Spitze: The Romanian Roma - 2009 Growing Journal

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 August 1, 2009

The temperatures the last 2 weeks have been suprisingly cool, with intermittent light rain. The grass around here is actually green, instead of the brown it usually becomes by mid-July. In those two weeks, not much has happened except for some creatures that destroyed a small part of my tomato crop. First off, the Spitze tomato in the picture above was quite large, and just starting to ripe when I found it on the ground one morning hacked to pieces. A bird? I don't know what else could have gotten that high, torn it from it's branch, and then savaged it until it was almost unrecognizable. However, two of the other four spitze tomato plants are producing, not much, but a few fruit as pictured below.

So far, here in Oklahoma, I don't think my Spitze tomatoes are doing that great. As a late season tomato, the production so far has been quite low and the plant itself would probably prefer a cooler climate than we have. If a true Romanian tomato, this would not be hard to believe as I have lived in that country for 3 years. Even so, I am going to try growin some other Romanian tomato cultivars next year and will chronicle that in another website to be named later.

The second fiasco to hit my tomatoes in the last 2 weeks (don't I seem to always have one or two every update?) is this super disgusting, awful, parasitic, crop destroying tomato caterpillar. I've posted pictures in the update on the Roma Classic page. Read all about by going here. Whew, this thing was disgusting!

End of Season Summary: Aug. 15 - Oct. 01.

Our tomato season ended rather abruptly after the last post as my wife and I found our dream home, the one we have been saving up our money for 6 long years. It's exactly what we want too and for gardening, it's perfect. Without going into a lot of extraneous detail, it comes with 2.5 acres and it's own well. A lot of work needs to be done on the property as it was neglected for the last 10 years. The previous owner was just unable to keep up with the demands of a property of that size and features. I am not sure I will be able to get the greenhouse, and raised bed garden features in place by next Spring/Summer, but I will definetely be gardening from containers. The one difference is that they will be 10 gallon containers, not 5 like this year.

All in all, the roma tomatoes went will this year. The roma fruit productiong was about as good as can be expected,, but smaller in size than I would have liked. I attribute that to having a 5 insead of a 10 gallon container, which we will use next year. The Spitze Romanian "roma" tomato was a disappointment. The size of each fruit was large, but there just wasn't enough of them to do much with. With rugose, corkscrewed leaves, and it's extra demand for water, I don't think the Spitze is well suited for the hot, more Southern Climate of Northeastern Oklahoma (Tulsa area). I think if someone in the North tried it, they might get better results.

I will say one thing: When we combined the Spitze and Roma OG tomatoes together to make tomato sauce, it was - OUTSTANDING. It makes most store brand tomato sauces taste like garbage. We produced our own video and added several more that you can view you are interested in making your own tomato sauce.

So what happened since our last update? Well, all the pain in the rear stuff that goes with negotiating, buying, documenting, and moving. The tomatoes...well, they didn't survive the move.

2010 Growing Journal