Planted out tomatoes and peppers

My oldest refuses to touch ANY vegetables (crazy kid!) The last time I tried to get my youngest to eat a tomato he pushed it aside and said “That’s poison and can kill me” Where do they get this? Oh well, I just keep trying. That is actually 3 plants. I know they are too close together, but it was the space I had. There are 3 54" tomato cages in there too that the stakes are holding up. I keep having to wire up layers that are hanging low because my neighbor likes to mow around the tractor tire (it’s mostly in his yard, and I think he likes checking out the tomatoes) but he’ll knock off branches and tomatoes if I don’t keep them tied up. He said he didn’t care if I planted there as long as I share some tomatoes. Not a problem. :smile:

Girl Girl is a dog, and it used to eat (steal) fruit from that tomato plant. Which was a weird thing. The plant grew out of a package of another variety, a strange cross that is unknown. I think it was Green Zebra. and that was also a weird thing. I obtained seed from Starlight at Tomatoville. Many have odd names that I have obtained. Some cool like “Rebel Yell” Some even weirder than GGWT I have a somewhat unstable blue tomato, Dancing With Smurfs, “Seek-No-Further Love Apple” was also obtained from Starlight. The name is a “hybrid” derived from a heirloom apple (the variety “Westfield Seek-No-Further”) and a term (love apple) used for tomatoes ages ago.
MS seed was obtained from Baker Creek
You asked I think about KBX before, some info
Potato leaf version of Kellogg’s Breakfast that appeared in a garden of
Martha Hufford of SE VA (gardenmama), a Tomatoville/Garden Web member.
This is what Martha said about it in her letter to Linda Sapp at Tomato
Growers Supply: “In 2002, I ordered some Kellogg’s Breakfast seeds from a
seed supplier in California. Upon growing them out I noticed there was a
50/50 split of regular leaf and potato leaf plants. Out of curiosity I
grew out 6 of the PL plants along side the RL ones “just to see what
would happen”. The PL plants out paced the RL ones as seedlings and as
mature plants they were noticeably healthier with heavier and earlier
fruit set. Speculation by the tomatophiles at GardenWeb was that the PL
plants would produce a pink fruit as there were no known orange PL
varieties at that time. In late July after 75-80 days the 16-20 ounce
fruits ripened to a beautiful deep apricot-orange. Taste tests had friends
licking the plates. I saved seeds from that plant and trialed 6 more plants
in 2003- all had the same results. Since then I have been growing out
plants from the 2003 seeds along with the current year’s seeds to assess
stability. Seeds have also been distributed to several growers across the
country and in Germany who are part of the Tomatoville family. While the
odd RL seedling does pop up from time to time (less than 2-3%), the color
and characteristics of the fruits has remained stable over the past 4 years.”
potato leaf Kellogg’s Breakfast, indet., large yellow-orange beefsteak,
great flavor and better disease res. and production than its brother
Purchased from Knapp’s Fresh Veggies

My KBX plant has more tomatoes than any other plant in my garden this year, None ripe yet.
I save seed, so any I mention are available, well most. I only have a few seeds of some, till I grow out more. Always a chance of a stray cross too. I’m growing Rebel Yell too, and that plant is doing poorly with few fruits setting. I think I’m also loosing fruits to bad set from the heat.

I picked fruit from my second dwarf Tennessee Suited plant, it appears the first plant did not come true, and pretty much lacked the stripes. I will only save seed from this plant.

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Thanks for the info on the girl girl variety, very interesting about that the other varieties. And I think I have heard about the Rebel Yell plant before.

Regarding the MS tom, I have a 2016 Baker Creek catalog, and didn’t see it in there, bit I guess they have sold it in years past. Both you and others have praised it, so I might have to check into that one.

It’s interesting about the RL and PL version of the Kellogg’s Breakfast strain. With my Brandywine plants I have two PL versions, three in pink and two in yellow. I only have one RL plant, a black.

As I mentioned up-thread, I did an inventory of all my plants last weekend. None of the PL BW’s have produced more than 10 fruit, and that is odd, considering just about all of the plants are quite vigorous, and most are over 4’ tall now. In comparison, my lone RL black BW has already set at least 17 fruit, and it isn’t the tallest of these varieties. I wish I had more of the black BW plants to make a better comparison.

When I was out there today, it looks like quite a few of my fruit are breaking color so maybe the heat is doing it. But, I also have seen quite a few fruit with BER, which could be too much variances in rainfall and sunlight. Or it also could be a calcium deficiency, which I hope to rectify with some Tomato Tone fertilizer, which has some Ca in it.

Alright, guess I’d better close this novel.

It is good. I’m growing Green Giant too, and it is supposed to be a good green when ripe but MS is better tasting to me.

Well it is productive as I mentioned to you last week, but .I agree the taste does not stand out like Malakhitovaya Shkatulka. I think you pointed me toward this one or Antmary, whomever, thanks it is a keeper for me too!

Finally got my very first tomatoes this year. Both are german queen and neither is real pretty looking. Bigger one was already split, but the smaller one split after I brought it inside. Haven’t tasted them yet. Oh and 1 little strawberry was ripe :disappointed_relieved:

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My tomatoes have been hit hard by critters and blight. I was away for a few weeks and the blight really ramped up while I was gone. I’m thinking of spraying with Serenade to keep them going to get a fall crop, but can’t decide. Any thoughts?

I have tomatoes in a small plot at a community garden that are hit worst (community gardens are like elementary school where the occupants just pass around their diseases) but the half dozen plants in my small yard have struggled as well. I expect the heat is weakening the plants, plus maybe a lack of watering.

But the good news is I’m getting some tomatoes and they’re delicious. I’m growing Stump of the World, Prudence Purple, Opalka, Black Cherry, Fish Lake Oxheart, Sungold and three of the dwarf project varieties - Dwarf Purple Heart, Dwarf Orange Cream and Rosella Purple (likened to Cherokee Black). The dwarfs are great, but I have noticed when blight hits them, because they’re lower and denser it can effect them faster and more substantially.

Here are a few of the Dwarf Purple Hearts living up to their name.


They are usually more of a regular oxheart shape, but these two were growing against each other (isn’t that precious) and formed such nice hearts I had to share.

I’m also growing what I used to call the Striped Mystery Beast which was a chance hybrid in some Prudence Purple seed last year. It has come pretty true to seed and I actually started a whole bunch of seedlings, renamed it to match my kids’s school mascot and sold out quickly at their plant sale for the PTA. The renaming was of course just a sales ploy, but it was for a good cause and it is a really nice tomato. It has a regular leaf, not potato like Prudence, and is even a little more prolific than Prudence.
Here are three nice ones with a finger for size reference.

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Nice looking mystery maters! I have been picking a few tomatoes daily, I forgot about one plant and one was over ripe! I had to throw it out. I tried straw bale gardening, and they grew, but the controls of the same plants in pots, grew better. Four cultivars of tomatoes, and peppers, and the container versions all out done the straw bale versions. I might have messed it up? Hard to figure out when the bales need water or don’t need water! I think hearing most under water, that I over watered. Still the difference is too huge and I won’t be doing it again. It works, just didn’t work well for me. Others have had better luck at it. No complaints, the plants in the bales would have been culled most years, so I had 4 extra tomato plants, and they are producing. Same with the peppers. I just had stuffed peppers tonight, Italian sausage with cream cheese, garlic and oregano was used as the stuffing.

A couple cuor di bues. They’re a little under-ripe, but we’re supposed to get a solid rain after a month of nothing and I was worried they’d explode. I love the combination of pear-shaped and deeply ribbed. Like a tomato dumpling.

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A couple of pictures…
Texas Star. It was not bad, it cracks though.

Yablochniy lipetskiy. Late tomato. It was voted one of the best tasting tomatoes on Russian forum. It sure tastes really good. The tomatoes are large.

Mushroom basket. Late, productive and very ornamental. It probably keeps well. The flesh is somewhat chewy, but the taste is good. The fruits can be very large.

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There are also pictures of peppers.

My favorite Antohi Romanian. It started to ripen.

Jimmy Nardello. Very productive early short pepper. We are eating it for a while. It has thin dry walls, so it is better for drying and probably canning, I have to try it.

Flavorburst F2 from my own seeds. The plant differs from F1 but it is still good, very small plant with a big load.

The last is Costa Rica seeds were bought in Lowers. It is really cool pepper, I did not expect this. The plant is very tall with dark green leaves. Peppers are very large and the whole cage is packed with peppers, there are so many of them. But it is hard to catch on the camera.


I also have three plants which have no single pepper on them! The pepper plants are crazy.

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None of my peppers are doing much this year. Not sure why. But yours that are producing seem to be doing so abundantly. Congrats!

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My bells are going red now - really early season for peppers this year

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Wow, Maria, those are some really nice peppers. Last I checked, only our Serrano plants has any fruit on them, the others are really lagging behind. But, I haven’t been in the patch much this weekend. Those tom’s look good as well. I’ve never heard of an “ornamental” tomato, just peppers. That mushroom basket kinda looks like a Costoluto Fiorentino.

We’re getting some color break on quite a few of our tom’s. Our first ripe red fruit was a Red Calabash, my wife liked the flavor, but I didn’t get a taste. I picked a few near ripe fruit from other plants, some Stupice, Jaune Flamme, yellow Pear, and Amur Tiger. Haven’t tasted any of them yet, tho.

We had a birthday party lunch to go to today, so my niece wanted to fry some large green (unripe) tomatoes. So I did pick some of those, of which we have plenty.
Have you ever tried fried green tomatoes?

I’ll get some new pics of our ripening fruit soon. We some really large ones, just wish they’d hurry up and ripen!

@subdood_ky_z6b,
I found that peppers are easier to grow then tomatoes. They do not need pruning, have very few disease and pest problems. They need good fertilizing and general care to get the good leaf mass to be able to set good amount of peppers. The trick for me is to start the plants early, in February, because they take so long time to start producing. The store bought peppers were almost always behind my own. Also some varieties do better for me. The above mentioned are really good.
Mushroom basket is a really interesting looking tomato. This is why I called it ornamental. It tastes good and it is productive and do not crack. I’ve never tried Costoluto tomatoes, they are said to be better for cooking then eating. Mushroom basket definitely has the same genes, but it is a good all purpose tomato.
I do like to cook green tomatoes, they taste surprisingly good. Although I am not sure if I fry them the right way.
Hope to see your ripe tomatoes soon.

I find that the trick to peppers is giving them heat but protection from direct sun

I now plant them behind the tomatoes

Ate some excellent ananas noir last night in tomato mozerrela basil salad. It had a very pleasantly sweet flavor. Beautiful looking too.

I tried Ananas Noir last year, but alas, this was one of my varieties that didn’t survive the rain, then disease onslaught. I didn’t try it this year, but still have some seed, so maybe I’ll give a shot next year. I do like those multi color tomatoes.

We are trying Mr Stripey again this year, which is as close to AN as we can get.

While I was gone camping for 4 nights the wind and weight of the vines started making my plants lean/fall over. Got a few more ripe romas and finally a better boy.

A lot of our tomatoes are really ripening up, but we have a lot of of our fruit with blackened ends, which I assume is blossom end rot. I think the main reason is all the rain we’ve had the last month. While not as much rain as last year, I’m sure it’s not helping matters. Plus, I still haven’t been able to get out and fertilize the plants, so that’s prob contributing to this issue.

Add to the fact that I haven’t been diligent about weeding and spraying the plants with fungicide, and the result is many of the plants are getting some disease issues. Most are OK, but I should have been more on top of it. We’ve had lots of other things going on, and the 'mater plot doesn’t get all the attention it needs.

I mentioned up-thread I think I bit off a more than I can chew with 98 different plants, and it’s coming to fruition. But, we do have a lot of good plants, and should still get a decent harvest.

We’ve spent the last couple days harvesting our sweet corn which hasn’t done well as expected. First, we got a lot of rain the first month it grew, plus it was cool, so that didn’t help. Plus, we had some varmits get in the patch and break about a quarter of the stalks, before the ears were even ready. I suspect our delinquent deer friends had something to do with that. I put up my hybrid tape and fishing line fence and that seemed to keep them out since then.

We actually just finished canning 9 pints of the corn this evening, it’s cooling off in the canner as I’m writing this. We’ll be lucky to get another 5 pints with the plants we have left.

We haven’t had a deer raid in the tomato patch since I put up a second perimeter fishing line fence up about 6 weeks ago. So, I think I may have discovered a pretty cheap solution. But, we’ll see how it does the rest of the season. Those deer are crafty, and I’m sure they’re sitting around the campfire smoking cigars, sipping bourbon, and plotting how to destroy my latest deterrent.

I am happy to report that our sweet potatoes are growing like gangbusters, so we’re looking forward to perhaps getting to harvest some later in the season. And, our cucumbers are growing well also, so that’s encouraging.

I’ll try to get some new pics from the farm posted soon.

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