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Re: Dot's on transplanting tomatoes

Richard Callwood, who gardens in the Virgin Islands, says,
>Romas are determinate--slip of finger?

I'm sure it was.  For the record, I've read that all the paste tomatoes are
determinates.  A big advantage since they set and mature all their fruit at
basically one time, which certainly would favor mechanical harvesting and
batch cooking processes of the commercial canneries.

>I've used 56" tall tomato cages for Romas, and the Romas still outgrow them.
>I don't know how this compares to other determinates, because all my other
>tomatoes have been indeterminates.

This business about determinates being "shorter vines" than indeterminates
doesn't hold true in my USDA Zone 7 garden near Washington, DC, either!  I
grow 'Mama Mia' for paste (it's a suberb eating *and* cooking hybrid, but I
have never seen it in commerce; I used to get my seed from the American
Horticultural Society's free seed exchange, but MM is not in there anymore
either....).  This hybrid produces huge quantities of blemish-free Roma-type
toms and does not seem to be disease susceptible either.

But it's plenty big.  Staked plants make an easy 5 feet tall and spread out
pretty far left-to-right, too.

If any square foot listers have seen notice of 'Mama Mia' in a seed catalog
this year, please please post to the list.  I tried to save seed from my '96
MM crop, but my husband decided the water glass full of smelly tomato crud
near the sink was garbage and threw the brew down the disposal....

--Janet
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Janet Wintermute             jwintermute@ids2.idsonline.com
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