Do you like growing heirloom tomatoes? Or do they perform poorly in your area? 0:00 Intro 0:31 Beautiful Plants in Our No-Till Garden Plot 1:45 What Was Planted Here Previously? 2:04 Big Differences in Tomato Varieties 2:43 Why Won't They Believe Us? 5:06 Seed Saving Is Not What You Think!
It really depends on the verity, Pink Brandywine and golden jubilee heirloom Tomato seems the best, none of the Beefsteak type do well in my area. I’m sure it’s lack of sun they get large and green then rot off before they ripen enough to harvest. Also determinant tomatoes do excellent compared to indeterminate.
I just wanted to brag on LDF store. My order was shipped and arrived at lightning speed. I’m so excited to have a couple of the okra varieties you grow and also think the multiplier onions will end be a sustainable onion solution for me. My 4yo son played “Lazy Dog Farm” as we planted our haul, and of course, he was “Trav.”
Very well said. I’m in blistering central Texas. We have to grow to our climate. Okree and melons are amongst the things thing thriving. Might even got some figs making a show. Point is if you ain’t from the south and don’t grow your food year round down here in our conditions, you got no leg to stand on. Grow to your climate and we’ll do the same.
Great video. I learned from you and your Dad about growing determinate tomatoes as the mainstay. I have found one heirloom that grows well at my 4500 foot elevation in Northern Nevada. Rutgers kills it here. Romas are probably the most vigorous at this location.
Since you’re discussing indeterminate tomatoes, I wanted to give a big thumbs up for the Turkey Creek tomato seeds I purchased from LDF. I’ve been growing tomatoes for over 50 years in zone 8A east of Atlanta and the Turkey Creek variety has some the largest and best tasting fruits that I have ever grown! Hope you have the seeds available next year.
Planted 16 varieties of heirlooms this year, here on Alabama Gulf Coast. It’s a year of testing what works here. Keeping a detailed journal, and next year I’ll plant more of those that thrived. It’s definitely a challenging zone in 8b!!
I started growing your bush maters a couple years ago just to try them here in zone 6b in S IL. They grow great and I get a large harvest in a short period perfect for canning them up. Then I pull them up about mid August and start in eating on the vine heirlooms. They grow right up until October or November and taste great with a very good variety since I have 18 kinds. If they flush I can them too. Tis best of all worlds. Your climate is main factor, you can play with it some but it is what it is. Grow some Maters and eat 'em up, yum yum eat 'em up.
My argument is not heirloom vs hybrid. It’s determinate vs indeterminate. I agree on the heirloom thing. I tried the string and pvc pipe and the heavy pruning for three years. They looked just like yours did. I stopped that, went back to cattle panels and just let them grow. Only prune the bottom limbs off the ground. I had 7 rows of 6 foot tall jungle of tomatoes. The best tasting one were hybrids. My determinate plot did very good as well, but don’t taste as good.
I live in south alabama, and I chuckle when I seen the videos of the energetic gardeners on youtube who live elsewhere. When I come in from the garden, I'm soaked in sweat and ate up by mosquitoes. And I'm in the same boat, heirlooms aren't doing worth a crap. I have a good number of red snapper and some other hybrids coming along though, already learned my lesson with heirlooms. I agree that it isn't the soil, because they get the same diseases in pots with completely different soil. I use drip irrigation, never overhead watering. I believe it's the heat/humidity that is too hard on those varieties.
Mid 90s? It's been 109 - 110 here and no rain for 2 months. I'm green with envy. I'm using 60% shade cloth. It helps but the high temps... It's hard to grow anything in an oven.🔥
Compost is mulch. I had a few that did not like the heat but Chocolate Stripey is going on five years of saving seeds now. It and copia are of the few plants hanging in there.
I live in the high deserts of NM. We get temperatures into the 100’s. I have been able to get plants to thrive here with amendments to the sand and heavy watering. I have some honeydews that are now four generations old and doing great! Guess I’ll just have to keep on growing them, but I have noticed that my seeds do better than the gen 1 in regards to the heat. We fortunately do not have the humidity that you have, I wonder if that plays into it?
Humidity definitely plays a role. The actual temperatures here haven't been unusually high this year, but the heat index has been off the charts because the Gulf water is so warm.
if you find a local seed seller in your vicinity for heirloom tomatoes, those will fair much better than seeds grown from another part of your country. or if you successfully grow some heirlooms that survive the diseases and pest pressures, they will grow much better as their seeds are kept over the generations.
I live in Central Pennsylvania and my cucumbers are going crazy. I have canned so many pickles and so many jars of cucumber salad and they are still producing. My tomatoes aren't doing so good. My peppers are doing pretty good too especially the hot ones lol.
👍🏽 to you Travis. I get what you’re saying cause everything don’t work for everybody. I’ve tried growing bell pepper seeds several times. I can’t seem to get any to grow. Now, I’m not responding to all that about traits, because I knows nothing of it. Just tell what you know like it is.
Travis I'm in the same zone as you 8B and my heirloom tomatoes performed almost as well as my hybrids. Granted I might not have planted the same varieties that you planted and mine did succumb to the heat and humidity eventually. I've learned to leave a lot of foliage and only take off the bottom leaves that will reach the ground, I prune pretty heavy at the bottom but I don't prune much anywhere else on the plants. I got a huge harvest of heirloom tomatoes this year.
A lot has to do with local disease pressure. The local Southeast Ga area I'm at has a big issue with Spotted Tobacco Wilt virus, thus heirlooms are impossible to grow. I tried just about every variety all died. However, my buddy 50 miles from here (same zone and climate) can grow heirlooms and Hybrids, as no STWV. I can only grow STWV resistant varities here, like Bella Rosa, Red Snapper ect.
People across the United States do not understand how difficult the environment is here in the South when it comes to growing certain vegetables. It is so hot and humid here, and the humidity makes a huge difference when it comes to growing vegetables. And as someone who for many years planted and grew nothing but heirloom vegetables, I can say that you are 100% correct when it comes to growing heirloom tomatoes. No matter how much you baby and pamper them, by the time they get big enough to bloom and pollinate, it's over 90 degrees and the blooms fall off and pollination does not occur in most heirloom/open-pollinated varieties when the temps reach 90+ degrees. Then you have the early blight, late blight, viruses and fungus issues from the constant high humidity. So you have to avoid watering in the evenings when you get home and when the sun has finally gone down and it's cool enough not to feel like you're being cooked. But, because of the high disease susceptibility if you water them after the sun goes down and they remain wet all night they will most likely succumb contract blight, viruses, or fungal diseases. Don't get me wrong, the heat is great for growing some vegetables. I have lived in Georgia since 8th grade, but as a child I grew up on a big farm in rural South Carolina, and my parents and grandparents never grew a lot of the veggies people (me being one of them for many years) spend a lot of time, money, and energy trying to grow, because they knew they would not grow well here in the South. And as someone who has tried almost every type of heirloom veggie out there, mainly because I love the stories, history, and selection of so many beautiful and unusual varieties. But there are some heirloom vegetables and melons that grow fine here in Georgia, especially ones bred and grown in the South originally. But our climate makes many heirloom vegetables, melons, and heirloom tomatoes most especially, difficult to grow here.
The humidity isnt the problem, it's the overall temperature being high as hell 😂. It's almost pointless for certain vegetables and varieties. You're either gonna get demolished by garden insects or the Sun. Yea we can pretty much grow year round but some require too much efforts that isnt worth it in the end.
Spot on, Tennessee is not exempt from the harsh conditions that heat and humidity managing require just to grow something, worst of all is pest control resulting from both, especially on tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Peppers seem exempt, they do will all the way into October and November, they seem to love heat and humidity till weather starts cooling down in late August were everything else has weathered away and garlic just starting to peak through and needs to be covered with mulch for their winter nap.
This past year growing was a nightmare struggle in central Louisiana. I did get okra, somehow kept a baby fig tree alive, managed to get a few cucumbers by constantly planting more, but I only got one quart of shelled Purple Hull Peas. My Red Rippers barely produced enough for saving seeds. I got none to eat and I mass planted them to help build soil. I`m only planting Purple Hulls next year. I got no green pole beans either...and these were SUMMER varieties! And my Armenian "desert" cucumbers did nothing either or my Amaranth. I`m about to try a self pollinating cucumber indoors but not in soil...but I`m not allowed by this tyrannical platform to describe HOW to do this!
I think you should do a video on how you store all your vegetables. From your corn to your tomatoes squash just for like beginners to see how storing is so important
We don't preserve as much as you think. We mainly just enjoy whatever is in season. We do can tomatoes, we freeze sweet corn, we freeze lima beans, English peas, and cowpeas, and we make a few jars of pickles.
@@LazyDogFarm honestly, I would love to see the videos of you doing that. I’m new to home gardening. I think that it would make some very good content for new gardeners like myself.
Heirlooms are good in the mix, low production/reliability offset by quality, also have plenty determinant, and for me some indeterminate that can go until 1st frost around November here in farther N. Commifornia, low inland, 9a.
Growing tomatoes is like throwing dice you just don't know what's going to turn up.. Mine are a bit smaller this year more than likely from drought than anything else but that very same drought makes the roma's even sweeter for sauce so plant a variety pray for good weather and be thankful for what the garden does produce..
Thank You Travis. Excellent poignant presentation. As a seed saver of some things, I try to save for heat tolerance. However, as a student of plant biology as a hobby I know that I am not equipped to do a very good job of selecting the right seed. I have seen your hybrid example over and over in my garden. They just outperform old air loom varieties, that is what they are for. I buy hybrid but save air loom for the worst case situation.
When you find the right heirloom for your particular area, it will kick @$$, no doubt. Somewhere, someone has a tupperware cannister full of seed in a big ol' deep freezer that was preserved by their great-grandma that will out-perform anything you can buy. Not sure how to go about finding them, but they are there. The olde folk didn't live off of of hybrid varieties, they lived off of seed that did well in their particular area, and was shared. All you gotta do is find them. I'm in the same corundrum.
Heirloom tomatoes have no hybrid vigor. They have self fertilized for so long that they are getting weak. So creating your own landrace tomatoes, like the determinate tomatoes have been crossed. And unless you are crossing the tomatoes by hand, you won't get new hybrids. But it sounds like you have bought into the idea that you don't want to do effort to create your own land race. Which is where those original heirloom varieties originated. And you are correct, that there are some varieties that absolutely don't want to grow in your particular south Georgia USA zone. 😁
I have to grow behind a heavy fence because otherwise deer will eat everything, so some of my cukes that grow through the fence wind up looking like a pretzel. Hah! So shape is pretty arbitrary there. Also, have you ever tried Thorburn's Terracotta tomatoes? I'm in central NC and I haven't been able to keep up with all the ones coming in this year. I've never had another heirloom perform that well down here! I know you always trial a few different varieties and that might be one to consider. It's one of the sweetest tomatoes I've ever tried, great for sammiches.
To the point about soil health, it is obvious that you have healthy soil. However, to the point about mulch it is not a fair comparison, those cucumbers are creating their own shade to keep the root zone cool, while your tomatoes were so heavily pruned as to not allow for significant self shading, so mulch would have likely helped. But you are absolutely correct in the fact that the biggest factor is that not all varieties are suitable for all locals. The most important thing with heirlooms is finding the varieties that perform in your location, and then allowing them to maintain, and improve their adaptation to your climate through seed saving. With seed saving it is important to save from a large enough population of each variety to maintain the full genetic diversity within the variety, which means saving from a dozen, or ideally several dozen individual plants each season, which is a major undertaking. However, there is a workaround for this issue, but it involves a complete overhaul to one’s thinking and approach to gardening, and that is to use what is known as landrace gardening. It is basically the complete inverse of the conventional approach to gardening, but it works wonders for those with the right mindset for it. The beauty of gardening is that there are no right or wrong approaches to doing it, just right or wrong contextual frameworks within which to apply a given approach. I am not at all suggesting you should change your approach as it is obvious you have found the approach that works best for yourself. I just want to spread the knowledge around for anyone who might take an interest in it, and would suggest folks check out landrace gardening here on TH-cam. Joseph Lofthouse has proven that it is feasible to create locally adapted varieties in a few short years, but not by selecting from a single variety, that approach will take many years if it works at all for adapting a specific variety to a given location. Rather, the basic approach is to grow as many varieties as possible in proximity and let them crossbreed ( or in the case of tomatoes hand pollination may be required due to the physiology of the flowers on most varieties found in the US not being conducive to cross pollination by insects). At about the third year you can start selecting for your preferred traits. 😊
A lot has to do with local disease pressure. The local Southeast Ga area I'm at has a big issue with Spotted Tobacco Wilt virus, thus heirlooms are impossible to grow. I tried just about every variety all died. However, my buddy 50 miles from here (same zone and climate) can grow heirlooms and Hybrids, as no STWV. I can only grow STWV resistant varities here, like Bella Rosa, Red Snapper ect.
I can't prove it, but I also think living amongst a bunch of commercial farmland also makes it tougher. I have friends "in town" that can grow heirlooms much better than I can.
Have you thought about trialing some dwarf tomatoes? I grew a lot of them this hear, of several varieties, some in grow bags and others in-ground. The ones in grow bags didn’t perform well at all while the ones in the ground and in raised beds did quite well. We had a lot of very large slicer tomatoes. It might make an interesting study for the channel. Love your channel - planting my Louisiana perennial shallots tomorrow! EDITED to add: I’m in NW Georgia, zone 7b.
THIS! The lady in the dwarf tomato project is in Australia. That environment is comparable to here in Ga. I'm trying them out next year. I spoke with her via the telephone about the most heat tolerant varieties she has.
Some heirloom tomatoes just don't like the heat you have down there. Even here in Washington I get less from heirloom than I do from hybrid. I think that's just normal.
If you have an AgriSupply store near you, they usually have the 6 mil UV resistant tarps. Also maybe check with any local billboard places. They usually have the old billboard material for cheap.
I save seeds for Hercules cowpeas and white half runner beans. Commercial seed sources for both varieties are mixed and/or poorly selected. The Herdules cowpeas are mixed with peas similar to brown crowder. I've been selecting seed for five years and now only have a few misfits. The half runners have over the last 40 years or so, grown more and more, tough, papery pods. There is a seed source that sells White Half Runner N/T(not tough) that offers select seeds. I stil had a few plants with tough pods, and a few plants that were not half runners. After about 5 years, I no longer have tough pods but I still get a few misfits. As far as breeding new varieties, I've tried when I was younger(and dumber). I had a spineless white okra variety I selected from a two way cross. However, it was weaker growing and less productive than either of its parents. Field corn seems easier to selectively breed. Yet, it took James Jarvis almost 50 years to perfect his corn, Jarvis Golden Prolific. It was known as the highest yielding open pollinated yellow field corn over much of the Southeast, prior to the introduction of hybrids. I've improved my seedstock of Jarvis, at least improved it for me. I select for consistent low ear placement in that variety, and save the heaviest of those ears for seeds. Low ears are the norm in that variety, so I see it as perfecting it, not changing it. I've been selecting for about 5 years and can't honestly say it's better than what I started with. I also piddle with a single ear field corn that's a mixture of about six varieties of primarily Southern heirloom field corn. I select for ear weight and shape, large kernels irregardless of color, and medium/small cob diameters. It averages one big/huge ear per stalk. Some ears will weigh 1 1/2 pounds.
I grew some half runners a few years ago after hearing folks rave about them. I wasn't impressed. They were tough and stringy. But your explanation makes sense as to why that might have been the case.
@@LazyDogFarm They are stringy which I don't consider a fault necessarily. Up here stringless green beans are looked at suspiciously. LOL We assume the flavor was lost when the strings were bred out of them. Speaking as a Southern Appalachian. LOL We also like the pods to be tender even when the beans are nearly mature. The old Greasy beans are probably better liked than half runners. The pods are thin and tender even when they're slightly yellowed and the beans are mature. The protein content is much higher that way. I just canned a bunch of mostly shelled half runners. The pods were borderline over mature. I was worried they would be tough but they're not. I'm going to continue trying to purify my seeds. I'm going to kill all the vines in the row except those I'm selecting for seed, to make sure none less than perfect can pollinate them. Since some of the genes are mixed in, I realize I can't totally eliminate the misfits but I can reduce them. Southern Exposure carries the N/T seeds but Bill Best of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center did the work. I think they still offer seed as well.
Travis I am in 8B and I mulch my tomatoes, and they never look as good as yours, but I still believe in mulch. Please next year do a mulch test row of tomatoes and compare to non mulch row. Your explanation of seed saving and passing gene traits was very good. thank you.
Hi Trav! Do you prune your cucumbers or let them go wild? Also, I'm in Colorado and I tried to grow "triple crop" it's the only one out of 15 tomato plants that doesn't have one tomato in it... yes, not even 1. The others are loaded full of ripe and green tomatoes...WT?
I can attest to the fact that tomatoes do not like the southern heat! I live in zone 10a and I have tons of tomato seeds that won’t grow, both heirloom and hybrids! Tomatoes aren’t particularly happy with massive heat.
Try the floradade and F1 91 determinates all from Florida for your summer slicers. The flowers don’t fall off above 75 and those can withstand the 95 degree temps
I struggle with heirloom tomatoes. To be honest, all I can find anymore are related to the Amish lines, Cherokee Purple, Pink Brandywine etc. They usually end up like yours; a straight up vine-like stem with little to no side branches. Nice, large fruits with a fantastic olde tyme flavor. But seriously lacking in the production side of things. Few fruits in other words. Back in the olden days of 1996-ish, I was a roofer in Selma, Alabama. My commute home took me past a group of houses and as I drove past one spring I started to noticing a man working his tomatoes just before dark every evening, 8-10 plants roughly 6 ft. apart divided evenly on either side of his concrete walkway. As spring turned to summer, these plants got huge and by august he was working them from a 12 ft, step ladder. They were super bushy, at least 4 ft. wide and extremely leafy but also slap full of fruits at every stage of ripeness. I finally pulled in and talked with him. I can't remember the name but it was an heirloom that he said was bred here in the south. I carried home two armloads for slicing and fried green. There never was a finer flavored tomato. I wish I could find something like that to grow.
One thing you can try that I am seeing good results with for the indeterminant tomatoes is planting closer together, I went 10"-12" spacing and mixed the 6 varieties together and to my surprize for the first time they are all alive( some sad some happy) still and putting on fruit still.
I am in Southeast GA and had to pull up my cucumbers. The heat and pests just beat them (and me) to a pulp! I’m going to plant some in a few weeks and go for a fall harvest. Glad to see you’re having some good luck with yours and will watch to see how long they last for you. Thank you!
I'm in Southern Indiana on the border of Louisville, Kentucky and the contrast in climate/temperature between where I grew in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the North compared to in the South in the same State is vast. I grew heirloom only in Fort wayne. I used to give bags of tomatoes away. People would stop and point at my gardens, just impressed with them. Everything grew enormous and I would donate to the food banks. Thought I could do that here and 🤣🤣 Worse garden of my life first year. I can't even grow Yellow Pear cherry tomatoes here because it rains more than Seattle does. And the heat means I can grow year round with plastic and planning but root vegetables are a no-go and the varieties of tomatoes are specialty hybrids and even some of them didn't last. I end up growing more cherry tomatoes than anything else. I spend a lot of time searching for disease resistant and heat tolerant tomatoes and it's still hit or miss. A heat tolerant disease resistant tomato variety might not tolerate the rainy season we have. Actually it's more like a Rainy Year. We have all day rain and that sometimes happens all week long or ot rains once or twice a day with one day without rain and the tomatoes develop blight despite being early and late blight resistant, so it's truly trial and error right now. I'm saving the seeds from the ones still growing and the volunteers because they are handling this Jungle like weather pretty well. So I understand. Not all varieties can grow everywhere.
Welcome to the muggy gulf coast. There's a reason why we produce more pine trees than produce. For home gardens we used to produce enough to keep a family of four with plenty of produce for a year , but the genetics just aren't there anymore. Good luck with your endevours.
We’ve been at or over 100 degrees every day since the end of May with zero measurable rain. I still have 36 out of 48 heirloom tomato plants going but I have 70% shade cloth and are babying these way beyond where I should have. I’m hoping to get them producing again if the heat dome over S TX ever breaks. I do have a couple of Red Snappers coming to maturity so I can try them this fall.
Heat has been horrible here in central Texas. Water restrictions are hampering our ability to keep things alive until it hopefully starts raining and cools off. We ended up cutting our tomatoes down by half thinking we might get a fall crop, both determinant and indeterminate. Lots of new growth but we shall see. Green beans, summer squash, and cucumbers were a failure. Lots of peppers earlier in the year. Love your insight and ability to share your knowledge in a down-to-earth manner. Plan to try Seminole pumpkins next year. You are a great teacher.
Can you do a vid for someone who has only one 30 x 40 plot. Like planting your onions in November. And then spring doing your carrots tomatoes. How would you go about feeding all these would you still use drip tape. With so many different kinds of vegetables how would you feed all these and what would you plant?
I'm in metro Atlanta and this year has been terrible. Very hot, periods of heavy rain and long stretches of no rain. My tomatoes didn't do well at all.
Great video, Travis. We have had a very weird weather year here in Seattle. Some thing failed and some things are doing well. Unfortunately, the weatherman says it will be around 90 degrees Monday. We will keep everything watered well. Happy growing to ya.
Not only what you mentioned, but I've noticed each season (at least where I'm at) is completely different year to year. Last season, we had rain all throughout March to June, and then nonstop sunshine. This season, from June to almost mid August we've had two sunny days, then two to three days of rain and/or thunder showers over and over and over again. We've had 4 tornado warnings (three landed in my city) in July, when the norm is one tornado every 5-10 years (and I don't think it'll get better tbh)... That makes it really hard to find varieties of anything that'll be good/great in my area. Not to mention those darn Japanese beetle that keep showing up every early July chomping on all my herbs and fruit bushes.
With what? natural soap kills aphids, and DT kills worms and slugs, but as far as I know, not much kills beetles unless you go all out with really bad pesticides. Heck, we have an unlimited supply of small birds all around my yard, and even they can't handle the limitless jap beetles. We even set up traps and as soon as we placed the attractant sticker I got hit in the head multiple times as a swarm of hundreds of them came rushing the trap. I don't understand why NO ONE is mentioning them. They must be using some really harsh stuff and lying about it. @@kennydavis2276
Travis, I am sooo with you regarding certain tomato/cucumber varieties just don’t perform well in all zones. Case in point, I’m in zone 9B Tampa Bay FL I don’t have luck with Amana, Costuluto, Black Krim tomatoes and Marketmore cucumbers as well as lemon cucumbers. However, Lemon Boy tomatoes and Eureka cucumbers thrive so much better for me. Regarding indeterminate tomatoes sweet million and black cherry tomatoes grow like crazy BUT Sweet 100 and zebra tomatoes don’t like my garden; I’m lucky if I get 20 tomatoes a plant.
You might want to check out Heritage Seed Market, which is a small cooperative of three growers in the Florida area. They have tomatoes (and other plants) that are adapted to hot humid southern weather.
Hey Travis, I’m in southeast Ga. Just north of Savannah, my question is about the orleans sweet potato, do you usually harvest according to listed days or do you use another process to determine when you will, my orleans look good except for the usual munching insect damage and will be date listed ready at the end of August. Thanks for any advice ( First Time Growing Sweet Taters )
I usually will dig a plant on the end of the row at the listed maturity date, and that will tell me if I need to dig the rest or wait another week or so.
I think it's important to note that there are both hybrid and heirloom varieties of both indeterminate and determinate tomatoes. I live in the Southwest where we don't get the humidity you do, but we spend about 4 months around or above 100 degrees, and it just destroys tomatoes. I find determinate varieties to be easier to grow, whether hybrid or heirloom, because they'll set a ton of fruit before it gets too hot for pollination to occur. The indeterminates, whether hybrid or heirloom, just languish because their fruit won't pollinate between July and September. To your point, though, the hybrids always seem to do a bit better in general, probably in part due to greater disease resistance. I find that most heirlooms were simply not developed for climates like yours and mine. Love your vids, as always!
There's a bunch of tomato varieties that don't like my climate in Southwest Louisiana. Sure you can get a few tomatoes early and if you baby them and they make it through the heat and disease pressure you may get a few later once it cools off. But my garden space and time is too precious to only get a few fancy heirloom tomatoes. In my climate the determinant hybrids are the way to go.
My tomatoes are the opposite of yours. Started growing some determinates last year as 3 years now here in Michigan we have had a lot of 90 degree days with dew points in upper 60s low 70s, so not your humid but pretty humid for us. My 60 ft row of Red Snapper and Celebrity look terrible, small, and diseased. My rows of Jet Star, Supersonic, Big Beef, and Amish Paste look fantastic. And I dont really even prune. I do the bottom 12 to 14 inches and a sucker here or there to keep from having a jungle on cattle panels. Had high hopes but for me Red Snapper and Bella Rosa are terrible. So that hits on your not all things grow here idea.
I have never understood why tomatoes, which are from South America originally, and are considered a warm weather crop, don’t do well in high heat. There must be a difference in climate between South America and the southern US..maybe humidity?
Could be some seed varieties developed by other Universities don't like being fed from a Dawg's bucket (sorry, had to do it).... On a more IRL side, my daughter lives about 20 miles north of us. Each year I start extra seeds so I can give her some transplants for her garden, so all the seeds we are talking about here are from the same package. This year I got her some EarthBoxes for her deck in their back yard and she was going to try some of the veggies in the EarthBoxes as well as the traditional yard garden. Same fertilizer, same plants, but the EarthBox plants were all huge and produced twice the fruit. Clearly this was an environment thing (Earthbox vs yard garden). The Earthbox keeps the soil moist and constantly has water for the plant to use and the cover serves as mulch to keep the soil media from drying out like bare garden soil can. I'm probably going to buy some of those EarthBoxes and give them a try myself as I'm more of a scientific gardener than she is (ie, computer controlled fertigation via drip irrigation, mixing custom fertilizer blends, mixing micros, etc....). I may do it for the fall planting on a medium scale, but if it take off like her's did I may be all in as we have limited space to start with.
Lots of good info. Part of Red Snapper success is the magic of hybrid vigor. Another huge part is the disease resistance bred into them as well as other traits that breeders select for in the inbred parents like crack resistance and plant structure. OPs are highly inbred. They'll be consistent, but they'll have little adaptability because helpful traits, diversity to pull from, is no longer there. The best way to adapt plants to your area are to bring in lots of diverse fruit and let them cross with each other and plant lots of offspring--a landrace. The strong plants will present themselves for selection in the following years--suvivors. It's difficult with tomatoes because the stigma is encased most of the time and is protected from cross pollination. This presents a ton of work for a breeder in tomato. I'm quite certain from all you've said, you fully understand all of everything I typed which leads me to think, why am I typing it all. Lol Anyway, hybrid vigor is truly magic. There are some really strong, productive OP tomatoes like Black Cherry, for example, but not many in the South.
Heterosis makes the gardening world go round, but usually only works well with determinate varieties. I would love to see something besides ever-bearing strawberries benefit from heterosis. Imagine , if you will, a tomato that produces from July to well beyond the first frost depending on your dedication. That's what tomatoes used to do. I know a local grocery store owner who uses plastic sheeting to ensure that they have fresh fried green tomatoes every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Them Piggly Wiggly owners can be pretty savy.
@@kennydavis2276 I've bred those tomatoes. They're still producing in our Arkansas heat. Putting up a video on it today if I can finish editing it. The magic of parthenocarpy.
Heirlooms can be tough in the south. Arkansas Traveler, Cherokee Purple and San Marzano are supposed to be more heat and humidity tolerant. The San Marzano is a plum variety and is the predominant one used in authentic Italian cooking. I grew them several years ago and they did well. Since you like to can/preserve those may be a variety for you to consider. People that say your soil isn’t any good haven’t been watching your channel at all. Between the gin trash compost, cover cropping, and the chicken tractor, that soil should be primo!! Any plans to bring in more compost?
I might add some more of those composted wood chips this winter, but I doubt I'll add any more of the gin trash compost. It's great, but man it stays dry at the top and can make direct seeding a challenge sometimes.
If the common person on the street knew how much their State Universities spend on developing crops and varieties that are bred to deal with temperatures, humidity, drought, soil differences in sand, loam, and clay, I think they would be surprised. Most of my fig trees were developed from the LSU Research Station (and I live in NC. I would trade all 180 trees to just grow LSU Gold and LSU Champagne.) But if they can survive the heat and humidity of Louisiana, they are doing great here in Zone 8A in NC. I grow tomatoes developed from the N.C. State Ag research station. I also grow tomatoes from Oregon state U. My Collards and some of the cucumbers came out of Auburn (I don't think it's legal to use Auburn and the University of Alabama in the same sentence) yet, but my Raspberries came out of Alabama. My Primocane Blackberries (Freedom and Traveler) came from the University of Arkansas and they are incredible. Thorn less Blackberries producing in their first year. It was unheard of. In a way, Travis is doing his experiments and sharing what he has learned. I already know I can't grow celery here. It just doesn't fit into my climate and soils. Thanks for sharing your findings. I am trying some of your vegetable seeds here. I hope they do as well here as they do for you. Keep on uploading.
I agree about the LSU fig varieties. They're tough to beat down here. I wasn't as impressed with the Freedom blackberries. I actually just mowed all mine down and am going to start fresh this winter with another variety. Although the larger fruited thornless blackberries don't taste quite as good as the Freedom to me, they seem to be much more productive.
What variety did you replace them with? The "Freedom" berries are twice as big as the "regular" thorn less I put in a couple years back. I'm going to have to move my Freedom berry line to make way for a few more fig trees. Found a sweet little Italian "Juda" from One Green World that is outstanding dark sweet and a highly productive fig for this area. Trying my luck at air layering this year. Good luck Travis!@@LazyDogFarm
@@JohnDeWeese-lq4pf I haven't chosen a variety to replace them with yet. But a local nursery has told me about a variety that a lot of the commercial guys around here grow. Can't remember the name of it. My Freedom blackberries were significantly smaller than the Native American named ones I had previously. Can't remember if it was Natchez, Arapaho, or something like that.
It’s not you. We had 2 weeks above 90 degrees with terrible humidity, and my heirloom tomatoes just looked stagnant. The blight started in on them, and I pruned them back and fed and watered them. Ow that we are back around 80-85, they put on another foot of growth and tons more blossoms. Tomatoes just hate and heat and humidity.
I've had years things didn't do well. hated twister cauliflower the first time I grew had great luck the last few years sometimes its the year or the timing
Crooked or deformed cucumbers is because the cucumber did not get pollinated fully. Cut the crooked or deformed cucumbers and you will see the lack of seed development. Cut the straight one and note the full seed development.
True, your correct some varities of seedless cucumbers are, but most over the counter and box store verities fall into lack of seed development and very pronounced “bend” -straight-eight, munchers and the like. Of course lack of water will affect their shape on the flowering end.
I've grown indeterminate paste tomatoes for years. My standby is sanmarzano. They seem to grow properly and produce as expected. Many others fail miserably. I live in Ohio and my new breeds are performing miserably. Nothing new i can depend on.
I've always attributed bitterness to some kind of stress. As long as we keep pumping the water to ours, they don't seem to get bitter no matter how hot it is.
There is no magic. Buy a hybrid tomato from Home depot, Lowes, or Tractor Supply. Buy a bag of potting soil anyone will do. Buy a bag of coop gro from Travis. Get a 5 gallon bucket drill holes in the bottom. Fill it up with the soil, plant the tomato and add 1/4 cup of coop grow and water., Put in a sunny location. You will get tomatoes. Just my opinion.
There's nothing wrong with your "soil" there's something wrong with your aggressive pruning on indeterminates. The Reason your cucumbers are performing better if you would notice the cucumber leavers are literally touching the soil, shading the soil and stem keeping the soil COOLER than it was with your "pruned" indeterminate tomatoes.
I disagree. His channel, his opinion and it's backed by his experience growing where he is along with his parents and friends. I think his intent is to help. TH-cam isn't a feel-good support system anyway. It's an open-communication platform which is why I support your opinion too. I do it too. Best part is we can unsub if we don't like something and it really bothers us.
Do you like growing heirloom tomatoes? Or do they perform poorly in your area?
0:00 Intro
0:31 Beautiful Plants in Our No-Till Garden Plot
1:45 What Was Planted Here Previously?
2:04 Big Differences in Tomato Varieties
2:43 Why Won't They Believe Us?
5:06 Seed Saving Is Not What You Think!
love your videos & information!
It really depends on the verity, Pink Brandywine and golden jubilee heirloom Tomato seems the best, none of the Beefsteak type do well in my area. I’m sure it’s lack of sun they get large and green then rot off before they ripen enough to harvest. Also determinant tomatoes do excellent compared to indeterminate.
Great information, gardening is also a healthy dose of luck
You are such a good gardener. Your hard work is paying off.
You are absolutely correct 👍. Tomatoes and cucumbers and their relatives are about at the end of their days here in upstate SC as well.
Bringing hard truths
Those Landracers are everywhere 💯
Great video 👍
Perfect! Heirlooms really do stink in the south. I’m going all hybrid, determinate next year for tomatoes.
I just wanted to brag on LDF store. My order was shipped and arrived at lightning speed. I’m so excited to have a couple of the okra varieties you grow and also think the multiplier onions will end be a sustainable onion solution for me. My 4yo son played “Lazy Dog Farm” as we planted our haul, and of course, he was “Trav.”
Thanks for your order!
Very well said. I’m in blistering central Texas. We have to grow to our climate. Okree and melons are amongst the things thing thriving. Might even got some figs making a show. Point is if you ain’t from the south and don’t grow your food year round down here in our conditions, you got no leg to stand on. Grow to your climate and we’ll do the same.
Great video. I learned from you and your Dad about growing determinate tomatoes as the mainstay. I have found one heirloom that grows well at my 4500 foot elevation in Northern Nevada. Rutgers kills it here. Romas are probably the most vigorous at this location.
Since you’re discussing indeterminate tomatoes, I wanted to give a big thumbs up for the Turkey Creek tomato seeds I purchased from LDF. I’ve been growing tomatoes for over 50 years in zone 8A east of Atlanta and the Turkey Creek variety has some the largest and best tasting fruits that I have ever grown! Hope you have the seeds available next year.
Glad you like it!
Planted 16 varieties of heirlooms this year, here on Alabama Gulf Coast. It’s a year of testing what works here. Keeping a detailed journal, and next year I’ll plant more of those that thrived. It’s definitely a challenging zone in 8b!!
Waiting for the video.... ;--)
I started growing your bush maters a couple years ago just to try them here in zone 6b in S IL. They grow great and I get a large harvest in a short period perfect for canning them up. Then I pull them up about mid August and start in eating on the vine heirlooms. They grow right up until October or November and taste great with a very good variety since I have 18 kinds. If they flush I can them too. Tis best of all worlds. Your climate is main factor, you can play with it some but it is what it is. Grow some Maters and eat 'em up, yum yum eat 'em up.
My argument is not heirloom vs hybrid. It’s determinate vs indeterminate. I agree on the heirloom thing. I tried the string and pvc pipe and the heavy pruning for three years. They looked just like yours did. I stopped that, went back to cattle panels and just let them grow. Only prune the bottom limbs off the ground. I had 7 rows of 6 foot tall jungle of tomatoes. The best tasting one were hybrids. My determinate plot did very good as well, but don’t taste as good.
I live in south alabama, and I chuckle when I seen the videos of the energetic gardeners on youtube who live elsewhere. When I come in from the garden, I'm soaked in sweat and ate up by mosquitoes. And I'm in the same boat, heirlooms aren't doing worth a crap. I have a good number of red snapper and some other hybrids coming along though, already learned my lesson with heirlooms. I agree that it isn't the soil, because they get the same diseases in pots with completely different soil. I use drip irrigation, never overhead watering. I believe it's the heat/humidity that is too hard on those varieties.
Even though you're a Dawgs fan I listen to everything you say. Love your help every time. Roll Tide ❤
Yeah me too, Go Cats!
Mid 90s? It's been 109 - 110 here and no rain for 2 months. I'm green with envy. I'm using 60% shade cloth. It helps but the high temps... It's hard to grow anything in an oven.🔥
You are the MAN
I wish people would understand GENETICS. There are people out there who do. Love your videos
Compost is mulch. I had a few that did not like the heat but Chocolate Stripey is going on five years of saving seeds now. It and copia are of the few plants hanging in there.
I live in the high deserts of NM. We get temperatures into the 100’s. I have been able to get plants to thrive here with amendments to the sand and heavy watering. I have some honeydews that are now four generations old and doing great! Guess I’ll just have to keep on growing them, but I have noticed that my seeds do better than the gen 1 in regards to the heat. We fortunately do not have the humidity that you have, I wonder if that plays into it?
Humidity definitely plays a role. The actual temperatures here haven't been unusually high this year, but the heat index has been off the charts because the Gulf water is so warm.
if you find a local seed seller in your vicinity for heirloom tomatoes, those will fair much better than seeds grown from another part of your country. or if you successfully grow some heirlooms that survive the diseases and pest pressures, they will grow much better as their seeds are kept over the generations.
I live in Central Pennsylvania and my cucumbers are going crazy. I have canned so many pickles and so many jars of cucumber salad and they are still producing. My tomatoes aren't doing so good. My peppers are doing pretty good too especially the hot ones lol.
Travis you are spot on climatic locations have a huge impact on growing certain vegetables
👍🏽 to you Travis. I get what you’re saying cause everything don’t work for everybody. I’ve tried growing bell pepper seeds several times. I can’t seem to get any to grow. Now, I’m not responding to all that about traits, because I knows nothing of it. Just tell what you know like it is.
Travis I'm in the same zone as you 8B and my heirloom tomatoes performed almost as well as my hybrids. Granted I might not have planted the same varieties that you planted and mine did succumb to the heat and humidity eventually. I've learned to leave a lot of foliage and only take off the bottom leaves that will reach the ground, I prune pretty heavy at the bottom but I don't prune much anywhere else on the plants. I got a huge harvest of heirloom tomatoes this year.
A lot has to do with local disease pressure. The local Southeast Ga area I'm at has a big issue with Spotted Tobacco Wilt virus, thus heirlooms are impossible to grow. I tried just about every variety all died. However, my buddy 50 miles from here (same zone and climate) can grow heirlooms and Hybrids, as no STWV. I can only grow STWV resistant varities here, like Bella Rosa, Red Snapper ect.
Hi Trav!
When did you plant (direct sow?) these cucumbers? I would like to maybe try the Supremo seeds you have for sale.
Mobile, Al
I think it was late April
People across the United States do not understand how difficult the environment is here in the South when it comes to growing certain vegetables. It is so hot and humid here, and the humidity makes a huge difference when it comes to growing vegetables. And as someone who for many years planted and grew nothing but heirloom vegetables, I can say that you are 100% correct when it comes to growing heirloom tomatoes. No matter how much you baby and pamper them, by the time they get big enough to bloom and pollinate, it's over 90 degrees and the blooms fall off and pollination does not occur in most heirloom/open-pollinated varieties when the temps reach 90+ degrees. Then you have the early blight, late blight, viruses and fungus issues from the constant high humidity. So you have to avoid watering in the evenings when you get home and when the sun has finally gone down and it's cool enough not to feel like you're being cooked. But, because of the high disease susceptibility if you water them after the sun goes down and they remain wet all night they will most likely succumb contract blight, viruses, or fungal diseases. Don't get me wrong, the heat is great for growing some vegetables. I have lived in Georgia since 8th grade, but as a child I grew up on a big farm in rural South Carolina, and my parents and grandparents never grew a lot of the veggies people (me being one of them for many years) spend a lot of time, money, and energy trying to grow, because they knew they would not grow well here in the South. And as someone who has tried almost every type of heirloom veggie out there, mainly because I love the stories, history, and selection of so many beautiful and unusual varieties. But there are some heirloom vegetables and melons that grow fine here in Georgia, especially ones bred and grown in the South originally. But our climate makes many heirloom vegetables, melons, and heirloom tomatoes most especially, difficult to grow here.
The humidity isnt the problem, it's the overall temperature being high as hell 😂. It's almost pointless for certain vegetables and varieties. You're either gonna get demolished by garden insects or the Sun. Yea we can pretty much grow year round but some require too much efforts that isnt worth it in the end.
Spot on, Tennessee is not exempt from the harsh conditions that heat and humidity managing require just to grow something, worst of all is pest control resulting from both, especially on tomatoes, cucumbers and squash. Peppers seem exempt, they do will all the way into October and November, they seem to love heat and humidity till weather starts cooling down in late August were everything else has weathered away and garlic just starting to peak through and needs to be covered with mulch for their winter nap.
This past year growing was a nightmare struggle in central Louisiana. I did get okra, somehow kept a baby fig tree alive, managed to get a few cucumbers by constantly planting more, but I only got one quart of shelled Purple Hull Peas. My Red Rippers barely produced enough for saving seeds. I got none to eat and I mass planted them to help build soil. I`m only planting Purple Hulls next year. I got no green pole beans either...and these were SUMMER varieties! And my Armenian "desert" cucumbers did nothing either or my Amaranth. I`m about to try a self pollinating cucumber indoors but not in soil...but I`m not allowed by this tyrannical platform to describe HOW to do this!
I think you should do a video on how you store all your vegetables. From your corn to your tomatoes squash just for like beginners to see how storing is so important
We don't preserve as much as you think. We mainly just enjoy whatever is in season. We do can tomatoes, we freeze sweet corn, we freeze lima beans, English peas, and cowpeas, and we make a few jars of pickles.
@@LazyDogFarm honestly, I would love to see the videos of you doing that. I’m new to home gardening. I think that it would make some very good content for new gardeners like myself.
Me in coastal NC: cluching pearls, maybe its not me
Hi there. I was thinking how do you keep rainwater from just running out of that flat garden 🤔🤔🤔🤔????
Many grand blessings everyone everywhere
Heirlooms are good in the mix, low production/reliability offset by quality, also have plenty determinant, and for me some indeterminate that can go until 1st frost around November here in farther N. Commifornia, low inland, 9a.
Growing tomatoes is like throwing dice you just don't know what's going to turn up.. Mine are a bit smaller this year more than likely from drought than anything else but that very same drought makes the roma's even sweeter for sauce so plant a variety pray for good weather and be thankful for what the garden does produce..
Thank You Travis. Excellent poignant presentation. As a seed saver of some things, I try to save for heat tolerance. However, as a student of plant biology as a hobby I know that I am not equipped to do a very good job of selecting the right seed. I have seen your hybrid example over and over in my garden. They just outperform old air loom varieties, that is what they are for. I buy hybrid but save air loom for the worst case situation.
Heirloom😂
When you find the right heirloom for your particular area, it will kick @$$, no doubt. Somewhere, someone has a tupperware cannister full of seed in a big ol' deep freezer that was preserved by their great-grandma that will out-perform anything you can buy. Not sure how to go about finding them, but they are there. The olde folk didn't live off of of hybrid varieties, they lived off of seed that did well in their particular area, and was shared. All you gotta do is find them. I'm in the same corundrum.
Heirloom tomatoes have no hybrid vigor. They have self fertilized for so long that they are getting weak.
So creating your own landrace tomatoes, like the determinate tomatoes have been crossed.
And unless you are crossing the tomatoes by hand, you won't get new hybrids. But it sounds like you have bought into the idea that you don't want to do effort to create your own land race. Which is where those original heirloom varieties originated.
And you are correct, that there are some varieties that absolutely don't want to grow in your particular south Georgia USA zone. 😁
I have to grow behind a heavy fence because otherwise deer will eat everything, so some of my cukes that grow through the fence wind up looking like a pretzel. Hah! So shape is pretty arbitrary there.
Also, have you ever tried Thorburn's Terracotta tomatoes? I'm in central NC and I haven't been able to keep up with all the ones coming in this year. I've never had another heirloom perform that well down here! I know you always trial a few different varieties and that might be one to consider. It's one of the sweetest tomatoes I've ever tried, great for sammiches.
Someone gave me a plant from a variety called Terracotta earlier this year. Not sure if it's the same one you planted, but mine croaked pretty early.
To the point about soil health, it is obvious that you have healthy soil. However, to the point about mulch it is not a fair comparison, those cucumbers are creating their own shade to keep the root zone cool, while your tomatoes were so heavily pruned as to not allow for significant self shading, so mulch would have likely helped. But you are absolutely correct in the fact that the biggest factor is that not all varieties are suitable for all locals. The most important thing with heirlooms is finding the varieties that perform in your location, and then allowing them to maintain, and improve their adaptation to your climate through seed saving. With seed saving it is important to save from a large enough population of each variety to maintain the full genetic diversity within the variety, which means saving from a dozen, or ideally several dozen individual plants each season, which is a major undertaking. However, there is a workaround for this issue, but it involves a complete overhaul to one’s thinking and approach to gardening, and that is to use what is known as landrace gardening. It is basically the complete inverse of the conventional approach to gardening, but it works wonders for those with the right mindset for it. The beauty of gardening is that there are no right or wrong approaches to doing it, just right or wrong contextual frameworks within which to apply a given approach. I am not at all suggesting you should change your approach as it is obvious you have found the approach that works best for yourself. I just want to spread the knowledge around for anyone who might take an interest in it, and would suggest folks check out landrace gardening here on TH-cam. Joseph Lofthouse has proven that it is feasible to create locally adapted varieties in a few short years, but not by selecting from a single variety, that approach will take many years if it works at all for adapting a specific variety to a given location. Rather, the basic approach is to grow as many varieties as possible in proximity and let them crossbreed ( or in the case of tomatoes hand pollination may be required due to the physiology of the flowers on most varieties found in the US not being conducive to cross pollination by insects). At about the third year you can start selecting for your preferred traits. 😊
I would say use shade cloth where you are to keep the tomatoes cooler
A lot has to do with local disease pressure. The local Southeast Ga area I'm at has a big issue with Spotted Tobacco Wilt virus, thus heirlooms are impossible to grow. I tried just about every variety all died. However, my buddy 50 miles from here (same zone and climate) can grow heirlooms and Hybrids, as no STWV. I can only grow STWV resistant varities here, like Bella Rosa, Red Snapper ect.
I can't prove it, but I also think living amongst a bunch of commercial farmland also makes it tougher. I have friends "in town" that can grow heirlooms much better than I can.
Have you thought about trialing some dwarf tomatoes? I grew a lot of them this hear, of several varieties, some in grow bags and others in-ground. The ones in grow bags didn’t perform well at all while the ones in the ground and in raised beds did quite well. We had a lot of very large slicer tomatoes. It might make an interesting study for the channel. Love your channel - planting my Louisiana perennial shallots tomorrow! EDITED to add: I’m in NW Georgia, zone 7b.
THIS! The lady in the dwarf tomato project is in Australia. That environment is comparable to here in Ga. I'm trying them out next year. I spoke with her via the telephone about the most heat tolerant varieties she has.
Hi, I'm interested in growing some dwarf tomatoes. Please let me know where you purchase the ones you grow. Thanks 😊
@@TexasNana2 Victory Seeds will have what you need, dear.
@AnenLaylle7023 Thank you so much for your response 💗 🙂
Some heirloom tomatoes just don't like the heat you have down there. Even here in Washington I get less from heirloom than I do from hybrid. I think that's just normal.
Travis, I am fed up with fighting weeds. Where do you buy the light proof covers to kill the weeds out?
If you have an AgriSupply store near you, they usually have the 6 mil UV resistant tarps. Also maybe check with any local billboard places. They usually have the old billboard material for cheap.
@@LazyDogFarm Thanks Travis!
I save seeds for Hercules cowpeas and white half runner beans. Commercial seed sources for both varieties are mixed and/or poorly selected. The Herdules cowpeas are mixed with peas similar to brown crowder. I've been selecting seed for five years and now only have a few misfits. The half runners have over the last 40 years or so, grown more and more, tough, papery pods. There is a seed source that sells White Half Runner N/T(not tough) that offers select seeds. I stil had a few plants with tough pods, and a few plants that were not half runners. After about 5 years, I no longer have tough pods but I still get a few misfits.
As far as breeding new varieties, I've tried when I was younger(and dumber). I had a spineless white okra variety I selected from a two way cross. However, it was weaker growing and less productive than either of its parents.
Field corn seems easier to selectively breed. Yet, it took James Jarvis almost 50 years to perfect his corn, Jarvis Golden Prolific. It was known as the highest yielding open pollinated yellow field corn over much of the Southeast, prior to the introduction of hybrids. I've improved my seedstock of Jarvis, at least improved it for me. I select for consistent low ear placement in that variety, and save the heaviest of those ears for seeds. Low ears are the norm in that variety, so I see it as perfecting it, not changing it. I've been selecting for about 5 years and can't honestly say it's better than what I started with.
I also piddle with a single ear field corn that's a mixture of about six varieties of primarily Southern heirloom field corn. I select for ear weight and shape, large kernels irregardless of color, and medium/small cob diameters. It averages one big/huge ear per stalk. Some ears will weigh 1 1/2 pounds.
I grew some half runners a few years ago after hearing folks rave about them. I wasn't impressed. They were tough and stringy. But your explanation makes sense as to why that might have been the case.
@@LazyDogFarm They are stringy which I don't consider a fault necessarily. Up here stringless green beans are looked at suspiciously. LOL We assume the flavor was lost when the strings were bred out of them. Speaking as a Southern Appalachian. LOL We also like the pods to be tender even when the beans are nearly mature. The old Greasy beans are probably better liked than half runners. The pods are thin and tender even when they're slightly yellowed and the beans are mature. The protein content is much higher that way.
I just canned a bunch of mostly shelled half runners. The pods were borderline over mature. I was worried they would be tough but they're not. I'm going to continue trying to purify my seeds. I'm going to kill all the vines in the row except those I'm selecting for seed, to make sure none less than perfect can pollinate them. Since some of the genes are mixed in, I realize I can't totally eliminate the misfits but I can reduce them.
Southern Exposure carries the N/T seeds but Bill Best of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center did the work. I think they still offer seed as well.
Travis I am in 8B and I mulch my tomatoes, and they never look as good as yours, but I still believe in mulch. Please next year do a mulch test row of tomatoes and compare to non mulch row. Your explanation of seed saving and passing gene traits was very good. thank you.
Great video
Hi Trav! Do you prune your cucumbers or let them go wild?
Also, I'm in Colorado and I tried to grow "triple crop" it's the only one out of 15 tomato plants that doesn't have one tomato in it... yes, not even 1. The others are loaded full of ripe and green tomatoes...WT?
I just let mine roam. I'll occasionally prune some trailing vines that won't stay on the trellis, but not much.
I can attest to the fact that tomatoes do not like the southern heat! I live in zone 10a and I have tons of tomato seeds that won’t grow, both heirloom and hybrids! Tomatoes aren’t particularly happy with massive heat.
Try the floradade and F1 91 determinates all from Florida for your summer slicers. The flowers don’t fall off above 75 and those can withstand the 95 degree temps
I grow determinate tomatoes now and I live in Michigans UP. I have my most success with them.
Heck, I'm in 6B and I don't like my climate this time of year!
I struggle with heirloom tomatoes. To be honest, all I can find anymore are related to the Amish lines, Cherokee Purple, Pink Brandywine etc. They usually end up like yours; a straight up vine-like stem with little to no side branches. Nice, large fruits with a fantastic olde tyme flavor. But seriously lacking in the production side of things. Few fruits in other words.
Back in the olden days of 1996-ish, I was a roofer in Selma, Alabama. My commute home took me past a group of houses and as I drove past one spring I started to noticing a man working his tomatoes just before dark every evening, 8-10 plants roughly 6 ft. apart divided evenly on either side of his concrete walkway.
As spring turned to summer, these plants got huge and by august he was working them from a 12 ft, step ladder. They were super bushy, at least 4 ft. wide and extremely leafy but also slap full of fruits at every stage of ripeness. I finally pulled in and talked with him. I can't remember the name but it was an heirloom that he said was bred here in the south. I carried home two armloads for slicing and fried green. There never was a finer flavored tomato. I wish I could find something like that to grow.
If every variety did well in every area, then we would not need so many different varieties
Well said, my 24 years of gardening concurs. Common sense gardening, thru experience
One thing you can try that I am seeing good results with for the indeterminant tomatoes is planting closer together, I went 10"-12" spacing and mixed the 6 varieties together and to my surprize for the first time they are all alive( some sad some happy) still and putting on fruit still.
How is the branching? Width of plants? Height at what age? Fertilizers, soil type? Latitude? Nitrogen causing blooms to shoot? Really interested here.
I am in Southeast GA and had to pull up my cucumbers. The heat and pests just beat them (and me) to a pulp! I’m going to plant some in a few weeks and go for a fall harvest. Glad to see you’re having some good luck with yours and will watch to see how long they last for you. Thank you!
I'm in Southern Indiana on the border of Louisville, Kentucky and the contrast in climate/temperature between where I grew in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the North compared to in the South in the same State is vast. I grew heirloom only in Fort wayne. I used to give bags of tomatoes away. People would stop and point at my gardens, just impressed with them. Everything grew enormous and I would donate to the food banks. Thought I could do that here and 🤣🤣 Worse garden of my life first year. I can't even grow Yellow Pear cherry tomatoes here because it rains more than Seattle does. And the heat means I can grow year round with plastic and planning but root vegetables are a no-go and the varieties of tomatoes are specialty hybrids and even some of them didn't last. I end up growing more cherry tomatoes than anything else. I spend a lot of time searching for disease resistant and heat tolerant tomatoes and it's still hit or miss. A heat tolerant disease resistant tomato variety might not tolerate the rainy season we have. Actually it's more like a Rainy Year. We have all day rain and that sometimes happens all week long or ot rains once or twice a day with one day without rain and the tomatoes develop blight despite being early and late blight resistant, so it's truly trial and error right now. I'm saving the seeds from the ones still growing and the volunteers because they are handling this Jungle like weather pretty well. So I understand. Not all varieties can grow everywhere.
Welcome to the muggy gulf coast. There's a reason why we produce more pine trees than produce. For home gardens we used to produce enough to keep a family of four with plenty of produce for a year , but the genetics just aren't there anymore. Good luck with your endevours.
We’ve been at or over 100 degrees every day since the end of May with zero measurable rain. I still have 36 out of 48 heirloom tomato plants going but I have 70% shade cloth and are babying these way beyond where I should have. I’m hoping to get them producing again if the heat dome over S TX ever breaks. I do have a couple of Red Snappers coming to maturity so I can try them this fall.
It’s been a brutal summer here in SE TX!!!
Heat has been horrible here in central Texas. Water restrictions are hampering our ability to keep things alive until it hopefully starts raining and cools off. We ended up cutting our tomatoes down by half thinking we might get a fall crop, both determinant and indeterminate. Lots of new growth but we shall see. Green beans, summer squash, and cucumbers were a failure. Lots of peppers earlier in the year. Love your insight and ability to share your knowledge in a down-to-earth manner. Plan to try Seminole pumpkins next year. You are a great teacher.
Can you do a vid for someone who has only one 30 x 40 plot. Like planting your onions in November. And then spring doing your carrots tomatoes. How would you go about feeding all these would you still use drip tape. With so many different kinds of vegetables how would you feed all these and what would you plant?
I'm in metro Atlanta and this year has been terrible. Very hot, periods of heavy rain and long stretches of no rain. My tomatoes didn't do well at all.
What is drilling holes in my cucumbers?
Pickle worms
I thought cucumbers don’t do well in summer. In central Florida here it’s blazing 90-100 already in mid may
I usually throw in the towel late July or early August. But I've found you can feed them heavy and push them through some of the summer stress.
Great video, Travis. We have had a very weird weather year here in Seattle. Some thing failed and some things are doing well. Unfortunately, the weatherman says it will be around 90 degrees Monday. We will keep everything watered well. Happy growing to ya.
"That's like comparing cucumbers to tomatoes" I'm saying this from now on, thanks Travis! Decent merch slogan for you for a T-shirt.
Not only what you mentioned, but I've noticed each season (at least where I'm at) is completely different year to year. Last season, we had rain all throughout March to June, and then nonstop sunshine. This season, from June to almost mid August we've had two sunny days, then two to three days of rain and/or thunder showers over and over and over again. We've had 4 tornado warnings (three landed in my city) in July, when the norm is one tornado every 5-10 years (and I don't think it'll get better tbh)... That makes it really hard to find varieties of anything that'll be good/great in my area. Not to mention those darn Japanese beetle that keep showing up every early July chomping on all my herbs and fruit bushes.
Spray, spray some more, then spray some more. Stupid bugs...
With what? natural soap kills aphids, and DT kills worms and slugs, but as far as I know, not much kills beetles unless you go all out with really bad pesticides. Heck, we have an unlimited supply of small birds all around my yard, and even they can't handle the limitless jap beetles. We even set up traps and as soon as we placed the attractant sticker I got hit in the head multiple times as a swarm of hundreds of them came rushing the trap. I don't understand why NO ONE is mentioning them. They must be using some really harsh stuff and lying about it. @@kennydavis2276
Travis, I am sooo with you regarding certain tomato/cucumber varieties just don’t perform well in all zones. Case in point, I’m in zone 9B Tampa Bay FL I don’t have luck with Amana, Costuluto, Black Krim tomatoes and Marketmore cucumbers as well as lemon cucumbers. However, Lemon Boy tomatoes and Eureka cucumbers thrive so much better for me. Regarding indeterminate tomatoes sweet million and black cherry tomatoes grow like crazy BUT Sweet 100 and zebra tomatoes don’t like my garden; I’m lucky if I get 20 tomatoes a plant.
You might want to check out Heritage Seed Market, which is a small cooperative of three growers in the Florida area. They have tomatoes (and other plants) that are adapted to hot humid southern weather.
Thanks for the lead. Might have to try some of their stuff.
Hey Travis, I’m in southeast Ga. Just north of Savannah, my question is about the orleans sweet potato, do you usually harvest according to listed days or do you use another process to determine when you will, my orleans look good except for the usual munching insect damage and will be date listed ready at the end of August. Thanks for any advice ( First Time Growing Sweet Taters )
I usually will dig a plant on the end of the row at the listed maturity date, and that will tell me if I need to dig the rest or wait another week or so.
Thanks Travis I’ll do that and see where we are @@LazyDogFarm
I think it's important to note that there are both hybrid and heirloom varieties of both indeterminate and determinate tomatoes. I live in the Southwest where we don't get the humidity you do, but we spend about 4 months around or above 100 degrees, and it just destroys tomatoes. I find determinate varieties to be easier to grow, whether hybrid or heirloom, because they'll set a ton of fruit before it gets too hot for pollination to occur. The indeterminates, whether hybrid or heirloom, just languish because their fruit won't pollinate between July and September. To your point, though, the hybrids always seem to do a bit better in general, probably in part due to greater disease resistance. I find that most heirlooms were simply not developed for climates like yours and mine. Love your vids, as always!
P.S. I also have to use 30% shade cloth all summer!
There's a bunch of tomato varieties that don't like my climate in Southwest Louisiana. Sure you can get a few tomatoes early and if you baby them and they make it through the heat and disease pressure you may get a few later once it cools off. But my garden space and time is too precious to only get a few fancy heirloom tomatoes. In my climate the determinant hybrids are the way to go.
My tomatoes are the opposite of yours. Started growing some determinates last year as 3 years now here in Michigan we have had a lot of 90 degree days with dew points in upper 60s low 70s, so not your humid but pretty humid for us. My 60 ft row of Red Snapper and Celebrity look terrible, small, and diseased. My rows of Jet Star, Supersonic, Big Beef, and Amish Paste look fantastic. And I dont really even prune. I do the bottom 12 to 14 inches and a sucker here or there to keep from having a jungle on cattle panels. Had high hopes but for me Red Snapper and Bella Rosa are terrible. So that hits on your not all things grow here idea.
I have never understood why tomatoes, which are from South America originally, and are considered a warm weather crop, don’t do well in high heat. There must be a difference in climate between South America and the southern US..maybe humidity?
I'm finding that Pink Ozark is a good producer. Nice handful size tomatoes. And mine are crowded climbing a cattle panel arch.
Maybe people dont understand how awful terrible and disgusting the weather is in south Georgia
I'm having the same issue with cucumbers germinating. I planted about 50 seeds and I have maybe 10 that have germinated. Pitiful...
Could be some seed varieties developed by other Universities don't like being fed from a Dawg's bucket (sorry, had to do it).... On a more IRL side, my daughter lives about 20 miles north of us. Each year I start extra seeds so I can give her some transplants for her garden, so all the seeds we are talking about here are from the same package. This year I got her some EarthBoxes for her deck in their back yard and she was going to try some of the veggies in the EarthBoxes as well as the traditional yard garden. Same fertilizer, same plants, but the EarthBox plants were all huge and produced twice the fruit. Clearly this was an environment thing (Earthbox vs yard garden). The Earthbox keeps the soil moist and constantly has water for the plant to use and the cover serves as mulch to keep the soil media from drying out like bare garden soil can. I'm probably going to buy some of those EarthBoxes and give them a try myself as I'm more of a scientific gardener than she is (ie, computer controlled fertigation via drip irrigation, mixing custom fertilizer blends, mixing micros, etc....). I may do it for the fall planting on a medium scale, but if it take off like her's did I may be all in as we have limited space to start with.
Lots of good info. Part of Red Snapper success is the magic of hybrid vigor. Another huge part is the disease resistance bred into them as well as other traits that breeders select for in the inbred parents like crack resistance and plant structure. OPs are highly inbred. They'll be consistent, but they'll have little adaptability because helpful traits, diversity to pull from, is no longer there. The best way to adapt plants to your area are to bring in lots of diverse fruit and let them cross with each other and plant lots of offspring--a landrace. The strong plants will present themselves for selection in the following years--suvivors. It's difficult with tomatoes because the stigma is encased most of the time and is protected from cross pollination. This presents a ton of work for a breeder in tomato. I'm quite certain from all you've said, you fully understand all of everything I typed which leads me to think, why am I typing it all. Lol Anyway, hybrid vigor is truly magic. There are some really strong, productive OP tomatoes like Black Cherry, for example, but not many in the South.
Heterosis makes the gardening world go round, but usually only works well with determinate varieties. I would love to see something besides ever-bearing strawberries benefit from heterosis. Imagine , if you will, a tomato that produces from July to well beyond the first frost depending on your dedication. That's what tomatoes used to do. I know a local grocery store owner who uses plastic sheeting to ensure that they have fresh fried green tomatoes every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Them Piggly Wiggly owners can be pretty savy.
@@kennydavis2276 I've bred those tomatoes. They're still producing in our Arkansas heat. Putting up a video on it today if I can finish editing it. The magic of parthenocarpy.
Gardeners have a bad habit with thinking one size fits all. Except for the benefits of mulch lol
Agreed. I am in 8b in east Texas but my temps are 10 degrees hotter than Travis this year. It was 113 degrees today.
Heirlooms can be tough in the south. Arkansas Traveler, Cherokee Purple and San Marzano are supposed to be more heat and humidity tolerant. The San Marzano is a plum variety and is the predominant one used in authentic Italian cooking. I grew them several years ago and they did well. Since you like to can/preserve those may be a variety for you to consider. People that say your soil isn’t any good haven’t been watching your channel at all. Between the gin trash compost, cover cropping, and the chicken tractor, that soil should be primo!! Any plans to bring in more compost?
I might add some more of those composted wood chips this winter, but I doubt I'll add any more of the gin trash compost. It's great, but man it stays dry at the top and can make direct seeding a challenge sometimes.
If the common person on the street knew how much their State Universities spend on developing crops and varieties that are bred to deal with temperatures, humidity, drought, soil differences in sand, loam, and clay, I think they would be surprised.
Most of my fig trees were developed from the LSU Research Station (and I live in NC. I would trade all 180 trees to just grow LSU Gold and LSU Champagne.) But if they can survive the heat and humidity of Louisiana, they are doing great here in Zone 8A in NC.
I grow tomatoes developed from the N.C. State Ag research station. I also grow tomatoes from Oregon state U.
My Collards and some of the cucumbers came out of Auburn (I don't think it's legal to use Auburn and the University of Alabama in the same sentence) yet, but my Raspberries came out of Alabama.
My Primocane Blackberries (Freedom and Traveler) came from the University of Arkansas and they are incredible. Thorn less Blackberries producing in their first year. It was unheard of.
In a way, Travis is doing his experiments and sharing what he has learned. I already know I can't grow celery here. It just doesn't fit into my climate and soils.
Thanks for sharing your findings. I am trying some of your vegetable seeds here. I hope they do as well here as they do for you. Keep on uploading.
I agree about the LSU fig varieties. They're tough to beat down here. I wasn't as impressed with the Freedom blackberries. I actually just mowed all mine down and am going to start fresh this winter with another variety. Although the larger fruited thornless blackberries don't taste quite as good as the Freedom to me, they seem to be much more productive.
What variety did you replace them with?
The "Freedom" berries are twice as big as the "regular" thorn less I put in a couple years back.
I'm going to have to move my Freedom berry line to make way for a few more fig trees.
Found a sweet little Italian "Juda" from One Green World that is outstanding dark sweet and a highly productive fig for this area.
Trying my luck at air layering this year.
Good luck Travis!@@LazyDogFarm
@@JohnDeWeese-lq4pf I haven't chosen a variety to replace them with yet. But a local nursery has told me about a variety that a lot of the commercial guys around here grow. Can't remember the name of it. My Freedom blackberries were significantly smaller than the Native American named ones I had previously. Can't remember if it was Natchez, Arapaho, or something like that.
Only heirloom tomato I grow is the Everglades Tomato. Unless you grow in the heat, humidity, rain, etc of the South, sorry you just don’t know.
It’s not you. We had 2 weeks above 90 degrees with terrible humidity, and my heirloom tomatoes just looked stagnant. The blight started in on them, and I pruned them back and fed and watered them.
Ow that we are back around 80-85, they put on another foot of growth and tons more blossoms.
Tomatoes just hate and heat and humidity.
I've had years things didn't do well. hated twister cauliflower the first time I grew had great luck the last few years sometimes its the year or the timing
My cucumbers are so bitter you can't eat them. Gerkins Pickling
Crooked or deformed cucumbers is because the cucumber did not get pollinated fully. Cut the crooked or deformed cucumbers and you will see the lack of seed development. Cut the straight one and note the full seed development.
I believe you. But how do you explain crooked cucumbers from a parthenocarpic variety?
True, your correct some varities of seedless cucumbers are, but most over the counter and box store verities fall into lack of seed development and very pronounced “bend” -straight-eight, munchers and the like. Of course lack of water will affect their shape on the flowering end.
I've grown indeterminate paste tomatoes for years. My standby is sanmarzano. They seem to grow properly and produce as expected. Many others fail miserably. I live in Ohio and my new breeds are performing miserably. Nothing new i can depend on.
Have you had any problems with bitterness in your cucumbers?
Some say on the vine too long for that. Harvest them early for sweet ones.
I’ve harvested young never had this problem before this year.
I've always attributed bitterness to some kind of stress. As long as we keep pumping the water to ours, they don't seem to get bitter no matter how hot it is.
💚🌱🌻
Cucumbers don't succumb to the same disease as tomatoes. Cucumbers like rain, tomatoes do not
I dont seem to have any luck with any type of tomatoe lol.
There is no magic. Buy a hybrid tomato from Home depot, Lowes, or Tractor Supply. Buy a bag of potting soil anyone will do. Buy a bag of coop gro from Travis. Get a 5 gallon bucket drill holes in the bottom. Fill it up with the soil, plant the tomato and add 1/4 cup of coop grow and water., Put in a sunny location. You will get tomatoes. Just my opinion.
There's nothing wrong with your "soil" there's something wrong with your aggressive pruning on indeterminates. The Reason your cucumbers are performing better if you would notice the cucumber leavers are literally touching the soil, shading the soil and stem keeping the soil COOLER than it was with your "pruned" indeterminate tomatoes.
All of your plets look funominal
You shouldn't lecture people
Explaining is not lecturing
I think he used to be a professor actually so it would be most appropriate.
Why not? He has a master's degree in biology. 😆
I disagree. His channel, his opinion and it's backed by his experience growing where he is along with his parents and friends. I think his intent is to help. TH-cam isn't a feel-good support system anyway. It's an open-communication platform which is why I support your opinion too. I do it too. Best part is we can unsub if we don't like something and it really bothers us.