SEEKING OPINIONS ABOUT TOMATO PLANTS

[whitewater262]

I live in southern Wisconsin, and I'm planning my garden for summer. Each year, I grow tomatoes, which are frequently in demand at the local food pantry. A few summers ago, I gave them more than 850 tomatoes. Because my space is limited, I always plant a number of tomatoes in containers.

NOTE: Cherry tomatoes are not much in demand, and most of the people I've encountered here prefer red tomatoes of some considerable size

- large enough to be used for sandwiches and so on.

Before I came to this group, I did research online, but I never found the answers I was seeking. I've already visited several garden web sites, none of which offered customer feedback about the container varieties I'm planning to grow. If anyone has enjoyed personal experience with these, I'd love to hear about them. I've found that such feedback has tremendous value.

Burpee Bushsteak Bush Goliath Bush Celebrity Bush Champion Super Bush

I have enough yard space to plant some tomatoes in the ground - probably no more than 10 plants. First Prize, Jumbo Hybrid, Jet Star, New Yorker, and Oregon Spring are the ones I'm leaning towards, but I'd welcome opinions from the group about this as well.

[farmerdill]

Most folks have better luck, with standard determinates Goliath, Celebrity then the bush types. have not grown out the others.

[greenthumb]

I'm in NY and this is my first time using containers. I plan on burying the containers in the garden by cutting out the bottoms! Is this a good method or crazy. I bought beefsteak and earl girl tomatoes but are bush tomatoes better? greenthumb

[Antipodean Bucket Farmer]

If the containers are big enough, there isn't any reason to cut out the bottoms. I use 20-litre (5-gallon) buckets, on a porch.

And, if you have regular ground space available, why use containers at all?

[jamescerwin]

Some of the better tomatoes i have grow are better boy and big beef both nice red round large tomatoes that start producinging around the

65 to 67 day mark. I also was very happy with sub artic maxi last year a little larger then a golf ball but it makes up for it's size in earliness at 45 -50 days I had ripe tomatoes (from transplant) and they even had taste , some thing that is lacking in most earliy tomatoes.

As for putting containers in the garden with no bottoms I agree with Antipodean Bucket Farmer if you have the room to plant the containers in the garden i would just plant the tomatoes directly in the garden , if you are going for larger plants with this method they should be well rooted by that time and you should be able to remove them fron the pots with out much trouble to put into the ground.