How to grow great tomatoes
The first step in getting a bountiful harvest lies in planting them right
Everybody’s favorite warm-season garden star?
Tomatoes. We plant them, we nurture them, we rejoice with every yellow blossom
Q and, in harmony, we curse How early can you the dreaded tomato horned plant tomatoes outside worm when it inevitably appears. in the East Bay, specifically Moraga?
In our recent Gardening
A 101 webinar, viewers No matter where you had so many questions live, the main factor about tomatoes we in planting is the soil temperature. couldn’t answer them all. For tomatoes, So here’s the information peppers and other warmseason you need to create a tomato crops, the soil temperature heaven in your garden, should be at least whether it’s in your 60 degrees. Peppers actually backyard or in containers prefer it a little on the patio or balcony. warmer, 65 to 75.
You can invest in a soil thermometer, or just wait until we’re having warming daytime and nighttime temperatures, which generally arrive in May.
The secret recipe
the lower leaves were, creating a strong, extensive root system that will support a robust, thriving plant.
Let’s pick some tomato questions
The secret to growing good tomatoes starts with how you plant them, which is deeper in the ground
Q than you might think. I plant primarily in
Trim off the lower leaves containers. Can I use on the plant, leaving the top the same container and third in place. Then dig a soil I previously planted hole deep enough to bury tomatoes in for planting the plant all the way up to something different? those top leaves.
A
Actually, dig it a little You can use the deeper than that, because same pots, if they’re before you plant anything, in good shape, but you’ll you’re going to toss in a need to replace the soil. handful of organic vegetable
Q fertilizer, a handful of bone I’m just starting a meal, a handful of worm garden this summer castings, a couple of pulverized in planter boxes. Should I egg shells and two or rotate next year or can I three uncoated aspirin tablets plant the same veggies? I — yes, aspirin! — into plan on planting herbs, tomatoes, each hole. You also can add cucumbers. a fish head, if you’ve got one.
A
Cover the additives with a The basic guideline bit of soil and add the plant. for crop rotation
Fill in the hole, burying the is to avoid planting plant so only the leafy top is crops from the same family above ground, and create a (such as the solanaceae water well around the base family, which includes tomatoes, of the plant. Water gently, peppers, eggplant but thoroughly, and wait for and potatoes) in the same the magic. spot year after year. Generally,
Roots will develop where waiting three years
to plant those crops in the same place again is recommended, so you avoid building up soil-borne pathogens that thrive on that particular plant family.
You can grow the same plants, just not in the same places they were last season. Grow tomatoes where you grew your herbs, herbs where you grew your cucumbers, and cucumbers where your tomatoes were.
Q
Should I remove my tomato plant’s suckers — the leaves or little shoots that grow where the branch meets the stem?
A
Yes. They won’t produce tomatoes, and they take up valuable resources from the parts of the plant that do.
Q
Do you advocate putting a tomato plant on its side for a few days before planting to stimulate horizontal development of roots?
A
Rather than just putting plants on their side and later planting,
try digging a small trench that extends from the planting hole and gently bend the leggy stem into the trench and cover with soil. leaving the crown of the plant exposed above ground.
The leggy stem portion will grow vertical roots at the same time roots are extending from the root ball at the base of the plant.
Q
Will my tomato, eggplant and pepper plants from last summer survive and give vegetables this year? I have hot peppers from last year that have a lot of peppers on them.
A
If you lived in the tropics your tomatoes, peppers and eggplants could well last for more than one year. But generally in Northern California, winters are too cold, and we need to pull the plants out when they stop producing and replant when the weather warms in early spring.
Occasionally, a plant, such as your hot pepper, will over winter. You can certainly experiment with
keeping it going for another year by harvesting the fruit and then applying compost and a bit of organic fertilizer, but not till after the danger of frost.
Q
I’ve been told to cut back drastically on water to get tomatoes to ripen. Is this true of indeterminate tomatoes? My second harvest of tomatoes were much smaller and tough skinned, and I wonder if they needed more water. need to prepare the beds beforehand, adding a lot of compost and other amendments into the soil to make it very loamy. After planting, cover the beds with straw or other mulch. Water as usual until the first fruit sets, then shut off the irrigation. This should force the plants to put down deeper roots to get the water they need. Your plants could end up looking pretty sad, but the fruit will be amazing.
Q
I was going to pull my tomato plant, but it started producing again. What’s going on?
A
It’s just Mother Nature taunting us. Many tomatoes continue to produce long after the summer season has waned. If you like green tomatoes and don’t have a need for the bed, there’s no reason you can’t keep them growing, but the tomatoes won’t have enough sun and heat to ripen on the vine. Those that you ripen off the vine won’t taste as good as those you harvested in the summer. Bite the bullet, pull the plants and put something else in the bed.
Q
I get “volunteer” tomatoes every year. Should I just thin them A The method you’re describing out and go? is known as dry farming, which produces smaller, fewer and more intensely flavored tomatoes. Dry farming works with either determinate or indeterminate tomatoes, although you’ll want a variety that has a strong root system. Organic farmers in the Central Valley have experimented with many varieties and found that the hybrid Early Girl and the new variety, New Girl, do best.
Dry farming is a bit more involved than just cutting back on water. You
A
Sure, gardeners like to take advantage of freebies, and with volunteer tomatoes, you never know what you’ll get — maybe even a brand-new hybrid. But you shouldn’t count on them for your main tomato production. For one, they might not taste very good.
Let them grow, if they aren’t taking up valuable space, but plant some varieties that you know will be tasty and will produce. (Then start contemplating caprese salad recipes for summer.)