Re: Cool-season tomato plants?

**y*@sfo.com**

At 5:46 PM +0000 8/7/08, MARY FRAN MCQUADE wrote:
>In a recent posting on tomato tastings, you mentioned you went to one at a
>nursery that featured cool-season tomato plants.
>
>Can you tell me some of the ones they were showing? Our north-shore Lake
>Ontario climate here in Toronto...

Mary Fran,
Look for tomatoes with a low "days to maturity" number. The lowest 
I've seen is 45 to 55 (not the best tasting, though), but anything up 
to 65 or 70 should work. Or look for heirlooms from Siberia.

When I plant in early spring, I use walls-o-water until nighttime 
temperatures are above 50 degrees F. They've worked better than 
bubble wrap in previous years, but this year I kept moving them 
around and lost my earliest plants.

The cool-season varieties are in the third article below, or just go 
to www.gotonursery.com
Steve Goto says a humic acid product (John and Bob's Soil Optimizer) 
is the key to tomatoes that can survive low temperatures. I bought 
some last year to try it, but then I injured my hand and couldn't 
play in the garden for a month last year, so now I'm going to try it 
this year.

Here are some articles. I can send you the text if the links no longer work.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/17/HOG25OLAGO1.DTL&hw=Tomatoes+March+17&sn=001&sc=1000

http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-tomatoes26jul26,1,2388408,full.story

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070217/ai_n18625068

Tanya Kucak
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