Heirloom Tomato Experiment

We've all heard that you should try heirloom vegetables, right?  Well, I'm from the extreme cold, where the growing season is short and hybrids are your friend.  I'm not talking about the GMO hybrids, I mean the good old fashioned 'short season' hybrids.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, however, I have a temperate climate, nice weather and no severe freezing (when you're used to -20 to -40 in the winter, an occasional 10 degrees is nothing).  The downside, however, is that it is cool in the evenings and it rains until the 4th of July, which is not ideal tomato weather.  We didn't like how our local selection of 'Better Boy' or 'Early Girl' performed for us, so I started thinking about a cool weather tomato - and if they even exist.

Enter TomatoFest.com.  Their website listed more tomatoes than I ever imagined and even had a 'Cooler Coastal Collection' with 8 different kinds.  This collection looked good enough - tomatoes from Russia, China, Alaska and one from Heinz - all heirlooms and supposed to do great in our cool evening area.  So I took the plunge, got the seeds and started them early on (April), so I could set them out when it was warmer.

They all sounded great, we were skeptical, so I started 4 of each strain, just in case they didn't have a high germination rate.  Surprise!  All of them sprouted and we soon had little tomato plants crowding under our grow lights.

Here are the tomatoes included in our collection (by shortest time to tomatoes to longest):

Name	Height	Days	Season	Fruit Size	Color	From	Type
Sasha's Altai	Determinate	57	Early	5"	Bright Red	Southern Russia	Heirloom
Gold Dust	Determinate	62	Early	2"	Yellow-Orange	New Hampshire	Open Pollinated
Zhefen Short	Determinate	68	Early	3"	Pink	Zhengiiang China	Heirloom
Azoychka	Indeterminate:	70	Mid	3"	Yellow / Orange	Russia	Heirloom
Nikolayev Yellow Cherry	Semi-determinate:	71	Mid	Cherry	Bright Yellow	Russia	Heirloom
Sunset Red Horizon	Indeterminate	72	Mid	5"	Red	Southern Russia	Heirloom
Heinz-9129	Determinate:	73	Mid	3"	Bright Red	Ohio / Ontario	Open Pollinated
Japanese Black Trifele	Indeterminate	81	Late	6"	Black Purple	Russia	Heirloom

Here's what I did when I planted them:

Box Prep
Potting soil
Sub-irrigation planter  (see my other posts for info on this one)
1 cup of lime in the top  4" of soil
2 tomatoes per box

Layout in the garden
Street 1

Box 1	Zefen/Heinz
Box 2	Peppers
Box 3	Azoy/Nicholai

Arbor

Box 1	Sunset/Japanese
Box 2	Red Bore Kale
Box 3	Gold Dust/Sasha

Garage

Planting Time - in each planting hole

Small handful of Cascade Minerals
Small handful of HuMagic (Hendrikus Organics)
Small handful of Organabloom (Hendrikus Organics)

1st weekend in June

Spray-N-Grow Micronutrient Spray

1st weekend in July

Spray-N-Grow Micronutrient Spray

1st weekend in August

Spray-N-Grow Micronutrient Spray

Water sub -irrigation planter daily

Progress:
March started seeds indoors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 9 - moved tomatoes to larger containers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May planting time in containers under cover.  Moved out last weekend in May.

June 5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 27

 

July 5 - Trellises added

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 15







I'll add update posts as the summer progresses. 

Happy Gardening!