What 40 Years of Growing Tomatoes has Taught Me

Everyone has their own way of growing tomatoes. There those who trellis or stake, some that use store bought cages and others who make their own. Everyone has their own special way of feeding or caring for the plants once they are planted. I have no intention of telling people that they are not growing their tomatoes the "right way" way, but there are a few things I see people doing which limits their tomato production. So in this blog post I am going share a few of my tomato growing secrets and talk about some important things to know about growing tomatoes.

Since it is past seed starting time I will skip past that in this post and go straight to getting them in the ground and caring for them. Every year at tomato planting time I break out my fishing gear and head to my favorite spot to fish for fertilizer. I don't care what I catch, but I don't take large or desirable fish out of the lake. I will let someone who will eat them have those. What I want are the small guys and bottom feeders that no one will miss. Pumpkin Seed, small bluegill and catfish are what I hope to catch. Once I have a bucket full of fish I will head home and begin to plant my tomatoes. I dig a deep hole and place a piece of fish at the bottom of the hole. Then I trim off the bottom set of leaves or two depending on the size of the tomato seedling, and plant the tomato in the ground   on top of the piece of fish then I cover them with dirt above where I trimmed off the leaves. Tomato can be planted deep in the soil. They will grow roots all along their stems which will  help to anchor it and draw up more nutrients making for a stronger tomato plant. The fish is easy to access nutrition for the tomato while it is establishing in its permanent location.

Readily available natural fertilizer to give my tomato the best start in life possible.

Half a Pumpkin Seed fish at the bottom of the tomato hole will provide easy to access nutrients and help prevent transplant shock.

This seedling is ready for planting. It is large enough to stand up to some wind and driving rain and has plenty of leaf branches.

Here I have removed the bottom couple leaf branches so that I can plant it deeply in the soil.

The plant is deeply planted and will grow roots all along the stem under the soil to provide stability and better uptake of nutrients.

Here is what the plant looks like 6 weeks after planting. Healthy and laden with ripening fruit.



Once the tomato is given a nice deep hole and some easy to access nutrients, the next thing to consider is how to keep the plant healthy. Here in North Carolina, Early Blight is a real problem. Early Blight is a soil borne fungus that causes the leave to yellow and wither and will reduce the plants production substantially

Early Blight fungus takes a perfectly health plant and reduces it to yellowing leaves and bare vines.
(Photo from Google search no photo credits given)

Early Blight will also reduce production and cause misshapen  or small fruit
(Photo from Google search no photo credits given)

It is very simple to prevent Early Blight. Since it is a soil borne fungus, all that must be done to prevent it is to provide a deep mulch or ground cover  under the tomato plants that keeps soil from splashing up on the leaves.  I use a landscaping cloth that easily passes water, bu prevents splash. It has the added benefit of suppressing weeds. Most years I also put a layer of wood mulch on top of the cloth to further prevent splash and help to hold in moisture.

Tomatoes prefer to be watered at their roots. Although this isn't always possible, if it is it will help to prevent fusarium wilt and powdery mildew. If you have these problems, then it is important to water at the roots and never touch the leaves of the plant when they are wet. 

Tomato Hornworms can wreak havoc on your plants as well. There are a few tried and true organic ways to eliminate them. You can spray your plants with Bt, (Bacillus Thuringiensis, trade name Dipel) at the first sign of damage. It is a naturally occurring bacterium, that paralyzes the digestive system of leaf eating caterpillars. It is safe for humans animals and beneficial insects with the exception of butterfly caterpillars, so be sure to avoid getting the Bt on the plants where butterfly caterpillar feed, like dill, parsley and milkweed. I don't use Bt on my tomatoes, but I do use it on anything in the cabbage family since looper worms are difficult to control any other way. The reason I choose not to use it on my tomatoes is because it is easy to see where the worm are at work and pick them off and destroy them,. This given me one less area I need to spray. The only time I leave the caterpillars alone is when they have little white cocoons on their backs. The natural predator of the Tomato Hornworn is a parasitic wasp that lays its young in the back of the Hornworm. The young feed on the caterpillar, killing it and creating more predators for the worms. 

Tomato Hornworm
(Photo from Google search no photo credits given)

Remove but do not destroy the caterpillar that has these cocoons on its back.

Now that the tomato is protected from disease and pests, the next concern is how to increase productivity and quality of the tomato fruits. Tomatoes are heavy feeders so I feed mine a side dressing of compost when they begin to bear fruit and feed them with a diluted solution of fish emulsion as a foliar feeding and at the roots every few weeks, plus bonemeal every two weeks,once the plants start putting out flowers. Feeding is important, but the plants will really excel when they are judicially pruned to channel the strength of the plant to fruit production instead of spending energy on foliage. It also helps light reaches the fruit and helps the bees to find the flowers to pollinate. 

I know that there is much talk in gardening circles about pinching "suckers" to increase production. But it is important to understand what the sucker really is. It is said that little leaflets that appear in the crotch of the stem and tomato branch are the "suckers" that tomato growers are encouraged to pinch, but if you pay attention to the habits of the tomato plant you will see that this in incorrect. In truth, the leaflet in the crotch will become a fruiting branch and the leafy branch that it is attached to to the stem of the tomato is actually the part that need to be removed.  If you look closely you will notice that as the leaflet in the crotch grows, the leafing branch below will bend downward. This leafing branch will never produce flowers and should be removed, not the leaflet.

 In the following series of photos I will plead my case and you can see if you agree with me. Below is a photo of the stem and leafing branch with the "sucker" growing in the crotch. 

It has been said that the "sucker" should be pinched, but in doing so you are actually removing the fruiting stem and leaving an non producting leafy branch.

The leafy branch, "non bearing leaf" that is pointing down will never produce fruit. It should be removed to allow for the fruiting branch to have the energy to produce more fruit.

When the leaflet in the crotch is a couple inches tall and the leafing branch is beginning to point downwards it is time to prune off the leafy branch leaving the center leaflet to become a fruiting branch.

The bottom circle shows that this is the leaflet growing in the crotch, the top circle shows the forming flower spurs. If you had pinched this as a "sucker" you would have reduced your production by 4 to 6 tomatoes for each one you pinched out.

The proof is in the pudding... What was originally thought of as a "sucker" that takes strength from the plant and reduces production, is actually a fruiting spur and the leafy branch that would be left if you pinched the spur is what should be removed to give strength to the spur.

Hopefully this is not confusing. I have tried to lay it out clearly, but if anyone doesn't understand, leave a comment and I will try to clarify.

Well, I have probably talked enough about tomatoes today so I will stop here and continue next time with how I increase productivity in Determinate tomato varieties. Hope to see you then!

As always I love comments. They help me to feel like I am not just talking to myself :) Please feel free to tell me what you think or just to say "howdy!"

Some Thoughts on Tomato Varieties

This post is overdue. My spring was full and blogging unfortunately took a backseat to an array of other things. So here we go, better late than never...

Tomatoes are serious business here at Heart's Ease Cottage. We only eat fresh tomatoes in season, since in the off seasons even the organically grown tomatoes at the store are a sad lot. So we really  look forward to the day we can eat our fresh, homegrown, warm off the vine 'maters.

We start our tomatoes from seed in our indoor seed starting system. I have my favorites that I plant every year and usually try a new variety or two in search of new favorites. There are 2 kinds of tomatoes, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate varieties ripen heavy flushes of fruit at once and then after a few flushes will die off. Indeterminate varieties will produce less fruit at once, but with proper pruning and feeding will produce consistently over a long season.

For preserving I stick with the meaty Roma style tomato. San Marzano and Amish Paste tomatoes are my stand-bys. San Marzano is a determinate variety, as all Romas are, so they put on a lot of fruit that ripens in flushes, usually 2 large flushes and one smaller one and then the plants are done. You can eek out a few tomatoes from there on but it is really not worth the bother or the garden space to try and squeeze any more out from the vines. San Marzano is a heavy yielder of uniformly sized fruit, that is great for drying, canning as sauce and stewed tomatoes, and also works very well for salsa and relish. Amish Paste tomato is determinate, with thick, blocky tomatoes that have dense flesh and very few seeds. They make wonderful sauce and paste as well as dried tomatoes. Their one draw back is that they do not produce as many tomatoes per plant as the San Marzano. This is probably because the dense fruit takes longer to ripen. You will get one solid flush and a smaller second flush and then the plant is done. I would have to plant about twice as many Amish Paste Tomatoes to get the same amount of fruit as I get from San Marzano. So I use the Amish Paste tomatoes for specific purposes, paste and dried tomato powder, and grow San Marzano for the bulk of my preserving needs. I do have a way to extend the growing season of a determinate tomato variety, but I will have to write another blog post on that to keep this post from becoming a book. I promise I will share this technique in a future post!

San Marzano is a good Roma Type Tomato for sauce, paste and drying
(Photo from Google search had no Photo credit posted)

Amish Paste Tomato is a blocky, meaty tomato good for paste, sauce and drying
(Photo from Google search had no photo credit)

Indeterminate tomatoes do not make very good candidates for preserving. They have too much water and too many seeds. But they make great tomatoes for slicing and fresh eating. There are some indeterminate, open pollinated slicers, but I usually don't grow them. I grow heirloom and open pollinated varieties for many of the vegetables in our garden so that I can save seed, but since I grow a lot of varieties of tomatoes, I can't save the seed, so I grow a mixed bag of hybrid and open-pollinated tomatoes for fresh eating.

Many of the open pollinated and heirloom tomatoes are large, juicy fruits that can weigh a pound or more a piece and take forever to ripen.  I don't like wet tomatoes for sandwiches because I hate soggy bread, so I prefer to grow a smaller 4-6 ounce hybrid tomato that gets ripe fast, fits neatly on my sandwich without overhang and won't make my bread soggy. I do grow heirloom varieties for eating straight off the vine like and apple or for slicing as a side dish with a sprinkle of basil strips and some freshly cracked pepper.... my mouth is watering as I type... but most of my slicing tomatoes are hybrid. Hybrids are also less prone to Cat Facing, and splitting since they don't suck up so much water.

So what varieties of indeterminate tomatoes do I grow? I am very fond of Celebrity (hybrid) for sandwiches, it is a nice 4-6 oz. tomato with a thin tender skin. I also grow German Pink (Open Pollinated), Black Cherokee (Open Pollinated) and some variety of orange tomato. Of course there is the Sweet 100 (heirloom) cherry tomato that produces quantities of sweet, "pop in your mouth while weeding goodness" (only need one of these babies...), and Yellow Pear (heirloom), and the Rutger (Open Pollinated), an 8 oz determinate slicer  that is has good flavor and not too many seeds. Others that I adore but haven't planted this year are the Currant tomato, which is a slightly larger than a pea sized tomato that is a powerhouse of tomato flavor in a tiny package. Warning this volunteers prolifically and where ever you last planted it is going to have a mass of volunteers the following year, brace yourself and treat them as weeds except for the one or two you want to transplant for this years consumption). Indigo Rose for it's beautiful almost black color and anathocyanins that have proved to help prevent cancer, I also really enjoy the heirloom Pineapple tomato. It is delicious, but often split and beaks on the vine because they take up so much water, so I only grow it on occasion.

Celebrity is a hybrid, 4-6 oz. slicer with good taste and thin skin
(Photo found on Google search not photo credit given)

Rutger is a determinate  open pollinated slicer. It has a good flavor and size but is not a long season variety
(Photo found on Google search no photo credit given)

Indigo Rose_ lovely and delicious 

Tomato varieties I don't bother to grow: Mortgage Lifter, it is so huge I can't get it out of my tomato cage without great effort and it is sloppy wet, mealy and won't keep, I don't grow Beefsteak for the same reason. Big Boy isn't prolific enough to give it garden space. I don't grow Grape tomatoes because they are shaped like a torpedo and are a choking hazard, (personal issue...).

So what do I do with all these tomatoes??  I will tell you in an upcoming post that will include some of my favorite fast and easy recipes.  But for now I am trying to catch up on overdue blog posts so I will end this here and start my next post and what 40 years of growing tomatoes has taught me.