Of all the pleasures of summer, tomato gardening is surely one of the finest. The flavor of homegrown heirloom tomatoes is a thousand times that of any supermarket tomato. Commercially grown tomatoes are bred for easy shipping and long shelf life at the expense of taste and texture.
Unlike many persnickety fruits and vegetables that challenge backyard gardeners, tomato gardening is relatively easy armed with a little knowledge.
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Determinate varieties of tomatoes grow to a specific height and then produce their fruit all at one time. These varieties are ideal for canning or freezing large amounts of tomatoes, or for making salsa. Determinate tomatoes are sometimes called ‚”bush tomatoes.” The Bush Early Girl is a good variety, producing tasty fruits that measure four inches across. The Bush Big Boy is also a good selection, well-known for its high yield and 101-ounce fruits.
Indeterminate varieties are vine tomatoes, which continue to grow throughout the season. Indeterminate tomatoes produce fruit throughout the summer and fall, making a good choice for gardeners who enjoy slicing tomatoes for hamburgers or salads. Better Boy is a terrific choice for an indeterminate tomato, producing large, bright red 16-ounce fruits. Big Beef is also a great selection; it makes a good slicing tomato.
Cherry tomatoes make a good choice for the patio gardener. Cherry tomatoes come in many varieties, make great additions to salads or party trays, and can be grown in containers. The Super Sweet 100 Hybrid produces multiple branches with large clusters of tomatoes.
One of the best cherry tomato varieties for home growing is the Sweet Baby Girl Hybrid, which has small and easy-to-train vines. For a colorful addition to the patio, try Burpee’s Tangerine Mama, which produces 3- to 4-ounce bright orange fruits. Cherry tomatoes are fun to grow, ripen quickly, and make healthy snacks.
Tomatoes come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. To ensure a year-long harvest, purchase both indeterminate and determinate varieties. For smaller gardens, a few cherry tomato plants and one determinate variety may be all that is needed.
One heartbreaking situation sometimes faced by tomato gardeners is blossom drop. The plants look beautiful, green, and healthy, but the blossoms drop and the fruit does not set. The culprit is most likely ineffective pollination. This can occur for at least three different reasons.
The wild ancestors of our cultivated tomatoes today were not self-pollinating. Even today, tomato flowers vary in their tendency to be completely self-pollinating. Tomatoes are grown outdoors in breezy conditions usually can pollinate adequately.
In some climates and greenhouses, tomatoes may need to be shaken a little to give pollination a boost. There are small electric appliances sold for use in greenhouses that cause a small vibration of the flowers. Giving tomatoes a little shake every day might help a gardener if there is little to no wind.
Tomato varieties are not all the same, but generally, tomatoes need “Goldilocks” temperatures‚ not too hot, not too cold! If nighttime temperatures are below 55 ¬∞ F or above 75 ¬∞ F, pollen tubes might not form correctly. (This can happen even if the pollen reaches the stigma.)
If daytime temperatures are too high, somewhere between 90 ° F to 95 ° F, tomatoes will not set fruit. Research has suggested damage to pollen, and possibly damage to ovules. Either way, gardeners will see a dramatic drop in fruit set under high-temperature conditions.
Tomatoes should not be set out too early unless they are protected from low temperatures. The best hot-weather strategy is to try to ensure that a crop has been pollinated before the onset of hot weather for a given area.
Of course, gardeners cannot predict the weather, but experienced gardeners have some idea of what to expect. Starting plants indoors very early or paying extra to purchase larger plants from a nursery can pay off.
If larger plants are set out in the garden, chances are better for earlier flowers. Earlier flowering means earlier pollination. If the fruit is set before the onset of hot weather, the fruit will ripen normally.
It is extra work to handle and transplant larger tomato plants when starting a garden, especially vining (indeterminate) varieties. But the extra effort can be worth it for gardeners who live in areas where hot summer weather begins early.
Setting seedlings out under a hoop house can also be a way of planting moderately sized tomato plants earlier in weather that might be a little too cool. The hoop house can help keep tomato plants warmer, especially at night. Then, when temperatures warm up, the plants are established and ready to flower.
The only gardeners who have any hope of controlling humidity are greenhouse growers. But it bears mentioning that humidity can lead to failed pollination. (Sometimes gardeners feel a little better if they at least have an explanation for things that go wrong in the garden!)
If humidity is too high, pollen can clump together and this can interfere with the ability of fruit set. If the humidity is too low, the pollen may not stick to the stigma. University of Nevada research indicates 40% to 70% as the optimum range for humidity.
Ideally, you should start heirloom tomato plants indoors eight weeks before the desired transplant date, which should be after the last frost date for your area. If your tomato gardening season is short, you’ll get more bang for your buck if you choose “early” tomato varieties with shorter days to maturity. Keep in mind that if a given tomato variety requires 70 days to mature, this is the time from transplanting into the garden, not seeding.
One of the most important aspects of growing tomatoes is the process of gradually exposing tender seedlings to cool outdoor air. This “hardening off” decreases transplant shock, which can damage and sometimes kill fledgling heirloom tomato plants.
If you have heavy clay or sandy soil, enrich it by digging in an ample amount of compost, peat, or other organic material. This increases drainage and adds nutrients. If you want to grow organic heirloom tomatoes, forgo chemical fertilizers. If you do use them, avoid ones with high nitrogen content, which encourages foliage growth at the expense of fruit production.
Unlike most other plants, tomato seedlings prefer to be planted deep. Transplant tomatoes so that the first set of leaves is just above the new soil level. Space tomato plants 18″ to 24″ apart, with at least three feet between rows.
In tomato gardening, nothing is more important than an even and constant water supply. Too little water will lead to small, cracked fruit. Too much water will lead to rotten, wilted plants. But how much to water and when isn’t as hard as it may seem.
Tomato watering needs vary depending on their stage of growth. When first planting, water seedlings deeply, and water at least once a day up until a week after planting. Between one and two weeks, water at least every other day. After two weeks, your growing tomatoes will need to be watered once or twice a week, making sure to maintain a consistent watering schedule.
The most important part of watering tomatoes is maintaining constant, even moisture throughout the growing season, making sure the water reaches the depth of the roots. An easy way to check if your tomatoes need water is to check the top inch of soil with your finger. If the soil is dry, the plant needs water. If the soil is moist, the plant does not need water.
Never water the leaves of your tomato plant. This can spread diseases from the leaves of the plant to the soil. Always water the plant at the soil level.
Make sure to check your growing tomatoes every day to see if they need water, as their watering needs may change based on the weather. In hot, dry weather the plants will need to be watered more often. If humid, or in the rainy season, the plants will need less water. Watering your tomato garden too much will result in waterlogging, which will cause your tomatoes to split, and the plant to rot. Remember, the roots need air to breathe as well as water to drink.
Your tomato watering needs will also depend on the type of soil in which they are growing. If they are in sandy soil, they will likely need more water. If you are watering more, but the plants are still wilting, try mulching around the plants to conserve more water. Tomato plants that are not watered adequately will produce small fruit, which may dry up and crack before ripening.
Another problem caused by dry soil is called blossom end rot. According to Steve Reiners at Cornell University, tomatoes absorb calcium, an important nutrient, from the soil. If the soil is too dry, the roots cannot absorb the calcium. This results in a dry, brown, leathery patch at the bottom of the tomato fruit. Although there are products that you can buy to help with this problem, nothing is as effective as adequate watering. Reiners suggests mulching to avoid water loss and never letting the soil dry out.
Keep your heirloom tomato plants uniformly moist but not soggy. Uneven watering encourages diseases such as blossom-end rot. This may mean watering seedlings every other day until established, and then watering the tomato plants often enough to keep the root zone damp. During hot spells, you may need to water your tomato garden daily.
Indeterminate tomato varieties require support, such as wire tomato cages or sturdy stakes. To avoid damaging the stems, use strips of cloth or other soft ties to secure the vines.
Pruning tomato plants increases fruit size and keeps the vines from overtaking your garden. When side shoots develop at leaf axles (the “V”), pinch them off with your fingers or snip with scissors. Also, pinch stems when they’ve reached the top of their support system.
When you take that first tangy bite of the season’s first homegrown heirloom tomato, you will know that all your tomato gardening efforts have been worth it!
Early Blight affects the stems, fruits, and foliage of the plant. It is distinguished by dark spots, usually appearing first on the oldest leaves. The remainder of the leaf can become discolored and yellow, causing the fruit to become scalded by the sun. To solve this issue, remove the affected plants away from the rest and spray with a copper or sulfur spray to stop the fungus from developing any further.
Grey Leaf Spot only affects the tomato’s leaves, again, starting with the oldest. Little, dark patches can be seen on both the top and bottom of the leaves. These spots will then get wider and turn gray in color. After this, the center of these spots falls out, leaving holes in the plant’s leaves. This disease can be avoided by choosing a resistant variety.
Southern Blight is a disease that appears as a pale mold developing on the lower section of the plant’s stem. Dark spots then appear on the lower part of the stem. This prevents the stem from taking water and nutrients to the rest of the plant. If this happens to a very young plant, the stem may even break in the affected area. Evidence shows that this disease can be prevented by rotating your plants around and using fertilizers with ammonium content.
Aphids are a very common pest. They are very small in size and tend to be green or black. They gather on the underside of leaves or along stems. Because they are a sucking insect, they cause leaves to become curled and distorted. Small infestations can be quickly blasted away with water or pruned off. Another option is to apply insecticide products locally to the plant.
Blister beetles are black or striped beetles that eat the plant’s leaves. You can usually see them later in the season, around July and August. They can be hand-picked from the plant, but be sure to protect your hands with gloves as they let out a caustic fluid to defend themselves. You can also control them with chemicals such as pyrethrins.
Grasshoppers are a great problem as they eat almost any plant. A good way to stop them from eating your plants is to use grasshopper bait. There are many kinds of bait available and it is always better to choose one that is not harmful to anything else in your garden, such as wild animals and birds, as well as humans too!
A common disease of tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, and peppers is blossom-end rot, which appears as dark sunken areas at the bottom of fruits. Blossom-end rot is rooted in soil conditions and watering habits.
Large amounts of water followed by prolonged dry spells cause blossom-end rot. It is best not to let the soil dry out completely before tomatoes are watered again. Mulch spread around the root zone – but not packed against the stem, will help conserve moisture and keep soil-borne diseases from splashing onto foliage and fruits.
Hornworms, the larvae of a large brown moth, are the same color as plant leaves and difficult to spot. Look for piles of dark droppings on lower leaves and inspect the undersides of denuded stems.
‚”With this perfect camouflage coloration, tomato hornworms may go unnoticed until they reach nearly full size,” Michigan State University entomologist Walter Pett said in a news release. ‚”At this point, they can defoliate whole plants virtually overnight.”
As long as you check your tomato plants regularly, they should grow healthy and problem-free.
Plastic 5-gallon buckets work great for growing tomatoes upside down, but they need to have lids like the buckets in which paint or pool chlorine tablets come. Restaurants generally can provide these buckets, because many food items are delivered in them, or they can be purchased at most hardware stores.
Make sure to wash the buckets with a natural dish detergent and hot water before beginning this project. It is also possible to change the color of the buckets by painting them with special spray paint designed specifically for plastic that is available at most hardware stores.
First, turn the bucket upside down and use a utility knife to cut about a 3-inch hole in the bottom of the bucket. Alternatively, a drill with a hole cutting bit used for installing door knobs can be used to cut the hole.
Next, turn the bucket over and cut a 3-inch hole in the center of the lid. Take off the lid and place several layers of newspaper in the bottom of the bucket to cover the hole.
Fill the bucket with 40 lbs of premium potting soil mixed with the directed amount of four-month time-release fertilizer, or an appropriate organic substitute like crab meal. Vermiculite or Perlite may be added in place of 50% of the soil to improve water retention, which is especially helpful in hot or dry climates.
For an even better soil environment, add a few worms before closing the bucket. Place a piece of screen on top of the soil and secure the lid.
Next, turn the bucket upside down and cut a couple of slits in the newspaper. Dig out a small cavity and plant the tomato plant inside. It is best to start with a small tomato plant around 10 inches tall and bury 80% of the plant to stimulate root growth.
Grow the plant right side up until it reaches 10 inches above the bucket and then it is ready for hanging. It is important to have a secure fixture for hanging the bucket and to hang it at a sufficient height to accommodate the tomato plant’s growth, generally at least six feet high.
T shaped poles that are sold for clotheslines and cemented into the ground make excellent hanging structures and may hang two to four buckets each.
The tomato plants can be watered and fertilized through the top holes and will take much less water than those grown on the ground due to the closed container. These upside-down tomatoes are sure to turn some heads in the garden and the kitchen at harvest time.
Tomatoes taste absolutely heavenly fresh from the garden. It is always the right time to plan next summer’s garden.
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