Interesting thing about Cherry Tomatoes. :)

[Gary350]

My Son planted Cherry tomatoes it is very interesting that those plants produce more pounds of tomatoes than my plants that make larger tomatoes per plant. He picked 10 lbs of tomatoes from 4 plants that is a lot of tiny tomatoes and that takes a lot of time to pick. LOL. His plants are in my garden and hot weather does not seem to effect them as much as hot weather effects plants that produce larger tomatoes. If a person was only interested in getting the largest volume harvest possible all summer for what ever reason cherry tomatoes seems to be the way to go. Most of my tomatoes go into mason jars for winter to make, soup, chili, stew, etc. cherry tomatoes can be Canned in jars too. Cherry tomatoes have a very good flavor so why not use them in soup, stew, chili, etc. Someone mentioned once cherry tomatoes do better in hot weather than other tomatoes now I think that is true. We eat as many tomatoes every day as we possible can. I picked 14 lbs of tomatoes today from 25 plants that is about 9 ounces of tomatoes per plant compared to 40 ounces per plant for cherry tomatoes. Last summer my son planted cherry tomatoes it seemed like his plants were making more tomatoes than mine but I was not weighing his tomatoes and comparing them to mine.

[thanrose]

Gary, it could have been me that mentioned about cherry toms doing better than larger tomatoes in the more extreme heat. It has to do with blossom set or drop and the average daily temperature. If you have night time temps in the 90s, then cherry, grape, and berry tomatoes will continue to set fruit while the large slicing tomatoes or the Romas will sulk and drop any blossom. It's a different temp for different varieties.

My absolute best summer long volume came from tomato seed purchase from Johnny's Selected Seeds, I think. Maine Tomato Berry. Now why my ex bought DownEast tomato seed for growing in Florida, I do not know. Contrarian, that fellow. But over ten years, that was the only one that continued to fruit from spring well into fall. I dried a lot of tomatoes back then, and the flavor of these tiny berries fresh or dried was pure pleasure to this Jersey girl.

All of the Solanacaea: peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, tomatillo, and others (excluding potato which I never tried to grow through summer) had issues with extreme continued heat. Peppers and eggplants did better than tomatoes overall, but eggplant from India or Thailand was more tolerant than Italian types. I've read academic papers on the productivity of plants in this family, as we all do? They just confirmed my general observations over the years.

Everybody's situation is different. Not just the climate or the soil, but the techniques and the practitioners, the microbes and marauders. No toms for me this year at all. Root knot nematode coupled with summer move. Maybe in Autumn I'll be settled enough to grow some in large tubs at least. I'm buying all my tomatoes at farm markets and ethnic groceries. Depressing and interesting at the same time.

[pepperhead212]

This is why I grow many more cherry tomatoes than slicers. They produce sooner, incredible amounts, and, even if they drop their blossoms due to heat, they come back quickly.

[dtizme]

Interesting. same here in Canada. I've grown cherokee purple here the last 2 years and would be lucky to get a few tomatoes off it in the year. I mainly grow cherry tomato plants here. sweet and super sweet 100 and get over 100 of the little ones easy per plant. u do get alot of spoilage if you don't keep up with picking them though. especially after a rain when they swell and break open. I have 1 pineapple tomato plant now that seems to be doing well. about 5 feet tall but only has 4 tomatoes on it as of now. my other 5 are cherries and should be loaded soon enough. gave away alot of quart baskets of cherry tomatoes in the past few years