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Garf
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Re: Growing tomatoes in Miami

I am still looking for heat tolerant tomato seeds. Despite a massive collection, I just bought 3 more packs of seeds. Afghan, African Queen, and Bedouin. Something has to work.

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Garf
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Latest tomato count is 51. Still none blushing.

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Garf
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Tomatoes are now beginning to blush, so my next head count will be the last. I have started 4 more plants that will be batch 4, my last batch of supermarket tomatoes this year.

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Garf
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Rather than risk the tomato being attacked by something, I went ahead and picked the first blushing tomato of the season. It will still be 2 or 3 days till it can be tasted. This ends the head counts with the final total at 72. Even one backup plant has babies. Tomato size is 1 3/4".
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Garf
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I just picked the first blushing tomato of this season. This ends the head counts at 72. It will still be a few days till it can be tasted. Tomato size is 1 3/4"
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Garf
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I have picked the third blushing tomato of the season. The first two have been eaten and taste approved. All 3 were from batch 1, the last surviving plant from last season.

imafan26
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In Miami, you have pretty much the same weather as I do in Hawaii. Really no snow to speak of and very hot summers. Sun gold and and the cherry tomatoes do o.k. in the summer heat, but for the late summer July-September, you need to have heat resistant tomatoes. University of Florida has put out a few that can take temperatures in the 100's. I could not grow them because they lack resistance to fungal disease. The bigger tomatoes that are not heat resistant will drop their blossoms when the temperature goes over 90 but may still live on if they are disease free and will put on fruit again once the temperatures come down. Really big tomatoes don't do that well but the tomatoes in the 8 oz. size tend to do a little better. I can't grow a whopper tomato since I have short days so I have not grown a tomato that has reached a pound yet.

Tomatoes are not as fussy as peppers. They prefer warmer but will germinate as low as 50 degrees, they germinate better at 65.

Heat resistant varieties I have grown have been HeatwaveI II, Brandywine did remarkably well up to the 90's, Creole, Early Girl (stopped producing but lasted and came back), Jubilee (It was too tart for me), Sweet 100, Sungold, Red Cherry, Sioux, Arkansas Traveler, Fourth of July, and Big Beef.

Sun Leaper, Sunmaster, Florida 91 and Solar Fire are supposed to keep producing well into the 90's.

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Garf
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New batch of 6 Everglades plants. So far I have 30+ babied and hopefully more to come.

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Garf
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Here is a sample pic.

imafan26
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For wild tomatoes they are big. Most of my wild tomatoes are small.



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