If you are like me you start your tomato varieties indoors. I peruse the seed catalogs, place my order, and start all my own varieties. You’ll notice that some say they are resistant to a variety of diseases and some aren’t. Some are cold or hot tolerant. Picking the ones you like is the definite advantage of starting your own tomato transplants.
Unfortunately, not all varieties are winners. As I’ve found with peppers, the early tomato varieties can be lacking in flavor or color, and the plants may be more finicky. But take the good with the bad, you can still have good tomatoes better than market early in the season.
Now in recent years many of the tomatoes I’ve trialled have failed in my garden. Well, not failed, but shown evidence of disease early in the year. But is it really disease? Or is it the 100F+ temperatures we get just 2 - 6 weeks after the last transplants go in? Some early varieties tolerate cold but don’t like heat.
Rather than knock my head around, or worse yet - move - I’ve decided on a tip for next season to help pinpoint my troubles.
My neighbor has great tomatoes. Not a spot on a leaf. She got garden center tomato transplants this year, and they typically (but not always) pick varieties that are at least moderately disease resistant and a compromise between size, flavor and growing length.
Next year I’m going to grow one of each transplant I start inside in her garden to grow alongside her garden centre variety. This should help eliminate the potential of a soil borne disease as my problem. Her garden is also sheltered differently and may eliminate the possibility of some environmental factors. Lastly, it is still a good idea to bag up the bad plants and send them off to a lab to have them identify the issue with a specific plant just in case there is something that can be corrected immediately to help with the next season.
There you have it. Find a friend with great tomatoes and ask if you can grow some of your transplants alongside in their garden. At the very least you’ll get some more data to help make better decisions, and at the very most you’ll have more early garden tomatoes to eat!