Heirloom tomatoes in south Florida

[gnappi]

After enjoying a batch of gnarly but DEElicious tomatoes recently I dug around in them for seeds and thought "what the heck, why not try growing them" and I planted the dozen or so seeds I was able to get from the seed stingy tomatoes I had. Gads, the 10 or so seeds I was able to get sprouted!

Now the questions...

Has anyone grown Heirlooms in south Florida?

If so, my yard is semi to mostly shaded with patches of full sun areas, which is best?

Container or in ground?

Planting / soil medium?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Galatians522]

Large fruited heirloom tomatoes probably won't set fruit when the night temps are above 68 degrees. They like lots of lime and may need sprayed for bugs and disease. I have found multi color cherry/grape tomatoes easier to grow. August or September is a good month to plant. I like the indeterminate varieties that just keep growing and fruiting.

[Satanic Onion]

I grow about 20 plants of 3-5 varieties every fall and then spring season. All indeterminate full blown heirlooms and landraces. Fall season planting in early September is best. By January the early blight and bacteria will take them over no matter what you do. I am a licensed applicator and spray the heavy stuff when needed and even I can't keep them going. Spring season is a waste of time for backyard gardeners. The whitefly vectored TYLCV will get them by March or April and they will not continue to produce.

If you want to grow heirlooms here without being an applicator, plant for fall, spray copper and mancozeb every two weeks and find another soft fungicide to rotate with on off weeks. There are some unique varieties with good flavor on the market with TYLCV resistance but they are not quite the heirlooms you want, and they will only give you a few more weeks of production before the resistance is overwhelmed. Best practice is very wide plant spacing, use plastic or fabric mulch on a raised bed, limit plants to 2-3 stems for large fruited varieties or 4-5 for cherries, spray a rotation of spinosad + soap, azadirachtin + soap, and sulfer + soap on a three week rotation for pests, and make sure plants have full sun for fall season or taste and production will suffer.

[Mysta]

It's an F1 but Cherokee Carbon was fantastic this year. It's a hybrid of Cherokee Purple and Carbon, still trucking for me in SC in Humid 100+ temps. No shade cloth.