As I am starting to pull dead plants, I think back to this late June view - hope, health and future tomatoes!

Here’s a guest post by Doreen Howard, whom Carolyn knew well. I think I was interviewed once by Doreen for one of her articles on tomatoes. I spent some time searching for her on line to see what she was up to, and had no luck.

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Growing Heirlooms Amongst the Gators and Squeeters

by Doreen G. Howard

Growing any tomato is a challenge in a climate that receives 72 inches of annual rainfall, averages 85% humidity year-round and boats of temperatures in the 80’s during summer nights. Summer runs from April 15 to Thanksgiving – if we are lucky. There are only about six weeks in the spring in which night temperatures range between 45F and 75F. It’s no wonder that the only cash crops grown in the area (45 miles south of Houston, Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico) are rice, mosquitoes and alligators. I jest about the last two; we endure them without profit.

Heirloom tomatoes present additional problems to tropical gardeners like me. In addition to the disease and pests nurtured by our primordial soup and the short window of opportunity for fruit set, the heat produces misshapen blooms that prevent fertilization. Also, tropical storms that dump 8-10 inches of rain within hours often preclude fruit set and stress the plants. Such was the case in 1995.

I grew Abraham Lincoln, Valencia, Black Prince, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, White Beauty, Tigerella, Pineapple, Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, and Purple Calabash. As a control, I grew a plant each of two hybrids that do well in my area – Champion and Carnival, and Green Zebra, a tasty open-pollinated variety.

All plants were set out February 25 with protection. Nights were in the 40F range. Each was caged, the cage wrapped in Reemay. All were propagated according to the principles of Texas A&M’s Team Tomator, time-released plant food in the soil at planting, mulch, weekly foliar feeding and regular applications of fungicide to prevent early blight. Heirloom varieties were not fed weekly after they reached four feet in height. By April 20, I had huge, healthy plants loaded with flowers and small fruit. Nightly temperatures were averaging 68F, and days were in the 85-90F range. A week later, it hit 100F at noon, and night temperatures soared into the 80’s. True summer had arrived and didn’t let up until Halloween.

Most of the tomatoes matured and were picked during the next 30 days. The last fresh fruit was picked on July 4. Of course, there was no further fruit set. Disease began to take its toll, and the sad looking plants were pulled from the garden. I don’t compost old tomato plants, because they are so full of fungal and viral diseases.

It was not the best year for tomatoes or any crop along the Gulf. After five mild winters, pests and diseases were pervasive in 1995. The stink bugs (Nezara viridula) and various virulent outbreaks (Early blight, Septoria, and Fusarium wilt) sharply reduced yields in comparison to previous years. That included the usual hybrid big producers, Champion and Carnival.

I picked a total of 50 Carnivals that averaged 5 ounces each. The usual output of Carnival is at least 75 fruits that averaged 10 ounces. Pineapple performed in the same miserable manner. 1995 fruit averaged 6.5 ounces versus 1994’s average of 13.5 ounces.

Cherokee Purple was a big tomato, several fruit were larger than 10 ounces, but on average the 24 I picked were in the 6-8 ounce range. The color was interesting, brick red interior with green shouldered, dusky pink exterior. Valencia also had big fruit; it bore 22 in the eight-ounce range. I didn’t like its mushy texture, though. The biggest fruit came from Radiator Charlie; three giants weighed in at 18. 20 and 22 ounces. There were only nine tomatoes on the plant.

Black Prince yielded 15 tomatoes; in 1994, I picked at least 78 from one plant. White Beauty produced the least, five fruit. But they were wonderful in flavor and perfect in appearance, chalky white skin and interior.

Green Zebra was the most prolific, 99 fruit in the four ounce range, even surpassing Tigerella, which produced 63 1.5 ounce fruit. The best producing heirloom was Purple Calabash, with 67 tomatoes. Of course, it was the worst tasting of the lot. In fact, it was the worst tasting tomato I’ve ever eaten. I grew it out of curiosity, the antiquity of it and its color fascinated me. A dinner guest thought that Purple Calabash was the best tasting tomato she had ever eaten and took home seeds. So, you never can really say something is the worst.

Brandywine was the only heirloom tomato that did not yield a crop. The plant was as tall and healthy as other varieties. It was also loaded with flowers that never produced fruit. Sometimes a small fruit would remain after the blossom drop, but it, too, would drop. This puzzled me all winter, so I started asking questions on the Internet newsgroups. Gardeners in Australia and parts of Southern California reported the same phenomenon. The answer to the puzzle came from NC State student Keith Mueller, who is a Masters candidate in the Department of Horticultural Science. He emailed me the following information.

This is why Brandywine may not have set fruit. Fasciated, rough shouldered or irregularly fruiting tomatoes like Brandywine tend to have irregularly shaped flowers. The result can be a stigma which is not typically enclosed by the anther cone. It exerts beyond the anthers. Or, as I’ve seen in some cases, the stigma actually grows larger than the diameter of the anther cone, splitting it. Both incidences make it difficult for pollination. Heat can also make the style exert and push the stigma beyond the anthers in normal flowers.

Keith’s suggestion was to hand pollinate, because normal vibration pollination is not possible with irregular flowers. I’m going to try this technique on the new crop of Brandywine I have seeded under lights now.

Another technique I will be using is popping estrogen and multivitamin pills in the planting hole of each tomato. George and Mary Stewart of Houston, Texas used this combination in 1990 to grow huge tomatoes. Their Carnival and Celebrity fruits averaged 1.5 pounds. The smallest was a pound.

The victims of my 1995 experiments, including Brandywine, will be planted for the 1996 season along with White Potato Leaf, Pruden’s Purple, Hawaiian, Costoluto Genovese, Texas Wild, Black Krim, Bush Big Boy, Banana Legs, and San Marzano. I’ll let you know the results next fall.

Incidentally, the Internet is a great source of tomato information. Keith Mueller has an excellent web page on tomatoes including how to make crosses. The URL is: http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/k/kmdmuelle/public/hp.html.

Texas A&M’s Master Gardener diagnostic program for tomatoes and other vegetables can be found at: http://leviathan/tamu.edu:70/1s/mg. The Team Tomator project is at: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu.

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Quite interesting article. What strikes me is that what she endured all those years ago are plaguing warm climate gardeners annually - septoria, early blight and fusarium. All three certainly paid visits to my garden this year. I certainly have better luck with Brandywine than she did - I wonder what her seed source was? One final thing - those links undoubtedly don’t work any longer, but I included them for completeness and to be faithful to the original article. I remain good friends with Keith Mueller - he is known as KC Tomato, and continues his breeding work in Kansas City.