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Tomato
"Anne Middleton/Harold Walker" wrote in message . net...
I respectfully disagree with Harold Walker.????????? No problem at all with disagreements...we are all entitled to our opinions...and another comment to follow.......have you ever tried to grow heirlooms in the same spot year after year after year due to space limitations?.....HW While the Brandywines I have grown here have tasted fantastic, they are very low in production, maybe 10-15 tomatoes per plant per season. So, I wouldn't recommend them if you don't have much room. There are several varieties of heirloom tomatoes that produce well and have a good taste. Mortgage Lifter is very prolific and mine averaged around 24 ounces. The taste beats any hybrid I have found. Delicious also is prolific and tasty and seems to have some disease resistance. I think the heirloom versus hybrid question can be solved by considering what you want out of your tomato plants. If you want uniformity and disease resistance, by all means grow hybrids. If you want variety and taste, go with the heirlooms. I usually plant between 15 and 20 tomato plants each year in a very limited space. Out of these, only 1 or 2 are hybrids. The only reason I grow hybrids at all is in case I have a very disease prone year (like last year). Then, at least, I still have a good number of tomatoes. Despite the unexpected 50 degree cold snap in June (almost unheard of in TN) and the excessive rain which made the blights worse than usual (both early and septoria), I still would have had tomatoes to give away even without the hybrids. To avoid planting in the same space year after year, I have two small patches. I grow cucumbers and melons in one, tomatoes, carrots and mesclun mix in the other. I rotate the crops back and forth each year. It would be better to have three patches to have an extra year but it is usually no problem. I also heavily amend the soil with homemade compost, greensand, gypsum and rock phosphate and have had pretty good luck as well growing in compost with no soil at all. If you try this yourself, be sure to check the pH of your compost as it can be highly variable depending on what went into it. Lee Hall South end of Zone 6B in Tennessee |
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