I think you will find that removing them from those pots for transplanting won't be difficult. You'll just have to make sure they are well watered and invert the pot with the tomato stem between your fingers and your hand and fingers supporting the rim of the pot. Then just give the pot a sharp rap or three with your other hand and you'll find the root ball will drop free. (Which is why your hand is over the opening of the pot, it wouldn't be nice to drop a 'mater baby on its noggin.)

I hope that helps.

Betsy

Betsy -- I hope so! Thanks!!

I love the clean and structured look of these planters and I bought many ranging from this 5x5 to much larger 5 gallon equivalent ones. They're not "pretty" but with such limited space, I can't have pretty, large AND functional, haha.

I guess I'll let these grow for a few more weeks before transplanting,...hopefully the roots will fill the pot and the whole thing slides out with no noggins damaged. :-)

Grace

Well, they've come a long way. I am totally in love with Maskotka as a plant--I rarely find tomato plants to be "beautiful" but the color, stems and spread on this, as well as how the fruits develop, have been fabulous. It's also fascinating how they don't actually "tumble"; they grow outward and shoot out branches horizontally/laterally to BECOME a tumbling plant, if that makes any sense.

Then again, I've only had a few varieties of tomatoes in the ground before.

The Tumbling Tom yellow ones continue to grow well but are currently setting tiny fruit. Now that is more typical of what I expect a tomato plant to look like! ;-)

Here's a shot of the first Maskotka tomatoes to turn colors. Hmm....I wonder how red I should let this get before popping it in my mouth....

Do you have a not-so-closeup picture of the Maskotka so we can see the growth habit? Sounds like an interesting variety, I had so many people ask me for container tomatoes last month I'm thinking of starting some next year. Where did you buy the seed? And when you do pop one, be sure to come back and tell us how it tastes ;-)

My neighbors must think I'm insane.

ajsmama,
Haha, it's not quite as easy as you might think to get a frontal shot of this plant. It's hanging on the front of my balcony because that's where the full sun is, so short of climbing onto the roof in front, it's near impossible to get a full front shot. Then, factor in that I have the plants tied up to the balcony railings to keep the main stem upright -- it's not even sensible to undo all of that to hopefully pick up that heavy planter, flip it around and take a shot.

I did what I could with a phone, leaning out as much as possible from the balcony. A little blurry but you get the general idea.

I'm certain the plant would be 10x more attractive had it been planted alone. This is a ~7 gallon planter I have where I originally planted FOUR, yes, FOUR tomatoes thinking they'd all neatly tumble over and life would go on happily.

That did not work out that way.

So, I removed one Tumbling Tom into a different container, and now have two Maskotka and one TT in the middle (the smaller, darker leaves, if you look closely). It's still too many....
Luckily, this is a determinate type so it won't be much longer and I think they'll all be okay, especially with our downright chilly 60-something weather here in SF.

Here's the view *I* get everyday:

I tied these because they were getting too heavy and it looked like it might be lifting out of the pot. I pictured waking up one morning to find my tomatoes 2 floors down.

I got these are Parks Seeds. Getting my order from them was a ridiculous ordeal and took forever -- but I will say their seeds did well. This one says "Maskotka Hybrid" and seed origin: England.

Grace

Oh, I had pictured the typical hanging basket (like people use on front porch for flowers). Looks like it might do well in a 5 gal pot but needs lots of support. I might have to look into dwarf varieties for patio growers.

How do they taste? And *what* are you feeding them, those things are huge!

Finally, some were rips enough to try.
Yum!!!
Natural sweetness, low acidity and some meatiness. The size is really quite large for a cherry tomato.

These were planted as seeds on April 1, started and grown outside in the sun and ridiculously cool weather.

Grace

Oh and AJ-- they were planted in 5-1-1 (heavier on the pro-Mix) with a good dose of Tomato Tone in the soil, followed by a weekly dose of Foliage Pro, and biweekly fish and seaweed fertilization just for kicks.

Grace

The plant is overloaded w tomatoes with about 4-5 ripening per day now. The taste is incredibly sweet, almost apple-esque. Prolific grower. There are at least 60-70 draped over the pot at the bottom, and can't be captured in this photo.

I will ALWAYS grow this one!

A typical cluster....this is the only one I can photograph from where I am on the balcony.

Wow, looks very prolific.

Guess we aren't done eating tomatoes yet....I am getting really tired of tomatoes, lol!

I don't know when the last time I have posted on GardenWeb but a search for Maskotka brought me here.

I picked up a plant of Mascotka late in the season for pollen purposes. I crossed it to a number of my specialty tomato varieties including my SHADOW BOXING tomato. The three way hybrid will be grown out this fall in Hawaii to get a number of clones with F-2 seed. I should be able to get lots of container type tomatoes next season out of these F-2's.

Here the fruit of Shadow Boxing with the crossing tag that indicates that Maskotka is the male parent of the F-1 seed inside the fruit. I extracted the seed earlier today.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/dbV6h5f.jpg[/IMG]
http://imgur.com/dbV6h5f
Tom Wagner

This post was edited by tom_wagner on Fri, Aug 23, 13 at 1:28

Tom, that looks....rich! Wow, please keep us updated. Hybrids are outside of my knowledge scope but I'd love to follow this.

What is Shadow Boxing like and why that one?

Grace

Shadow Boxing has many varieties in the pedigree that were adaptable to container planting. It has some of the blue anthocynin from the precursor of Indigo Rose, and stripes from many generations ago of Green Zebra.

The addition of the Maskotka into the breeding would open up the vines to allow for very blue tomatoes since direct sunlight is required for the blue to show up well.

http://www.tomwagnerseeds.com/index.php/tomatoes/blue-tomatoes/shadow-boxing.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22shadow%20Boxing%22%20tomato&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=np&source=hp