

Maxifort (F1) - Johnny's Selected Seeds

8-) 8) B-) B)

Maxifort question - Growing Tomatoes Forum - GardenWeb :-O :O :-o