Gardening Tips

TOMATOES


Winter:

Plan where you will plant your tomatoes.

There are two types: determinate (bushy or limited height) and indeterminate (vine-like).

You can technically use cages for both, but indeterminates grow up trellises better.

To add growth from rain storms, copper is the ideal metal to use around plants but any metal will use a storm's static electricity to help things grow.  (Avoid aluminum since it's a "heavy" metal and stays in the bloodstream.)

Buy seeds, especially if you want something different than Better Boy, Early Girl, or one of the very few types sold at garden centers.  Storing them somewhere fairly cool will increase their shelf life, and most seeds don't need to be fresh every year.

Spring:

Plant seeds in  a sunny window or under a quality grow light (preferably both).

Cover the seeds loosely with plastic at first (you can add some holes to it) until you see sprouts.

Using peat pots loses more water but has better aeration, and use a potting soil or seed starter mix that has visible pearlite (the little white Styrofoam-looking pieces) to hold water.  Peat pots or other biodegradables (such as sections of cardboard egg carton) are ideal for plants you cannot transplant, but tomatoes thrive on transplanting. 

Almost anything can be used as a starter pot except things which don't drain (unless you add gravel to the bottom) or aluminum--I've used black-and-white newspaper put into sections of a cardboard paper towel tube, but that wasn't ideal.

Get the yard ready for your vegetable garden, including using things like weed fabric and leaves or mulch over your garden plot (if you didn't do this already) so that you don't have a ton of weeding to do come planing time for summer crops.

You can also plant tomatoes in spots where things like lettuce have grown, because lettuce wants shade and coolness in the summer (and it still goes to seed quickly) so find your sunniest spot for the tomatoes.  Maximum sun is good for spring lettuce and summer tomatoes, but add fertilizer.

Move the seedlings to bigger pots, as needed, or reuse garden center pots and start them in ones large enough.  Move up the light as well, and keep the plants moist.


Summer:

I know that here everyone is anxious to get tomatoes planted, but a late frost kills many of them.  Anything under 60 degrees at night usually kills a tomato plant, although it may survive the first night or two of that if it is very healthy. 

One way around this is to plant in late spring using protection such as Wall of Water.  This is a green plastic cone which you fill with water and use over individual plants.  Everyone I know who has tried them swears by them, and they are inexpensive and reusable.

I have seen someone create their own version of Wall of Water by using plastic jugs of water around plants and securing plastic sheeting (presumably with holes) around everything to create an insulating greenhouse effect.  For a year with horrible weather and snow in June, he had a thriving garden.

Row covers (thin meshy fabric which breathes and lets in sun but holds in heat) are another option, but they are better for large low sections instead of individual standing plants.  I have only seen them in gardening catalogs where I bought mine, but you need to have garden stakes to keep them in place or they will easily blow away.

Whether you follow the above methods or buy tomato plants as soon as they are in the local garden center and hope for the best, remember to put them into well-fertilized soil (including time-release fertilizer pellets, if possible) and water them often.

Put tomato cages out as soon as possible after taking down the Walls of Water, because they are harder to get on the plants without breaking stems the larger the plant becomes.


In Utah's arid climate, we have to water daily because there are usually only a few months that have rain more than as a freak occurrence (March, April, September, and October).  We have few fungal issues from overwet soil, though, unless food scraps were not fully composted before adding them to the garden and it was overwatered.

If you want to try the TopsyTurvy planters, don't.  Actually, they can be interesting, but I suggest filling them with a layer of weed fabric or nylon to help hold in more water.  They are basically sieves and all your soil nutrients run out through their holes.  Added perlite to the soil would help hold some of that water in, too.  They need to be watered twice a day here, though, or with a contraption (such as a 2-liter bottle with a few holes) to slowly water them continually.


Tomatoes need tons of sun, lots of water, and a lot of food (fertilizer), although not the same as for flowers because you want the fruit to set.

If you are using a trellis, loosely tie the stems to the trellis.  Some people use strips of nylon from old pantyhose for this because they are flexible.  Twist ties, for example, could damage the stems as they grow.

Once you have lush greenery and start gazing at your plants full of tomatoes which seem to refuse to stop matching the leaves, you can do something drastic.  Pruning a tomato plant of all leaf stems that do not include fruit or blossoms is said to make for a less-attractive but faster-producing bush.  (This is a new experiment for me this year.)  All the plant's effort will go into setting fruit and ripening instead of greenery.

Fall:

Prune off blossoms when you know tomatoes won't have enough time left to grow.  This helps the plant focus only on ripening fruit.

When it starts to near 60 degrees at night (or you hear a cold front is coming in), start using your covering methods again.  They can be loose plastic or newspapers because holding just a little heat in is all you're really going to need since any more than that is enough to have unproductive tomato plants.  Just remember to take them off during warmer times of day.

Bring in green tomatoes to ripen at room temperature or to cook green (such as breaded and deep fried).