Tomatoes
 

Does anyone know if Lowes / Home Depot has seeds in yet? Also what
tomato do I grow in this area that is the most disease resistant? I am
determined to have tomatoes this year after 3 years of
disappointment !!!!!!!
Any and all help appreciated.

MJ

Tomatoes
 

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:21:09 -0800 (PST) in mj wrote:
Does anyone know if Lowes / Home Depot has seeds in yet? Also what
tomato do I grow in this area that is the most disease resistant? I am
determined to have tomatoes this year after 3 years of
disappointment !!!!!!!
Any and all help appreciated.

I have not been in such a store recently, so I haven't looked.

I don't know how many tomatoes you intend to grow,
but it's reached the point where it just makes more sense to
go with 1 or 2 4packs from Homewood nursery (Or the similar
place off of ten ten).

If you co-plant with marigolds for nematode control and mulch
to prevent soil from splashing on the leaves, you should not have
much problem with disease unless the plants were already infected
with early blight. Add lime so there is extra calcium to prevent
blossom end rot, and plan to do battle with tobacco horn worms.
The Mortgage Lifter heirloom did very well for me 2 summers ago
grown in the high calcium compost available from dirt cheap.

If you're insistent upon seed

The good.

Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com)
has excellent information on disease resistance for all of their
varieties and their customer service is excellent. They are one of the
few companies that markets to both home growers and produce farmers.
They are pushing NCSU's "Defiant PhR" tomato this year, but honestly,
I'd buy some flats of mortgage lifter and brandywine from homewood,
a bag of lime, and put out landscaping fabric over a soaker hose and

High Mowing Seeds (highmowingseeds.com) also has good information on disease
resistance on their website. Their customer service is EXCELLENT.
And they also market to both home growers and produce farmers.
cover with leaf mulch.

Territorial Seed Company (territorialseed.com) also has good information
on disease resistance on their website.

Thompson Morgan has had very comptetive prices on some of the
parthenocarpic hybrids of cucumbers and zuchinni.
But they will spam you to death afterwards.

The bad
That B company that has their name stuck on many of the seed displays
you see in the big box stores does not seem to provide ANY disease
resistance information on their website.
Have fun reading the seed packets. Be warned they remove the useful
information from most of them in the name of selling seed.

That FM company that has their name stuck on many of the seed displays
No disease information on their web site.
Have fun reading the seed packets. Be warned they remove the useful
information from most of them in the name of selling seed and stuff
for starting seed.

The awful.
That PS company out of South Carolina. I was enamored by their website
and selection, but their customer service and shipping policies suck.
Don't use them if you want your seed on time.

Email me if you want the expansions of B, FM, and PS.
Sadly the way the page ranking crap works, and how people are more apt
to complain, the really crappy companies float to the top in the search
engines. I'm going to try and do my best to just give the names
and sites of the good ones.

MJ

Tomatoes
 

On Jan 14, 7:21*pm, mj wrote:
Does anyone know if Lowes / Home Depot has seeds in yet? Also what
tomato do I grow in this area that is the most disease resistant? I am
determined to have tomatoes this year after 3 years of
disappointment !!!!!!!
Any and all help appreciated.

MJ

Craig LeHoullier is a local source for good plants. Here is his
website. I just found it. I think he used to sell plants at the
farmers market. Not sure if he still follows this NG or not.

http://nctomatoman.weebly.com/

Plants are preferable to seeds for me, but if you are willing to make
the effort, plants from seeds can be an interesting project. I never
could get the timing right and kept getting plants too spindly or I
would neglect them and lose them.

I like to wait and get the actual plants from Lowes. You get them a little later but it always seemed to be the safer route because I can't get the seeds to grow sometimes.

Tomatoes
 

On 01/20/2011 09:39 AM, Mulcher25 wrote:
I like to wait and get the actual plants from Lowes. You get them a
little later but it always seemed to be the safer route because I can't
get the seeds to grow sometimes.

There are difficult-to-evaluate risks either way.

Some years we've had disappointing results with homegrown "starts."

Some years the Big Box retailers (including Lowe's) sold seedlings which
were (unknown to them) infected with Late Blight. Google on "tomato
late blight big box" to read lots of details.

You could hedge your bets by doing both -- DIY starts and purchased
seedlings.

We like to plant several varieties of tomato on the (optimistic)
principle that a pathogen which destroys one cultivar may spare another.

We've found the prized heirloom varieties to be more susceptible to
disease than modern hybrids. YMMV.

Daniel B. Martin

Another idea would be to check with some wholesale planters. I know that is how my parents would get tomatoes for their garden. They will have all types of tomatoes and they'll be able to help you find some disease resistant tomato plants.