Beef(steaks) In The Learning Garden!

Look At These Beauties! 

You cannot grow large, beefsteak-style tomatoes close to the ocean - the cool off-shore flow and lack of heat will not allow the fruit to set.  So, if you try to grow beefsteak tomatoes near the ocean (Sunset Zone 24) you are wasting your time! This is what I read, this is what my experience has proven over and over again. And this is what I have taught my students for about 7 years.

BUT... 

These tomatoes were picked yesterday from The Learning Garden in a year that was not one of our warmest!  Beautiful and delicious tomatoes.  These were grown by the Venice High School students in their gardens without tags.  If I had known those vines were supposed to produce this size of tomatoes, I would have yanked the vines back in June.  But I didn't know and look at this.  Now, if I only knew what variety they were, I'd be saving seeds from them.

david

I Give Up

That's A Pretty Big Tomato

I have read and been told "Tomatoes need 85°F minimum to set fruit - and the larger the fruit, the longer it has to be 85°F for the fruit to properly set." 

We have not been anywhere near that warm for any length of time and yet we have several plants with very large yellowish fruit.  These are over in the area where Venice High School students planted and  I've as yet, not found a tag to tell me what these are. But they are larger than I would expect considering the coolness of this season.  

There were a couple larger tomatoes on this plant and it's neighbor, but this is the biggest one I could get in a clear shot.  One of these biggies, looks like it might be about four pounds or more!  Still, if these large fruits need 85°F to set fruit, these fruits wouldn't be here.  

So I'm saying...  this must be a myth that we just disproved - or something else is happening.  Any ideas?

Gardening:  You learn something new everyday!  

david