Plant Sale Survey
| Question | Randy's Observations | Eric Hintikka | Gail Reese | Anne P | Amy Donovan | Bob Easter | Ila Falvey | Alison Tartt | Jennifer Keane | Renee Fleishman | Susan Hoberman | Jason Youngblood | Debbie Mariano | -- |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Favorite new tomatoes | Aladdin's Lamp Butter Apple Kryptonite |
Since this is my first year gardening, every tomato is new to me. But my favorite was Stupice. It produced a lot of tasty tomatoes, was earlier than my other varieties, and stayed healthy longer, even as some of my other nearby tomato plants started looking diseased. | Supreme Roma (planted from seeds at home, huge firm romas, very prolific), also one of the new large golden slicer tomatoes from the sale but I forget its name,,, but it has Gold in the name I do think... | Blue Boar: early and plentiful harvest, very flavorful Blonde Köpfchen: very flavorful, still going strong now! (Both were labeled as heirloom cherry tomato varieties) |
Orange Jazz Bodacious Secret Sauce |
Sweet Gold. I've always been a huge fan of Sun Gold (half of my tomato plants are usually Sun Gold each year). But I've noticed that Sun Gold cracks very easily and needs to be eaten straight off the vine or within a day, or else it starts to go bad. Sweet Gold holds up much better, and the larger fruit is nice. I'm going to plant fewer Sun Gold and more Sweet Gold next year. | Brad's atomic grape that I though I bought at the plant sale Chef Choice Black - quite productive 20 tomatoes Both are still alive and the plant is pretty healthy |
-- | While I was thinking of it, I wanted to let you know we've had
great success with two tomatoes that were new to me. Muddy Mamba
and Aladdin's Lamp. Of course, it's been a great year for most tomatoes.
But those have been standouts. I would like to see both back for
next year, if there's room on the list for them. Aladdin's Lamp is
especially fun. It's a large pear shaped yellow paste. With great
flavor. And a bit of green at the top. And thanks for the recommendation for Large Barred Boar or whatever it's called. Pretty, tasty, and abundant. Hard to beat that combo! |
Cherokee purple | -- | Brad's Atomic Grape tomato. Not super new as we've grown them for three seasons now but I keep getting asked about them. They produce well and are still setting fruit. Fruit varies in size but most are larger than the typical grape size. | -- | -- |
| Favorite new peppers | Maria Elena Osmarsko Kambe |
I liked Anaheim Joe E Parker | -- | -- | Bastan Basque Pueblo chili |
-- | -- | I grew Corbaci for the first time this year--very nice. I seem to be unable to grow regular bell peppers (they get sun scald). I've been buying something called "Organic Mini Sweet Peppers" at HEB and Natural Grocer that are very good. The exact variety isn't given on the package, but I'd like to see Sunshine offer this pepper if you think it would do well here. The peppers are bullet-shaped, like a jalapeno, and about that size. They are red, orange, and yellow. Maybe a similar variety has been sold at the plant sale and I just haven't been aware of it. | -- | -- | Osmarsko Kambe. thick walled and delicious. a little smaller than I thought they would be | Chocolate Carolina Reaper. (seeds from baker creek) This is a variant of the current world record holder for hottest pepper. The heat and flavor are amazing. I made some blackberry pepper jam with these. | The peppers (California wonder, Jimmy Nardello, Pueblo chili and Anaheim) did much better and the Pueblo chili and Anaheim are still producing. | -- |
| Highest yield tomatoes | Cherokee Green Liz Birt |
Stupice | Supreme or Supermo Romas (by poundage, great producers), Juliets (as always), Cream Sausage (for me,,,) and Viva Italia (late producer but heavy yield) | Blue Boar | spot yellow cream sausage |
Early Girl ( still some production) Big Beef ( still some production) J D. Special-C-TEX ( limited production later in season) Sun Gold of course. |
Cappuccino does very well and it is still producing as ,of course, is Julliet. | Sun Gold Juliet |
-- | Cherokee purple Persimmon Sungold |
Juliet Early girl Carmello |
Romas (started seeds at home) have been prolific this year but are on their way out. I also grow native Texas wild cherry tomatoes every year and they are producing like crazy. | Despite the fungus infection the big red cherry produced heavily but was dead before July. | -- |
| Tomatoes that cratered (catch all for sudden wilts) | Azoychka Fireworks Yellow Pear |
Fireworks. It still produced a decent number of tomatoes early in the season, but it never really looked like it was thriving and didn't get very big. I pulled it up fairly early in the season because it seemed to be dying. | -- | San Marzano | A lot, that didn't get enough sun. :( | -- | Black Cherry did not do well. Years ago it thrived. Is the source of seed the same? | -- | -- | -- | Fireworks Yellow Pear(never again) |
-- | -- | -- |
| Mislabelled plants at sale | Corno di Toro Yellow (produced small hot peppers on pubescent plants) | None, to my knowledge. | The gold Italian Horn pepper, as you noted | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | As you noted, the yellow horned pepper. But whatever they actually were is the best ever. a small mildly hot pepper that turns to orange. What are they? | I picked up a white habanero plant and was surprised to find out it's actually a Bolivian white habanero. It makes small bird pepper sized fruit. The one I had gotten from the plant sale in years past has been the typical habanero size with a lantern shape, almost pumpkin like. This Bolivian variety while much smaller is very flavorful. | ??- a yellow cherry that was not the ten fingers of Naples that I thought I was planting (miss labeled or my mistake?) | -- |
| Varieties not from the plant sale that excited you | several folks have brought Brad's Atomic Grape to my attention | I got all my tomatoes and peppers from the plant sale. | Supreme or Supremo Romas | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | Lemon Drop (Ahi Limon) I started my own seeds but not sure if they were offered at the sale this year. | ||
| Tomatoes with atypically low yields this year | Cream Sausage Sarah Black |
Not sure. Since this is my first year, I don't have a great sense of what is typical. | as noted above, from home planted seeds,, Brandywine and Ox Heart | Not sure! (1st year gardening) | Black Krim Thornburns Terra Cotta |
-- | Sarah Black did not produce well - maybe 5 tomatoes | -- | -- | -- | lemon boy - those harvested were not as tasty and cracked Brandy Wine, but this is the 1st time I tried them |
Purple Russian, lost all of my plants early on to blight. | -- | -- |
| Practice you think more gardener's should adopt | make a planting chart - tags fade, get broken or lost and removes plastic from the environment | I wish I had put mulch out under my tomatoes earlier. I didn't realize at first that the mulch helps to prevent diseases from splashing onto the leaves from the soil during watering or rain. Some of my tomatoes got a fungal disease and I wonder whether mulching earlier could have helped prevent or delay that. | every gardener should realize hose maintenance and hose space maintenance is a zone wide job, not the job of the person whose plot is next to the hoses..... | Ditto on not using the plastic tags. A previous gardener in my plot used
them, and we keep finding bits of plastic in the soil. My method: I took
pictures with my smartphone of the plot with the plastic tags readable, and
then brought the tags home to my gardening binder so I know the variety for
next year. One of our neighbors (the plot with the blue and red hanging pots and the butterfly signs, by the parking lot) seems to have an interesting staking method involving deer fencing that we may try next year. It seems very vertically efficient. |
I was glad to discover the Fruit protection bags, they really helped! | -- | -- | -- | -- | get to know your neighbors and share phone numbers or emails to help each other water or anything needed in your garden | soaker hoses and keeping out the khaki weed from their common areas | I'm still pretty new to the garden so I'm still absorbing seasonal tips and tricks from other gardeners. I found that using mulch has helped both my peppers and tomatoes through the summer heat. | I water using a soaker hose to minimize transferring fungus from soil to plant or plant to plant. Also the tomatoes were well spaced to allow adequate air circulation and I removed excess foliage as well. I used the turkey compost and the garden compost to prepare the beads before planting. The fungus in the Spring was overwhelming. | -- |
| Biggest disappointment | not a single tomato on Anthony's Passionate Heart and poor quality of Bodacious fruit | Birds ate a lot of my Black Krim tomatoes. I wouldn't be so disappointed if they had eaten like 50%, but it was more like 90%! Often they pecked at the Black Krims while they were still completely green, so I don't think I could have solved this by just harvesting the tomatoes earlier. I'm not sure whether they just really like that variety, whether it was because of the location of the plant, or what. Next year I think I will try to do something to protect them a little better. | my New Mexico big jim peppers are very low producers and small this year, plants not good, nor were the poblanos,,, very few peppers. Usually these are two of my biggest producers. | San Marzano tomatoes got blight & also were bird-eaten more than the others. The ones we rescued were super tasty, though. | sunshine cherry | Fireworks Champion 2 Super Fantastic |
-- | Cherokee Purple and Mortgage Lifter. Only my cherry tomatoes produced well. The bigger tomatoes set a bit of fruit, but ripened slowly and then disappeared. Maybe it was critters and not the fault of the variety. Or maybe I planted them too close together. | -- | -- | the tomato blight | Poblanos, bells, and new Mexico chilis seem stunted this year | Overall my 9 tomato plants did poorly this season-shortly after setting
the first fruit all became diseased and stopped producing. I pulled the
heirlooms in June and the hybrids early July. My black cherry tomato was taken out by a virus at the same time one two gardens away presented with the same disease. (leaves shriveled, browning starting at edges) The rest were infected by a fungus- leaves yellowed and speckled with black. Because of the diseased state of the plants some of the tomatoes (on Flamme and cream sausage in particular) were infested with worms. The list of tomatoes that I planted: flamme cream sausage costoluto genovese brandywine celebrity big beef large red cherry black cherry ??- a yellow cherry that was not the ten fingers of Naples that I thought I was planting (miss labeled or my mistake?) |
-- |
| The joy that comes with each harvest | that first tomato sandwich or first batch of pesto and slicing a Muddy Mamba and seeing those swirls of color | First tomato! Seems like a miracle. | freezer full of yet more tomato sauce, smoked tomatoes, roasted tomatoes, salsa verde, salsa rojo, stewed tomatoes, all things tomatoes..... I am rotating 3 giant platters on my dining table and that is only half my crop, as am splitting with my neighbor who watered and picked when I couldn't... roasted tomatoes and platters with the Supreme Romas (bigger than the Cream Sausage they are next to in photo) | mmmm the first caprese salad with tomatoes, basil, and (for a treat) burrata! Also, the day the tomatoes started to "pop" and we all of a sudden had bags to bring home! | I made a ton of roasted tomatoes and tomato sauce | -- | -- | -- | -- | seeing the first signs of edible produce from the plants, and of course, that very first picking of each | harvesting, eating, preserving | I always enjoy seeing and chatting with fellow gardeners when I'm there. We have roasted and frozen so many tomatoes... I've also been making pepper jam and hot sauce. | -- | -- |