the mountain pride hybrid tomato is a big and delicious meaty tomato variety
that is very disease-resistant let's see how to grow this tomato variety in
containers
so in our earlier episodes we saw how to grow different kinds of tomatoes like
grape tomatoes roma tomatoes this time we're gonna grow a tomato that's a
beefsteak kind of tomato these are huge tomatoes that can be grown in containers if you
follow the right techniques for the container we're using a whisky barrel which
will provide enough room for this tomato plant to grow and remember that this
mountain pride hybrid is a determinate tomato variety which means that it will
grow produce a lot of tomatoes and then it will stop growing
it won't grow indefinitely like the indeterminate tomato varieties so that
makes it a good candidate for growing in containers and that's exactly what you
see here we have secured this tomato plant with this tomato cage and if you want to
take a look at all the tomato cages available you can see this video on your
screen which will give you the details and in just a few days in the warm month
of June you can see that the tomato plant has grown pretty well and has almost
occupied the entire whiskey barrel container Now this whiskey barrel
container does contain a lot of soil it's about two or three times the
capacity of a five-gallon pot and that gives a tomato plant enough room to grow
and as you can see herr this plant has now started flowering and it's about
mid June right now and you can see a lot of flowers being produced by this
plant and there you can see that I have pruned this plant at some of the nodes
the suckers have been removed and I do this mostly for determinate tomato
varieties and that too if I'm growing them in containers if I'm growing the
tomato plants on the ground or on raised beds I do not prune the plant a
lot but I do remove the diseased and the dead leaves so in about mid July you can see
that the plant is loaded with fruits of these lovely looking tomatoes
and if you think these tomatoes are big well just wait and see how big they can
get now I'd like to mention that when growing tomatoes one of the keys to growing
great tomatoes is to make sure that you prune all dead leaves, disease stems make sure
that the bottom part of the tomato plant is clean this allows a lot of air to
get in and it prevents fungal diseases for your tomato plants and overall is a very
important step in growing tomatoes something that a lot of us all overlook
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And as you can see here in August
the tomatoes have started ripening they've started becoming red
so I'm going to harvest this tomato from the plant and my first harvest is
usually the one that I ripen on the shelf and what this does is that it lets
me eat some tomatoes while the other tomatoes are ripening on the vine and
once again the ones the ones ripening on the vine taste a lot better however if you
want some tomatoes go ahead and harvest a few you can put them on the shelves
easily and use them
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And in the hot summer months you need to water your tomato plants very well
tomatoes might need watering once a day sometimes even twice a day in the hot
summer months so make sure that your tomato plants hydrated or what will
happen is that your fruits will start cracking from the bottom which is not a
good thing for good-looking tomatoes you need to make sure that you water your
tomato plants very well especially during the growing season which is the
hot summer months and I wont be discussing much about the kind of
fertilizer you need to use for this tomatoes because I have discussed that on a
lot of my other videos you can see some of those videos on your screen now
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So let's talk a little about this tomato variety
this Mountain pride hybrid tomato variety
was developed at the North Carolina State University
and it was developed as a part of the mountain series of tomatoes and it instantly
became a big hit because the plant produced really nice sized tomatoes that
were very delicious and the plant is very easy to grow because it is resistant
to a lot of diseases which makes it easy for the home gardener to grow this and
it also grows great in containers because it's a determinate tomato
variety now you can grow indeterminate tomato varieties in containers but you
have to make sure that you prune your plant well, otherwise you're plants are gonna grow out
of control
they're pretty large and they're pretty meaty and we'll soon cut one tomato to
find out how nice they are you can see some really good fruit being produced by
this tomato plant
so this is our harvest as you can see almost perfect tomatoes I did see a little bit
of cracks on the top part of the tomato however that's very very minor this is a
great looking tomato and let's cut open this tomato to see how it looks
like from the inside
so as you can see very meaty very nice looking tomato that's perfect for slicing and
cooking and I really like the tomato variety it was not an easy to grow but
they tasted absolutely delicious Now one thing that I must tell you about
this tomato variety and I've noticed that so far in growing this tomato plant is
that after it produces these large tomatoes on the bottom part of plant the
top part of the plant just grows to about five feet and then stops now this might
be just the way the tomato plant grows however I'm waiting to see the plant
will still produce more tomatoes however late in the season due to the heat the
high heat the pollen from the tomato flower becomes unviable which means that it
cannot set fruit so a lot of you have asked me this question as to why doesn't
my tomato plants set fruit well your temperatures are high
you have to choose varieties that are resistant to high temperatures like the
juliet variety. This tomato variety is a very prolific very nice tomato
variety that I can highly recommend especially to people who grow them in
containers so that's all for today let me know your comments
let me know if you've tried growing the tomato variety before and if not are you
planning to grow it I'll see you again soon
happy gardening