Category Archives: GIANT TOMATOES

Wall of Waters for tomatoes

tomatoes in wall of waters-2010

Here are the 35 tomatoes in wall of waters. You can buy them at your local nursery or order them through the internet. They are an invaluable tool for Spring as they act like little greenhouses or cloches to help protect your tender plants from cold nights and the wind.Be sure you fill them up in the morning so they have all day to heat up. Then they will give off the heat at night and keep the plant warm.

To set them up, put a 5 gallon bucket over the tomato (the tomato must fit inside the bucket) then slide the wall of water over the bucket and take a hose and fill up each cell in the wall of waters. When done slide the bucket out and the wall of waters support themselves. If your plant is taller than the wall of water, you can still use it but will need a friend to hold the wall of water as you fill up each cell. Sometimes the wall of water (WOW) can partially collapse under heavy wind. In that case put some bamboo posts inside the edges of WOW to help support it. In a few years, you might get some leaky cells. I take one of my leaky WOW and cut off a good cell and insert it into the leaky cell and fill it up and it works. I only use wall of waters in early spring when it is still cold at night. Be sure to take them off when the plant starts to get crowded inside of the wall of waters, usually in late May or early June.

giant tomato megablossoms

Single blossom on left and double megablossom on right

GIANT TOMATOES-I got my first 2 megablossoms off my Big Zac tomato plants and they are not even in the ground yet. All giant tomato growers are looking for megablossoms. Some varieties tend to produce more than others. Since megablossoms usually come earlier on a plant I will leave these on as I don’t know if I will get more off each plant. A megablossom is at least 2 or more blossoms that fuse together to make one big tomato.  That is why giant tomatoes are so knarley and bumpy. It is kind of like twins, triplets or quadruplets that are all conjoined together. Recognizing these megablossoms is the key to growing giant tomatoes. It doesn’t happen all the time so it is exciting when we get some megablossoms and the potential for a BIG TOMATO.  Since they are made up of many blossoms, oftentimes they abort if they don’t pollinate well.  Most tomatoes are self-pollinating so you don’t have to worry about pollinating them unless you get a megablossom. That is when we should hand pollinate them although I didn’t on these. Using a small soft paintbrush, you can take some pollen off of the stamen part of one blossom and paint it onto the megablossom pistils. Kind of sounds like Luther Burbank doesn’t it?

The top picture has two blossoms-the one on the left is a normal single tomato blossom and the one on the right is a megablossom made up of two flowers. Notice how big it is.

megablossom with three blossoms fused

This second picture  has even more blossoms fusing together. Looks like maybe three blossoms. Starting to look knarley! I’ll see if it aborts or starts to grow into a giant tomato on it’s own as I didn’t hand pollinate them. I will pick off all the normal blossom off of each plant. I might grow 2-4 tomatoes from megablossoms off of one plant. You don’t let all of the normal tomatoes grow so all the energy goes into these potential giant tomatoes. Obviously I am growing these for size and I have other varieties where I let every blossom become a tomato to grow for food.

planted 35 tomatoes today

Yep-went ahead and planted tomatoes with the help of Beto, Mernie, Lava and her friend Mo. Together we planted 35 tomatoes, added amendments, put up wall of waters for every tomato we planted, placed the drip system around each tomato and gave them a drink of seaweed/thrive mix. Hope they make it as it was sooo blasted windy (no pun intended) here today and it is suppose to get cold but not freezing tonight. Many were wind thrashed but we did the best we could. I guess the hardy will survive. Many thanks to all of you good friends! Then I went into the house and planted up to the gallon size all my giant tomatoes that will go in the ground in a couple of weeks. I also planted up the rest of my 4 inch pots into gallon sizes that I will give to friends. Phew, what a power out day…I’m fried.

Santa Fe’s Farmer’s Market

For the Discriminating Cook

This year the Santa Fe’s Farmer’s Market, which was recently rated as one of the best in  the nation, was a juried-in only market for farmers. Well, I went in the their office and they said I got accepted but I haven’t received their acceptance letter yet which makes me nervous as it’s been 2 weeks. I need to know for sure because it will determine whether I plant more tomatoes or not. We’ll see…

Last year at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market

I am known as ‘The Tomato Lady-Heirloom Tomatoes & Exotic Veggies’ for the discriminating cook. I grow varieties that you don’t get at the grocery stores or at our farmer’s market. See you there this summer!  I’ll keep you posted when I start going to sell my produce on SATURDAY mornings this year-probably late June since I sell warm season crops…

GIANT VEGGIES!

GIANT VEGGIES!

Finally, I can start to talk about giant veggies as I will start the pumpkins this month inside. Here is some background information on some giant vegetables so you will understand them. Later in another post, I will get more specific on which giant veggies I am growing.

All or most of the giant pumpkins, giant squash, giant marrow (look like BIG zucchini) and  giant tomatoes where people want to BREAK RECORDS AND GET THEM OFFICIALLY WEIGHED are listed by the weight/grower’s name and year. So for example: the new world record pumpkin holder is held by a woman named Christy Harp who broke the record last year-so her pumpkin is listed as 1725 C. Harp 09. This means her pumpkin weighed 1725 lbs, her name is C.Harp and 09 is the year it was grown.

Here is a pic of her with her world record pumpkin. This pumpkin came from a genetic line of very big pumpkins, so those of us after records look at the parentage of each seed to give us what we think are the best odds of growing certain traits-ie size, shape, or color and weight. Now you don’t have to go to  any special weigh-offs or buy any specific seed from a grower unless you want it recorded.

There are some varieties of these vegetables that are  known to grow very BIG. If you plant these, you will grow some very big vegetables maybe not  a world record but big.  None of these are GMOs but almost all are hybrids.
Here are some varieties of  giant vegetables  to get you started that will give you the potential to grow em BIG!

GIANT PUMPKINS-If you don’t want too big, try Big Max pumpkins where you have the potential to grow a 100 lb pumpkin but hands down the Atlantic Giant  Pumpkin variety is the one most grown-you can get it generically like I did my first year from amazon.com (I grew a 225lb pumpkin that year) or you can join some giant pumpkin clubs and/or organizations and buy or ask to get some specific seed that has been grown by one of the big growers. It’s a whole different thing or as Christy Harp said about giant pumpkin growing, “It’s a hobby gone mad”! The interesting thing is many giant pumpkin growers are growing them organically. Now isn’t that cool! One of the most important things I learned from some growers is to create really healthy soil.

GIANT TOMATOES-Some varieties you can purchase through the catalogs are:
Big Zacs, Giant Belgiums, Delicious and many more to grow 3 lb plus maters.

MARROWS-They aren’t generally grown here in the states but are big in Europe and I’m not sure why. Their seeds are harder to get here. I got one seed from a grower in the Netherland that I will try this year. It was 76 lbs. We’ll see how big it’s off spring gets or if it will even do well here.