[quote=]"@Saltmarsh, Claud, that is a very interesting observation about the temps, I hadn't thought of that -- last summer (actually the last 2 summers) here was unusually cool, and I actually did notice a lot of the "fused" flowers. This year I'll take your advice and remove those blooms and any weird fruit -- I really do love this variety and it's worth taking a few extra measures! Also very interesting that the pruned and trellised plants produce ripe fruit so much earlier than the un-pruned, caged plants do... especially since the latter is the method that I use! I've also read that root pruning will produce earlier ripe fruit -- do you have any experience with that? Thanks for the great advice, anything I can do to get earlier (and nicer) tomatoes is a huge plus! :thumbsup:" [/quote]
Sandy, I do have experience with root pruning tomatoes and it does work but I had to go back to a previous life to explain its use.
My Grandfather was a truck farmer and my father was a truck farmer. Children were required to work on the farm and there weren't any friendly discussions about what was to be done or when it was to be done.
The rules for how to complete tasks were very simple. There was the right way of doing things, the wrong way of doing things, my way (my father's) of doing things, or the highway (I took the highway when I was 12).
My father taught me to farm as his father had taught him. There was very little explanation as to why things were done a certain way, you did as you were told or you got your butt beat. It doesn't take many dances with a leather belt to quell your thirst for knowledge about farming.
Tomatoes were a primary cash crop and market forces worked then as they do now (but the market is very different). Tomatoes brought to market early were worth 3 times as much as the same tomatoes were after the market broke (when most farmers were selling their produce). The price would drop to 1/2 then quickly to 1/3 then stabilize for several weeks until the individual gardens started producing and the market was glutted and you couldn't give them away. I saw my father feed many loads of No. 1 tomatoes to the pigs rather than helping to glut the market. When your livelihood depends on it, the market can be just as deadly as any disease.
I hope you understand how important early tomatoes were to us when I was growing up. We normally had tomatoes ready for market 3 to 4 weeks before anyone else depending on the weather. Our market area was basically the north half of Mississippi, from Jackson on the south to Memphis, Tennessee on the north and from Greenville on the west to Corinth and Columbus on the east.
We did a number of things to get ripe tomatoes early. We only grew hybrids (marketed for their disease resistance and shorter days to maturity) even though they were much more expensive because late maturing varieties would only end up as feed for the pigs.
The cultural practices used were very similar to those shown in this french film with a few key differences. When the seeds were sown in the cold frame we didn't sow them quite as thickly as shown in the film. This eliminated the thinning and replanting in the cold frame step and the week to 10 days the plants required to recover from it. We used a different approach when you see the plants removed from the cold frame for planting in the fields. Our transplants were about twice the size of those shown in the film because growth hadn't been interupted by the thinning step and where you see the bare root plants in the basket ready for planting, we did something entirely different. We pulled the plants out by the handful also but then separated the individual plants and muddied their roots. A shallow hole was made beside the cold frame and dirt and water was added to the hole to make a thin mud. The plants roots and lower stem were dragged through the mud to coat the roots and stem, a bucket was laid on its side and the transplants were stacked in the bucket with the roots toward the bottom. The mud protected the roots and stems from drying out and causing transplant shock (another week to 10 day delay) and the bucket kept the wind from drying the plants while they waited to be planted. When you pull the plants from the cold frame you are root pruning at the same time.
In the film you'll see the tomatoes planted in a nice flat field. Our early tomatoes were planted on south facing hillsides using what is called contour farming where the rows follow the contours of the land. This allows water to drain slowly during rains but keeps the soil from being washed away. The south facing hillside creats a micro climate which has nighttime temperatures about 5 degrees warmer than the bottoms below. In effect you have moved your field a full zone south for early and late crops (similar to what is accomplished with grow tunnels today).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
The film also shows several types of pruning. Single stem with plants topped after the sixth cluster and also single stem topped at the second cluster, regrowth permitted to the 4 cluster, topped again, and regrowth permitted to the sixth cluster for a final topping. Each time the plant is topped the plant will redirect more of its energy into the existing fruit. In both cases you end up with a plant with 6 clusters of mature fruit. We pruned to two stems and topped both stems after the fourth cluster. This produced a plant with 8 clusters of fruit in the same time required to produce a six cluster single stem plant.
Again in the film you'll notice the woman guiding the horse as the farmer guides the fixed tooth harrow through the row of tomatoes (root pruning them) and loosening the soil. We used mules trained to Gee (move to the right) and Haw (move to the left) and a spring toothed cultivator called a Gee Whiz pulled by a shortened single-tree. This allowed closer shallow cultivation after the tomatoes were topped to loosen the soil and root prune them without causing damage. Claud
The film:
http://www.ina.fr/video/VDD090...
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