04-06-2007, 05:57 PM
Usually folks have the best luck with cherry tomatoes growing on "indeterminate" vines. Once you get them started, they will pretty much take care of themselves. Sometimes they will die back, but usually a fruit or two has fallen off and it will reseed.
Small fruited varieties such as cherry and pear tomatoes and thick skinned varieties such as Roma resist the fruit flies and can set and bear fruit. The indertminate vines - as opposed to determinate - keep growing crop after crop. The determinate variety of tomatoes will set one crop of fruit and then die off.
I think if you wanted the big beefsteak tomatoes, a screened in enclosure would almost be required and then you'd have to hand pollinate to get them to set fruit, too.
Small fruited varieties such as cherry and pear tomatoes and thick skinned varieties such as Roma resist the fruit flies and can set and bear fruit. The indertminate vines - as opposed to determinate - keep growing crop after crop. The determinate variety of tomatoes will set one crop of fruit and then die off.
I think if you wanted the big beefsteak tomatoes, a screened in enclosure would almost be required and then you'd have to hand pollinate to get them to set fruit, too.
Kurt Wilson