Spitze Paste Tomato: How To Grow, 2009 Growing Experiment

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Spitze: The Romanian Roma - 2009 Growing Journal

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Disclaimer: The following How To is just one way to grow a roma tomato plant. There are many different methods, tips and do's and dont's on growing tomatoes. The following method is right for our climate zone, requirements, and situation. We hope that it will be helpful to readers. Also, tomatoes grown in containers larger than 5 gallons, (10 to 25 gallons) will produce more and larger fruit, but 5 gallon is what we have to work with this year. So,...

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Update June 28, 2009: 2 bad things, 1 good thing

Forgive me if I repeat some of the stuff I wrote over in the Roma journal, but I'll try to focus this report on how the Spitze tomatoes faired. Plot spoiler - not good.

Shortly after my last update above and for the next 2 weeks, every single day we've had a scorching heat wave with temps 95 to 105 degrees, and a heat index (what it actually feels like) up to 109. Two weeks of that and tomato production is going to crash to a halt. As I wrote on June 17th, the two oldest Spitze's each produced one small tomato. Only one. When the heat wave came in, tomato production stopped and only a few blooms can be seen.

This heat wave that has come in, and shows no sign of leaving anytime soon, usually doesn't come until July. If it had been more considerate, my tomatoes would have had time to produce more tomatoes before the temps became too much for the blooms.

As if that wasn't enough, blossom rot came to town. For those of you that don't know, blossom rot looks like this: It occurs when the tomato fruit does not get enouch calcium from the soil.

The ironic part is that the soil might actually contain enough calcium, but it goes to the tomatoes' branches and leaves first, but not the fruit. Since I only had to Spitze's with one tomato on each, only one Spitze tomato was affected. One of my roma's faired worse and I lost 24 off of one.

What can you do when you have blossom rot? After you got it, not much. It's easier to prevent it from happening then it is to cure it. Either something went wrong with compost/peat/soil mix with the few eggshells I threw in, or I overwatered. I though I had enough peatEither way, I take the blame.

I'll tell you about my attempt to fix the problem, albeit late, but let's jump ahead to what you need to remember to do next year. As you are mixing the compost, peat moss and top soil together for your containers next year, throw in a cup or two of lime, or crushed eggshells, and mix it up real good with that soil. This will prevent a heartbreaking case of blossom rot.

To make this heat weave and blossom rot story short, here's how I fixed the problem: I bought a bag of lawn variety lime (high in calcium), and poured in about 4 to 6 ounces on the top of the soil for each bucket of all 30 of my different tomato plants. I then used a small tool to scratch this lime into the top one centimeter of the soil. I then added 2 to 4 more inches of top soil on top of the lime and old container soil.

As I had written about before, the soil had become too compacted from the rain and watering. In some cases, the roots were already showing through the top and in every other case, they were in danger of coming out from the top. So, learn from my mistakes.

After getting the soil levels built back up in all 30 buckets, I layed down a layer of quartz river rock to act as my mulch. This will do a great job of keeping the Sun off the soil, keep the water from evaporating as fast, and keep the temperature of the soil down in a cooler range. I chose rocks and pebbles because I wanted something heavy on top of the soil so it wouldn't get washed away. I also thought the white quartz rock would do a better job of reflecting the Sun then other types of mulch.

I came across this moisture meter (or here) (pictured above) in a garden store and it's been very practical. Much better than sticking your finger down in the dirt to try and guestimate the moisture content.

If you remember from reading above, I calculated that the Summer heat by the 4th of July would force me to water my 5 gallon container tomatoes 2x per day. Well, that scorching heat wave came earlier than expected, hotter than expected and I had to move up my soil and rock mulch schedule. I wasn't sure how these white quartz river rocks would work, but they are doing much better than I expected.

Moisture Meter

- This reading clearly says Wet although the Spitze tomato plant was watered about 20 hours ago. The added soil and rocks are REALLY doing a good job. The soil temps taken after this photo was taken were 86 to 88 degrees.

Soil Temperatures: Feeling inspired, I used my wife's meat thermometer (with her permission) to take soil temperatures. At about a 5 inch depth, on 3 seperate plants, the soil temperature ranged from 86 to 88 degrees. Nice! :-) - Keep in mind, I watered 20 hours ago, and it is 100 degrees outside right now at 1500 hours. While the soil is a comfortable 88 degrees in 100 degree heat, the rocks are only lukewarm - not near as hot as I thought they would be.

According to the temperatures and the results of the water meter, it looks like I might be watering once a day or less and not the 2x I expected. So far, Success!

Spitze Characteristics: I've thought all along that if this was a Romanian tomato, it would do better in cooler, Northern states than it would in the hot, humid and dry area of Northwest Oklahoma. So far, each of the 2 older Spitze has produced only 1 tomato, and one of those had blossom rot. There are only a few blooms on each and because of the heat, I am not sure what to expect. This is supposed to be a 78 day tomato, but might end up being longer with this heat wave interruption - as we wait for cooler temps. Growers north of the Nebraska/Kansas border might do better with this tomato.

. Spitze Tomato

My one Spitze tomato, despite the recent heat wave. Let's hope more come when the temperature cools down.

Update: July 14th, 2009

Since my last update, I solved the blossom rot problem I had on one of my spitze tomatoes and that particular plant has produced five more fruit in the last 2 weeks. See picture below:

Spitze Tomato

It's nice to see this cultivar produce some more tomatoes, but I can't say it's a lot. In the picture below, this one, large, odd shaped tomato is the only one on the plant.

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