(Photo credit: Cornell Chronicle)

The tomatoes were seeded March 13, 2017 and transplanted May 25th. As plants began fruiting and fruit began to ripen, I made sure to check each plot in each block and write down the date of the first ripe fruit in each plot. I calculated the days from seeding to first ripe fruit in order to analyze this particular parameter. How quickly tomatoes ripen here is obviously important. We have a very short season for tomatoes, and few seasons are hospitable to their growth. This is especially true for those of us close to Puget Sound, where nighttime temperatures can be 40 degrees F lower than daytime highs. In general we want them as early as possible; hoophouses, greenhouses, and cloches will help earlier ripening and a longer season, but the extra infrastructure can be more labor and resources for growers.

Unlike leaf curl and leaf cover, we’re dealing with time as a variable, so instead of ordinal data we have continuous data. With nominal and continuous variable, standard ANOVA (analysis of variance) is the easiest and best way to go about looking for significant differences. ANOVA assumes normal distribution (although it is relatively forgiving), but luckily the first ripe fruit data falls within acceptable boundaries for normality.

Days to First Ripe Fruit by Variety

ANOVA (F=13.33, P<.001) indicates significant differences are measurable between varieties. Follow up or post-hoc tests are used to look at pair-wise differences. So, ANOVA results indicate significant differences exist between varieties, but doesn’t tell us between which varieties. Post-hoc Tukey’s HSD will reveal this information. Results from Tukey’s post-hoc tests are given by letters. In other words, varieties that share the same letter are not significantly different from each other. Those that do not share a letter can be considered significantly different. The table below shows each variety, the average for the number of days from seeding until first ripe fruit, and the Tukey’s groupings.

Days to First Ripe Fruit by Block

ANOVA results (F=.15, P=.86) did not indicate significant differences attributed to block, or field position.