This year, we grew 55 plants of 6 varieties... 3 cherry type, 2 beefsteak type and 1 Roma. The harvested tomatoes are for our (extended) family and friends and occasionally customers from our “egg business” and we still have plenty of left over. We may be starting a small CSA next year. I am planning to keep the number of plants to about 60 but increase the varieties.

If I had a huge plot of land I'd love to grow a 20 Brandywine Sudduth's then 10 other varieties to test out, then next season grow the top few of those then another round of new varieties.

They would be so much fun! I am currently only able to grow 6 plants due to only being able to plant in containers.

I could technically grow 30+ plants but limit myself to around 15. I don't grow more because of time restrictions and I have a hard time giving the extra's away. My neighbors love getting them but they can only eat so many. I've tried taking them to work but with limited success. My co-workers are very picky and turn their noses at heirlooms.

Kris - you must not have any Indians at your work. In my office there are dozens and they will take anything I bring from my garden without question.

My property is a little over 5 acres but about 4 of it is wooded without enough sunlight to grow tomatoes well. My garden only takes up a couple thousand square feet of the open acre and I've only grown a max of 22 so far with all of them being different varieties. Unless I started a farm stand I wouldn't increase the number or varieties much if any.

I can only grow about 6 because of lack of room. Since I love trying new varieties, I`d like to grow about 10. I do give a lot away to neighbors.

I would love to grow anything more than my two or three plants I grow every year. I try to get a beefsteak type and an early girl. The biggest trouble I find is that when I buy seed it is not economical to get many different varieties because I can’t grow them. I would love to try many different heirloom tomatoes. There are just so many different varieties to choose from. It depends on where you live also when picking the DTM. Chicago has a short growing season. Last year I bought seeds and had to plant starters from the big box store because I was not able to start the seeds due to my husband’s health. I will try the seeds next spring. I would give all extras to neighbors and my extended family. I just like to grow the tomato more than any other vegetables. There is nothing as tasty as a homegrown tomato. It is also so much fun to be able to show yourself you can be successful in the garden.

I end up with about ten plants, including cherries and heirlooms, all indeterminate, which require more space by the end of the season. Whatever isn't consumed fresh by my small household is frozen or canned. There is never enough. I would double this if I had the space.

If I had the space (and a 20-year-younger body LOL) I would grow a whole rainbow of tomatoes. We grew KBX, Big Rainbow, Cherokee Chocolate, German Red Strawberry, Big Rainbow and Estler's Mortgage Lifters this year but nothing did well between the weather and the d*** bugs, except for one "spare" KBX that didn't make it out to the garden. I felt bad it sat there in it's little pot and nobody else would take it so I stuck it in the ground next to the house. It produced like crazy! Go figure. And cherry tomatoes out our ears until that arctic blast last week :>( First year gardening in Alabama. Quite a change from north central Ohio. I hope to be better prepared next year, especially since I'm going to have to try to grow the Mortgage Lifters for seed. And I sure wish I had more room to isolate them because since our growing space is so small that's all I will be able to grow next year.

I have grown 52 in my small garden but they were in non-optimal conditions and most were a grow-out of a new tomato I'm developing. If I had unlimited space with the proper sunlight and the proper deer fence, and unlimited energy, I'd like to grow about 100. Maybe 30-50 for the grow-out and the rest would be one apiece of 50-80 varieties. I love to test out new tomatoes and I haven't yet found that perfect one. (Although I have had some very good ones).

Hi Nan! Good to see you! Same for Tormato! I didn't know you were developing a tomato. I'd love to hear about it if it's not classified. That's pretty awesome, especially as you've grown so many plants for it already!

I'll write it up at TJ. It's also in the TV Crosstalk section. This past summer I had 37 disappointing F3's and one with fantastic taste!

I do have the space for endless tomatoes... but usually 10-14 plants, 4-6 varieties is what I do every year.

@ tormato

1,000 tom plants! OMG! and at 5.28 feet apart (approx 1.6m).. that´s a pretty wide spacing isn´t it? I am guessing you are growing more than 1 stem from a single plant. And in a single row! Blimey… that´s a really really long line. You have piqued my interest for sure! Or you are pulling my limbs apart again. lol

And hello to my fellow TJs - Shule, Nan, Patti and whomever else I might have missed out. =)))

1000 x 5.28 = 5,280 ft = exactly 1 mile of tomatoes ;-)

cheers Nan =)

lawdy lawd! I know. I had to convert that to kilometres… that´s 1.6km! Sheeeesh! LOL

That is truly insane and mind boggling! I should use Tormato as a benchmark! 1,000 tom plants! Think the poor hubby will either kill me or admit me to the looney house. LMAO

no offence to you Tormato… you are so definitely my Tomato Hero/Angel/Devil! ^-^

The thread title is "How many tomatoes WOULD you grow?".

I would, if I could, but I would have to win the lottery (or get a would-be online business up and running) to buy the land that's 1 mile long, and an unknown width. I CAN dream about it, though.

I figure I'd have two black/burgundy/dark tomatoes among the 1,000. One at each end of the row, They would be sacrificial plants, for any varmints that show up from either direction and want to take a sample bite. :)

So if I plant tomatoes in a lot that's a square acre 209' on a side I would need 152 feet by the 209 feet to plant the 1000 tomato plants. Assuming 6 foot rows. Rechecking my math that looks like I'd get an extra 12 plants which I'll take to make sure 1000 tomato plants survive!

That sounds doable.

Lol, I wouldn't even know what to do with 1000 plants!

I was running through "color years" to try out a lot of seed I got in a tomato trade here in 2012-13? I was doing 2-3 plants of 8-10 kinds at the time... after the bumper crop year of the whites, I kind of cut back, lol. It was just more than I needed or wanted to process every year.

LMAO! Tormato! You got to many of us! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...you you you! LOL

You truly detest black toms huh! lol

The 1,000 would just be a test year, to see how things would go.

From there, would it be 2 rows/2,000 plants?, 3 rows/3,000 plants?, etc...

No matter how many rows, I would have to increase the black varieties to four, covering the four corners. ;)

Honestly, 20-30 probably at home. However, I also volunteer for a few organizations with gardens, meaning that I'll also be involved in planting and caring for a few dozen more!

Well, I have 85 acres or so but a lot of that is cattle pasture and hay field, LOL. Oh, and a couple of 3 acre ponds...

Still, I have a pretty big garden. Last year I cut down on my tomatoes a little, I grew 12 Great White, 3 Sungold, 3 Pineapple, 3 Hillbilly, 9 Golden Jubilee, one that was supposed to be chocolate cherry but I think it was actually Cherokee, although it was "chocolate". Also 6 Mortgage Lifters, 3 Garden Peach, 3 Giraffe (which did nothing at all, so plants but not a single tomato), 3 Pruden's Purple which produced exactly two tomatoes total, and 24 Rutgers for canning. So, 70 tomato plants. The year before I planted 94 and that was a bit excessive.

Annie

So, Annie, how many are you planning on this year? There's only me, but I'd like to grow a lot for canning, especially your salsa. Everyone loves it. I'd like enough to cover my needs, give away to friends and to take to Mother's Cupboard, the local, I guess you'd call it a soup kitchen. And it would be nice to donate some to St. Vincent de Paul. An elderly man who came in to the garden center last year grew tons of tomatoes just to able to give to the needy. I think he had an acre in tomatoes.

Madonna

Madonna, I'll go with at least 6 dozen, I can get a dozen per row in my garden, so I always try to work in 12s, LOL. I'm sorry I didn't get back with you sooner, I've been reading the seed catalogs. (grin)

That gives me lots of tomatoes. I canned several batches of salsa, then did Chase's chile sauce, which the kids like to use for sloppy joes, so I made 48 pints of that. I canned tomatoes, and tomato sauce and tomato marmalade and enchilada sauce. I have two elderly aunts that still can, so I took tomatoes to them. Our Township Clerk is a friend and she had carpal tunnel surgery and so couldn't have a garden, and I gave her a couple of bushels. The B&B across the street bought some, both my daughters used some, and the police officer across the street ate as many Sun Sugar as he could consume. The rest went to the local food pantry, they are always happy to have fresh produce, so they get the zucchini, the extra cucumbers when I'm done making pickles, they even take the kale when I have extra.

Of course, we have to have tomato omelettes and tomato sandwiches and tomato and zucchini gratin. Everyone was happy until the tomato hornworms moved in. I plucked tomato worms and gave them to the chickens by the dozens, and after I finally got that infestation under control, the tomatoes never recovered.

So, anyway, the short answer is 72, and that's a mixture of slicing tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and canning tomatoes. Gives me plenty to can and extra to give away, especially the Rutgers which give me bushels all at once. My highest yield, though, is always from Golden Jubilee. they like the weather here, grow like crazy, bear prolifically and make some startlingly neon orange soup.

Annie

We used to grow Golden Jubilee in Ohio and yep, we would get bumper crops. Then somehow I couldn't find seeds for them for a few years. I was very excited to find some last year (first year of gardening in Alabama) and they did ... nothing. But not much else did anything either except for the cherries. We had a bumper crop of those! I did get some almost decent Mortgage Lifters before the heat/bugs/disease got them too :-(