Allotments 4 All

The year seems to be progressing alarmingly rapidly and it has been quite a challenging one, in our varied locations I imagine, with its very high temperatures and drought conditions.

I hope seed gathering has been able to proceed in spite of these difficulties, and now we're at the point of needing to agree on a deadline for sending in this season's seed offerings. For the last two years our small but very productive band of participants have worked to send in seeds by the end of November. Does that still look good for everyone?

As we sort our seeds perhaps we can begin to list some varieties we think we can offer. I write as someone who has a bench entirely covered with little pots of seeds which need to be cleaned, packeted and labelled. But I hope to be able to say in the next few days what I'd like to contribute.

So how's it going? What are your thoughts about aiming for the end of November?

That is fine for me Jang,  good to have a timescale to work towards.  I think I have been mentioning seeds as I went along when I could see how the harvest was going, barring last minute disasters as always.   

That's fine by me too, Jang. I have to germ. test a few things before I'm 100% certain they'll fit the bill, nevertheless I have a long list of varieties that I'd like to include.
It certainly has been a very tough growing season. Recently we've had a good bit of rain and the beans are really flourishing, after struggling for most of the summer.
And the lettuces, that had every single flower devoured by caterpillars, are in bloom again!

   So pleased about more lettuce flowers for you.  You were so down with the caterpillars ravaging them.  Good conditions for seed development and not too much damp weather to ripen them. 

That's excellent to hear from both of you. Great news about the lettuce flowers. At the moment here, we seem to be having rain most days so the one threat to seed harvesting is constant dampness. Quite a change from earlier! But much is safely gathered in already and such a relief not to have to worry about struggling plants and watering.

I look forward to your long list, Vetivert, and certainly, Galina, you have mentioned many interesting varieties already, so a promising time lies ahead.

I'd like to include Velmozha. Semi-determinate pink oxheart from Russia. Fruit below is 590g.

That's quite a whopper. Looks like a very interesting contribution.

How do you find it's best to manage semi-determinate varieties? I've found it difficult to know whether to prune, or how much to prune to encourage an upright habit. The one semi-determinate I've grown this year was over-pruned I think, and so lost quite a lot of its potential for fruiting. Perhaps the important thing is to give them quite a lot of space?

Bush, aka determinate, can be left to sprawl, but better with a short stake and if necessary a tie too, so not to lose fruit on the muddy ground or where slugs can get them. 

Semi determinate I always stake with a decent stake, tie, but don't prune. 

So, Galina, you treat them as determinate but with a bit more support?
And would you allow them a lot of space - about a square metre to each plant? In practice I find it quite difficult to accommodate their needs.

Not quite that much distance Jang, but I tend to pack in plants anyway.  40 to 50cm between plants of the same variety, with bigger row spacings to get in for picking is my usual spacing.  This is still way too tight for comfortable picking and I always end up with a jungle to tie up, especially here, where plants tend to grow bigger with more rainfall and not just the tomatoes.  With huge fruit like Vetivert's Velmozha, that equates to quite a lot of tying in to take the weight.  So not a very good solution here either and far too much work keeping them under control.  Metal tomato spirals work best for me.

Talking about high yielding tomatoes, I am getting pounds and pounds from just 2 plants of Silverleaf's Black Cherries.  I was surprised at their colour, which is not brown like the usual 'black' tomato, but dark, dusky  purple, very delish and the yield is something else. 

Because of the jungle in the polytunnel I have pruned Velmozha to two main stems and a few branches on each stem. I do not know if this is the best practice. I'd say it's more on the indeterminate side in term of the shape of the plant - it's more viney than bushy, and is controlled by a couple of strings.
With the Dwarf Tomato Project varieties, which are dwarf indeterminate, I haven't pruned them except for the older leaves below the main fruit trusses (or entire limbs damaged by cabbage moth caterpillars, but that's another story). 

Two main stems sounds like a good compromise for Velmozha. I'm growing Urbikany at the moment which is determinate and vigorous. I have two plants out of doors and made each a circle of cattle panel fencing of nearly a metre diameter. Even so they're reaching out in all directions and in practice grow through the fencing and down onto the ground again.
I'm enjoying Black Cherry too. It is apparently a parent of Chocolate Cherry which is also high yielding and full flavoured.

Speaking of cherry toms I'll be sharing most of the Ambrosia series including Ambrosia Gold, Pink, Red, Rose UBX, and Blue Ambrosia. I hope you all have a sweet tooth.

That sounds amazing. Is it a series bred by J & L? In a Tomatoville thread of 2018, there were one or two reports of instability. Did you find the ones you grew were stable?
I do like a sweet tomato! So very much looking forward.

Yes, they're from J&L, and they all look true to type. Ambrosia Pink is unusual, it isn't your traditional pink tomato colour, more of an apricot with blush that gets progressively more intense as it ripens.

Would anybody like a few Giant Bolivian Achocha seeds, which might have (or have not) undergone a genetic shift in the much hotter, brighter climate here?  Have just harvested a couple of buckets of fruit and many black, ripe seeds. 

An interesting offer. I haven't grown achocha for a couple of years. I gave the convenient piece of fencing over to Tromboncino squash for a while.
So a couple of questions come to mind. One is to wonder how long achocha seed stays viable as I have some from 2020. The other is to wonder what implications your possible genetic shift might have. Is it simply likely to be less inclined to fruit well in cooler, duller conditions?
I know you also experimented with day length etc. it would be interesting to experiment and simply see what emerges. On the other hand, achocha is so vigorous that it's a lot of growing space to give to something which might not work well. I guess more certainty about my first wondering might determine how I feel about the second. I think I need to try a germination test on my old seed.
Sorry to be so long-winded and still uncertain! And thank you again for raising the idea.

I think 3 years is nothing for achocha seeds JanG.  Would not even seed renew before 5 years, but I have spare seeds in the freezer to fall back on.   

If this plant has indeed experienced micro mutations, future plants from its seed may be fruiting earlier here too and hopefully also in UK.  But who knows.  Except that this batch has started fruiting well before the autumn equinox - we harvested lots of fruit - rather than only after the autumn equinox as was the case in UK.  But as you say, I already had them flowering here by the spring equinox from a January sowing, which made Giant Bolivian Achocha growing possible at all for me.  After two failed seasons with the usual May sowing, when frost killed them before they fruited here I had to think of doing something differently  .  Now at the autumn equinox we just got the first slightly frost damaged leaves after
a low of 1.2C at night, although most of the plant is still going.  Growing outside rather than in the greenhouse was also the better decision. 

The test question for me is whether I should now sow again in January from these seeds or whether they have climate adjusted and I could now also get earlier fruits from a May sowing.  A May sowing would be much more convenient as I would not have to transplant an already large plant.  It is really all still an experiment, but I am very glad to be harvesting fruits again.   

Yes, an interesting dilemma. I guess ideally you would back both horses for this one year and sow in January as insurance, but hope that the May-sown might make it, and your January plant might prove to have been unnecessary.
But your fruit this year was a just reward for your insight and persistence.

That is the conclusion I came to also, JanG. 

One day it will be as easy to grow these as it is with the smaller fruited achochas, Ladies Slipper and Fat Baby.  We just have to persist until that adaptation happens.