TOW - Red House Free Standing 6-20-11

[jcm05]

I love this variety. Very compact dwarf plant. Doesn't get more than 2-2.5 feet tall. RL rugose, deep green foliage. Good production of large red fruit. Flavor is only average, but I use it in crosses to hopefully capture the plant size/fruit size characteristics.

[peppereater]

I grew it in a 3 gal. container 2 years ago under less than ideal conditions and the fruits were probably 4 and 5 ounces. I thought the taste was better than just average, you definitely knew you were eating a homegrown tomato, and the flavor came through solidly on a blt or in a salad.
The plant looked basically just like yours, although I don't recall if it had those relatively smooth margins on some leaflets like yours. If I locate a pic of mine I'll post it.

[tucsontomato]

I have one that is doing well. A couple of days ago it started wilting and I thought it caught something like bacteria wilt. I let it sit for a day or two then checked my battery-operated timer. One of the kids had turned the spigot leading into it so it was off. It must have been a while because a couple of other tomato plants were floundering also. I watered it today and it looks like we're back on track. However, that wilting from the heat killed half a dozen blossoms!

Come on kids- don't you like daddy's tomatoes?

[leftylogan]

Is this the real TOW

[jcm05]

Here is a clear shot of the smaller RL Red House Free Standing in the foreground and the PL Summer Sunrise behind them.

[GunnarSK]

Jun 25, 2011 1:04:50 GMT -5 leftylogan said:

Is this the real TOW

yes

[jcm05]

I need to stop using this as a female parent. All crossed fruit on these plants developed BER the last two years. Even this year where I tried to pay close attention to soil moisture with it. No other fruit developed it on the three plants I am growing. Strange. I should be able to salvage some f1 seed from the fruit hopefully, but going forward may just simply use it as the male parent.

[tucsontomato]

Bummer. What makes some varieties more suseptable to BER than others anyway?

[jcm05]

Genetics basically. Don't know exactly why though.

[PVP]

I grew 4 Red House Free Standing in 4-gallon black plastic tubs this year, for seed.

I got zero BER in spite of the facts that those black tubs get hot. The 4 gallons of soil mix settle or wash out to about 3 gallons within a couple of months, I only watered the pots every other day at the most, and I didn't fertilize more than 3 times the entire growing season.

Two of the plants gave me the largest tomatoes I've gotten so far on RHFS. Seeds originally from John. Don't remember BER being much of an issue with this variety.

[maf]

On two different varieties of tomato this year (not Red House Free Standing), the only fruit on the entire plant that got BER was the one that I emasculated and used as the female parent in a cross. Interesting to see it is not just me this happened to. I also removed most of the sepals, don't know if that would have any bearing.