Categories: Blog

Tomatoes in Desert Gardens Part I

If you know when to harvest vegetables, then you can harvest the highest quality that your garden offers. A lot of gardeners tend to allow their vegetables to grow past the prime harvesting time. This makes many vegetables fibrous, less tender and less nutritious.

Care of Tomatoes

Tomatoes (Solarum lycopersicum: literally wolf peach)

Tomatoes are probably the most popular vegetable planted in home gardens across North America, and that stands true for the desert southwest as well.

Although tomatoes are easy to grow, take care when selecting varieties to plant. That’s because while many tomato varieties do well in other parts of the country, there are specific varieties that do well in arid climates and poorer soils.

If this is your first time trying tomatoes, know that they come in many different sizes, shapes and colors.

Tomato aficionados and botanists have argued for years about the exact origin of the tomato. Some say the plant originated in regions of Peru, while other point to southern Mexico and parts of Central America.

It is known that the plant was cultivated by various Native American peoples in southern North America, as well as Central and South America. The Mayans used tomatoes to cook with while the Puebloans of Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona and other southwestern areas believed that the seeds of the tomato conveyed some sort of oracular magic.

Part of the Nightshade family (Solanaceae), it was once thought by Europeans to be poison. That ended quickly, however, and Europeans and others began to use the vegetable as a food source.

Although most of the temperate and cooler regions of the world now treat the tomato as an annual vegetable, it is actually a perennial in its native areas. But it is a plant that likes warm weather and is extremely sensitive to frost.

Time of planting outdoors is important

You can grow the plants from seed inside and then transplant hardened seedlings into the garden, or you can buy already-hardened seedlings and transplant them immediately.

If you live in higher-elevation arid zones, which have shorter growing seasons, buy the transplants from your local nursery. If you insist on growing your own plants from seeds, start the seeds 8-10 weeks before planting them.

In warmer desert and arid areas, seeds can be planted right in the ground. Production of fruit might be later for these plants, but they are going to be much hardier than transplants, and certainly cheaper. Plant the seed about ½ inch deep in mounded hills about eight inches high. Make the hills about three feet apart, because each plant will need that much room to spread once mature. You can also plant them in rows, and thin the seedlings out to one plant every three feet.