A Tomato Lover’s Journey: Varieties, Triumphs, and Trials in the Garden

I love growing tomatoes. They come in so many shapes, sizes, and flavors, both the plant and the fruit. Some are determinate and some indeterminate. However, they are all very prone to multiple diseases. Each season is different from other years. I grow 108 varieties, cherries, plum, beefsteak, red, pink, yellow and source them from Tomato fest, Johnny’s Seed, Tomato Growers Supply and many others.  All these vendors can be located here.

As usual, I started most of my seedlings a bit too early, so they were a little leggy. For the first time, I used Hortisketch as my guide and also staggered my seed starting dates so that the crop will develop over a longer season. We’re in the middle of the season and this seems to be working.

Weather started off fabulously this year with no late frost and more importantly no rain. The plants stayed dry. We use a drip hose and grow plants under red plastic. As the fruit emerged, it rained continuously, with a vengeance and soon disease had its day. Diseases spread quickly. GardenAI was able to identify the diseases, but it was too late when the diseases hit. However, I will know what to do next year by keeping notes in the Garden Manager.

Based on past experiences, we sprayed with Biomin Calcium to avoid blossom end rot but it didn’t eliminate the problem. Hard to tell if it helped. For example Lady Sophie was a gorgeous lady, well some of them were very healthy and very productive but other Ladies were completely dead. Weird.

Another product we use to avoid disease, is Actinovate biofungicide. Works well until it doesn’t, but I believe at a minimum it slows the diseases down. CuPro 5000 is good against fungal diseases.

We’re having the best season ever. I’ve never seen so many tomatoes on our plants. The very large varieties such as watermelon beef, Regina, Giant Belgium are productive, but the fruit is smaller than usual.