Growing veg

The latest thing in Maters are the grafted kind. They graft an heirloom or some such kind on a disease proof rootstock. They are supposed to be very prolific.

They even have a 'Ketchup and Fries' kind where they graft a tomato plant on a potato root stock. I haven't done it yet, but I've been tempted to try one.

Vaughn, I used to do the seed thing. In the long run, I am not so sure it saves anything. After all with the seeds you have to plant them in those starter things and wait to see what seeds grow. Now I just go down the highway to my local feed store and buy plants for a $1.50 each and they work out great. I've had good luck with them. And, they are plants from a local farm. The ones Home Depot and Lowe's as examples come from Bonnie Farms, which is in Alabama. They travel some distance to get just to the store. I'll just keep supporting the local folks. Their plants work good for me. I already have a fair amount of cantaloupe sprouts going. Hopefully I'll have a good crop this year. So do all of my friends and family.

Vaughn McMillan said:

I've never done tomatoes from seed. Is there any advantage (other than cost) to starting from seed?

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Variety, there are a lot of varieties you can't get any other way. The local supplies are generally a bit shy on some of the ones we've wanted in the past. Depending on what you're looking for its only really worth it if you can't find it pre-sprouted or you're growing a whole lot of them (or you just enjoy doing that sort of thing).

If you're doing the giant sunflowers I might suggest planting 3-4 "scarlet runner beans" around them to grow up the stalks, they have awesome red flowers and the beans make pretty decent green beans as well

Ryan Mooney said:

Variety, there are a lot of varieties you can't get any other way. The local supplies are generally a bit shy on some of the ones we've wanted in the past. Depending on what you're looking for its only really worth it if you can't find it pre-sprouted or you're growing a whole lot of them (or you just enjoy doing that sort of thing).

If you're doing the giant sunflowers I might suggest planting 3-4 "scarlet runner beans" around them to grow up the stalks, they have awesome red flowers and the beans make pretty decent green beans as well

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I'm enough of a tomato Luddite that the run of the mill "Better Boy" and the like pretty much suit my needs. The times I've eaten heirloom tomatoes I've not been wowed.

I like the idea of the beans with the sunflowers.

Vaughn glad others offered an answer because for us this is just an experiment and a bit of fun specifically cooked up by me to get us involved in something we can share together. I feel now that kids are no longer the focus of our lives we need to work on some activities we can share which we both interested in. So we been adding to other activities.
We do eat loads of veg but we don't need 5 different types of tomato. For us its about being able to go out and pick our own when we can. Who knows how this will pan out. We keeping notes on everything like scientists lol. We don't plan on having any more than we need so we will only have one maybe two tomato plants. Same with other stuff.
We also going to move again and our veg garden needs to take this into account hence the build of elevated "movable" beds.


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We buy plants already started from the local hardware stores and such, but we have two or three Amish communities here that do some great plants... most are about 45 minute drive away, but just had one start up right here in Tellico Plains... should be well established by the end of this year. It's almost as cost effective to just buy tomatoes from them and not have to worry with the plants.

My soil is very heavy in clay... I've amended the garden area every year except the last two so I would have better soil there... found out a few years back after I had been working the garden a couple of years that the part of my yard I used as a garden was an old road bed from years back... lots of rocks.

We started using other tomato varieties mostly to extend the season. Some of the Siberian ones gave us a month on either side, and where we were at when doing a lot of this it would get hot enough for a month in middle of the summer to shut down production so that was another variety (some won't set fruit at much over 100f). Like I said, it's largely what you're trying to do, if you just want some BLTs there's really not to much point in getting to carried away.

Speaking of heritage varieties, last year a co-worker brought some seeds to work, so I took a couple of seeds of each packet.
Later that season when we came back from vacation I found a couple of ripe ones and found them to be the best tasting ones that I had ever eaten.
When I commented about the flavour, he said that the Brandywine tomatoes usually win competitions for taste.