Tomato Stick

The exotic variety Stick (synonym for Stick) is offered to the attention of enthusiastic gardeners. Its uniqueness lies in its columnar shape. The plant really resembles a stick, on which bunches of leaves and ripening tomatoes are visible in places. Otherwise it is a standard variety, with traditional tomato flavor and quality. The culture is grown in glass, film, polycarbonate greenhouses and in the open field. The berry is consumed fresh and for canning.

Low-growing (50-100 cm) columnar compact bushes (although it is difficult to call them bushes) have almost no leaves. A small number of them are collected in bundles, dispersed and pressed against the trunk. The leaf blade has a small size and a highly corrugated surface, which makes the leaves look curly.

Yellow ordinary flowers are collected in simple inflorescences, forming 5-6 ovaries. One shoot forms up to 5 brushes. The stem of the bush is thick, needs a garter, because it cannot withstand the weight of the fruit and lays down.

The advantages of the variety:

• exotic appearance;
• mid-maturity, unpretentiousness;
• stable yields, strong immunity;
• versatility of cultivation, keeping quality and transportability;
• complete absence of side shoots and stepchildren, the possibility of compacted planting and collection of seeds.

Of the shortcomings, one can be called conditional - the need for tying, but there are few varieties that do not need such measures.

Unripe round fruits, weighing 30–60 g, are colored milky green, changing to bright red at the stage of technical ripeness. The berry is firmly adhered to the stalk, not falling off even in an overripe state. The seeds are harvested from female fruits and can be distinguished by the deepening below.

The juicy fleshy pulp has a traditional sweet and sour taste with a subtle admixture of fruity notes. The smooth skin is dense, almost imperceptible while eating, prevents cracking, provides good keeping quality and transportability.

The mid-season variety begins to give ripe fruits on the 105-110th day from the day of sowing.

The variety is considered highly productive, despite the fact that one bush is capable of producing no more than one and a half kilograms of berries. The possibility of a compacted planting allows you to collect up to 30 kg per square meter, if you comply with agrotechnical requirements. Growing in open ground or greenhouse conditions has no effect on the yield.

Young seedlings are planted in the ground 2.5–3 months after sowing the seeds. The exact timing depends on the climatic characteristics of the cultivation region.

A stick grows with one trunk, although in subsequent years, according to some gardeners, a tomato obtained from its own seeds is capable of producing up to three trunks. When growing a bush in one trunk, the optimal distance between the roots is 20 cm.

The stick is grown in the traditional seedling way. Young seedlings are transferred to a permanent place after a two-week hardening period. Containers with seedlings are taken out into the street, put on open balconies. In the early days, these should be shady areas, at night the young are brought in. At the end of the hardening procedures, all seedlings should spend the night outside, if there is no frost, and get used to the sun. After transplanting, even hardened plants need shelter from the sun for the first time if they are planted in open ground. This is especially true for plants with an open root system - it is more difficult to tolerate a change of place.

Onions, garlic, cucumbers, peas and beans, cabbage and carrots are good crop precursors. It is not recommended to plant tomatoes after peppers and eggplants, since they belong to the same (nightshade) group and have the same diseases. The principles of crop rotation are important only for open ground - no one plants carrots and onions in greenhouses.

The soil for the Stick meets the standard requirements:

• fertility;
• breathability;
• neutral acidity.

If necessary, the earth is deoxidized with dolomite or bone meal, lime fluff, gypsum or chalk. Heavy dense soil can be saddled by more loose application of humus, buckwheat or other husk, by regular sowing of green manure.

The prepared area should be well lit, protected from cold winds and drafts. The ridges are enriched with organic matter (humus, compost, bird droppings), superphosphate, wood ash, complex mineral fertilizers. Stakes are installed in the holes for support.

When transplanting, care must be taken not to deepen the root collar. The earth in the near-trunk circle is compacted, watered with warm water. The next day, it is necessary to loosen the formed crust on the surface, providing the roots with oxygen.

Further care consists in regular, but not frequent watering, weeding, loosening, subsequent hilling and mulching. Natural mulch is successfully replaced by black non-woven agrofibre. The ground under it "breathes" well, but the weeds cannot grow. Watering is carried out directly on the fabric.

After 2-3 weeks, the first feeding with nitrogen-containing fertilizers is carried out, for the second, phosphorus-potassium preparations are used. Several times a season, tomatoes are fed with mullein or nettle infusions.

The variety is highly resistant to late blight and the main diseases typical for nightshade crops. However, this does not give a 100% guarantee of successful resistance to bacterial diseases and pest attacks. For any tomatoes, aphids and spider mites, a bear and a Colorado potato beetle are dangerous. Preventive treatments with insecticides and fungicides remain mandatory, as with all varieties.

The stick exhibits excellent drought tolerance performance.

It is difficult to say for which region of Russia the variety is adapted, since it was originally oriented towards the USA. Nevertheless, the variety is grown in Transbaikalia, Krasnodar Territory, Orenburg Region, and Altai. It follows from this that a tomato can be grown by inquisitive gardeners of any region of our country, because it can be cultivated in open ground, in heated and ordinary greenhouses.