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Post by hmoosek on May 28, 2022 18:14:38 GMT -6
These are called Mini Gold. These are my first tomatoes to ripen this year. I’ve grown these for quite some time. My original seed came from Ted Maiden and I forget where he got his start. I want to say Belarus, but I may be wrong. I believe my first year to grow them was sometimes around 09 give or take a year. I’ve been growing them ever since. Back around 2018, I emailed Ted just to shoot the breeze and during our talk, I learned he had lost his seeds, so I sent him some of mine and now we both grow it. Knowing Ted, I’m sure he has shared this one with others, but I felt proud to be able to pass them back to him. If I was limited to only growing two or three tomatoes, this is one I’d want for sure. My kid Sister calls these a “Mouthful of sunshine.”
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Post by chrysanthemum on May 31, 2022 20:31:37 GMT -6
Those look beautiful, HMooseK. Will you tell us more about the plant, please? Is it just the tomatoes that are mini, or is it a small plant. When did you start your seeds and plant outside?
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Post by hmoosek on Jun 2, 2022 10:35:59 GMT -6
Those look beautiful, HMooseK. Will you tell us more about the plant, please? Is it just the tomatoes that are mini, or is it a small plant. When did you start your seeds and plant outside? I’m sorry it took me so long to see this. The tomatoes and plants are small. You can grow them in flower pots if you’d like. I don’t remember when I started seed. This year has just been one disaster after another. The first bunch of seeds I started froze and I had to start over, so I was very late getting things done. I haven’t been taking care of the garden like it needs this year. I never got it plowed, so I’m growing among the weeds. I didn’t even realize I had ripe tomatoes till I happened upon them. The dang chiggers are so bad, I haven’t ventured out there much. This year isn’t my year. I tried to grow a few tomatoes on my porch, but I lost another plant to the wind this morning. We’ve sure had a fair amount of wind. Not uncommon and not generally a problem unless I have plants on the porch, then I lose whatever isn’t nailed down.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 2, 2022 13:28:21 GMT -6
Hmoosek,
I wonder if those Mini Gold tomatoes are a sport of the old Sun Gold? if so, they ought to be really good eating.
All the rain out here has put me so far behind on weeds I don't know if I'll ever catch up. My wife's two-year-old deer has had a baby and ever since then hangs out in our yard like a stray dog. She has eaten nearly every one of my bean plants, she has mowed my jalapenos, and has just about wiped out my sweet potatoes. It has been a tough year so far. I've replanted hundreds of okra seedlings and just now came back inside from running off a flock of crows that were walking down my rows of plastic, pulling up baby squash seedings.
Chiggers eat me up here too! They usually come in June around our place. A few years back, I was at the Farmer's Co-op looking for poison to kill them and an old man took me to one side to tell me that sulfur works just as good as any of the other stuff and is cheaper, plus it won't hurt you as long as you don't breathe the dust or get it in your eyes. So on his advice, I tried it and have never looked back.
I keep a 25-pound bag of sulfur in my barn, just for chiggers every summer. I go out early in the morning, about 6:00 am or a little before, while there's still dew and no wind. I wear a good dust mask (a bandana tied around my face) some safety glasses, (whatever I can find), and throw fists full of sulfur as high as I can. It settles into the dew and sticks to the wet plants and kills the heck out of chiggers. I've waded out into what I knew was chigger-infested weeds, knee-high while throwing sulfur, and never get a bite. I think so much sulfur lands on me while I'm doing that job, that no chiggers will have me.
You have to be careful not to get it in your eyes. It stings like crazy. Plus, make sure you wash your clothes right away in a load separate from the rest of the laundry or you'll never hear the end of how you made the whole wash smell like a rotten egg.
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Post by macmex on Jun 3, 2022 7:34:49 GMT -6
Wow! That's good to know! I used to have to spread about 40 lb of sulfur a year on my 35'X35' garden, in the high desert of Mexico. That was just to lower the PH.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 3, 2022 9:34:12 GMT -6
Now you can use your sulfur to lower the chiggers.
I use sulfur in my chicken house to kill mites too. Just make sure there are no chickens in there when you do that. Their poor little eyes and respiratory system would suffer greatly. I just throw a couple of hands full at the rafters and close the door behind me. When the dust settles, there is sulfur everywhere.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 3, 2022 16:18:10 GMT -6
My mom uses sulfur against deer ticks. She’s rather overrun with them in her part of Virginia, and they carry Lyme disease. She has acid soil so she doesn’t use it for pH, except maybe on blueberries or hydrangeas, but I think she puts it on her shoes and socks if she’s in the woods.
HMooseK, I agree with it being a hard gardening year down here in Texas. It speaks really well of your mini gold tomatoes that they flourish even without much attention.
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Post by hmoosek on Jun 4, 2022 17:20:53 GMT -6
I have heard that about sulfur, but never tried it on myself for chiggers because I’m allergic to it. I break out in big blisters if it gets on me.
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Post by hmoosek on Jun 4, 2022 17:23:35 GMT -6
We had another storm last night, but I pulled my 1 remaining plant into the house till it was over. I replanted the one I lost in the last storm. We’ll see how it fairs, but it looks like death warmed over at the moment.
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