Ep. 372 Transcript Tomato Winners (and losers) of 2024
(from the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, Dec. 27, 2024)
Farmer Fred
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener, or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred
Who were the winners? Who were the losers? No, we’re not analyzing pro or college football results today, nor, for that matter, Belgian cyclocross racing finishes.
In this episode, we reflect on the ups and downs of Northern California’s 2024 tomato gardening season, with Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California.
And anyone in the world growing tomatoes will glean valuable information from this chat, despite the truism, ALL GARDENING IS LOCAL.
We share insights on the successful varieties here, such as Rugby, Chef’s Choice, and Jet Star. But we also point out the ones that struggled, and failed, during 2024’s record-breaking July heat waves here (I’m looking at you, heirlooms!). We explore the effects of weather on tomato growth, including coping with extreme heat, and a comparison of heirloom versus hybrid tomato varieties, including planting tips.
It’s all in today’s episode number 372, “2024 Tomato Winners (and Losers!)”. We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!
2024 TOMATO WINNERS (and losers), Pt. 1
Farmer Fred:
Well, here it is, the end of the year, and we like to look back and see how we did in our garden, especially our tomato garden. How is 2024 for you? Let me know. Leave me a message on Facebook or whatever.
Leave me a note on Facebook or other social media, thank you very much, about your success and failures when it comes to your tomatoes. We are recording this on December the 18th, and I have pronounced today the official end of tomato season in my yard.
I picked the last remaining tomatoes. Ones that I would never show them to you whole because there was black mold on the tops and some cracking at the top. But the bottom half was okay for slicing, and so I put it on a roast beef sandwich, and it was delicious. And the tomato looked and tasted just like a tomato you'd buy at a grocery store, which is a terrible thing to say about a tomato, but it is December 18th.
And for us to have tomatoes a week before Christmas, that's great. It was a winning year. We had the right weather. So I was left with basically three winners in December that we're still producing, even though what was there is either very green or pretty moldy looking: Jet Star, Principe Borghese, and Rugby. I will be planting those again next year.
What are you going to plant next year? What is Don Shor going to plant next year? How did he do? He must have enjoyed this weather. It's been a long tomato season here in California. Don Shor is proprietor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, an alleged tomato head. He is one. And Don, you hector me every year about Principe Borghese, Principe Borghese. Well, finally, I grew it again. I actually did grow it like 20 years ago or so. And it was so-so. But this was a survivor. This one made it.
Don Shor:
It's a very good tomato. It's a determinate. So you can, if you wish, just crop it early. You can get it planted on Farmer Fred's birthday, which is April 28th. And you can give it a nice head start with some deep watering and maybe a little bit a fertilizer at the time you plant it and let it grow as vigorously as it chooses to, which isn't super vigorously for this one. It's a small plant and let it flower and fruit. And you can pick most of that fruit, pretty much all of it at once if you want to, sometime around into June, early July. And if you want, you can be done with it at that point. You can harvest them all, sun dry them. That's its primary use, but it's also great for sauces, great for eating fresh, excellent for salsa, one of my favorites, actually. And then you can cut it out and stick something else in that spot for the rest of the summer. So it actually has a lot of versatility for gardeners who are limited for space and want something that's kind of gourmet. I plant Principe Borghese every year, and it's one I have to grow from seed. I don't have any wholesale growers that are doing it, so I grow them for my own customers as well. It's really good to do this show December, January, so the people who are getting the seed catalogs and watching them pile up on their desks can start marking some of these varieties. Some of them you will have to order yourself. You're not going to find them in most garden centers. That is definitely one of my winners every year. I did a count this year. I counted the fruit on all of my 35 varieties.
And that one produced about 150 fruit, pretty much all at once, mostly in the first week or two of July.
Now, unlike you, I didn't pull them out, so I went ahead and left them through the summer, and I got another 50 or 60 fruit in late September, early October. These are small fruit, but that was a pretty good crop for a plant that was supposed to be determinate.
Farmer Fred:
Well, now, in my defense, the Principe Borghese is still in the ground. The plant is still there. I'm just waiting for more room in green waste to put it.
Don Shor:
Right.
Farmer Fred:
There's plenty of time.
Don Shor:
For a lot of gardeners who are limited for space, these determinate ones are really good ones to look for because I've actually done Principe Borghese in a container. Now, I used a 15-gallon container because, in my opinion, the absolute minimum soil volume to grow a tomato is one and a half cubic feet. And that's what a 15-gallon nursery tree container holds. I've done well with it that way. You are watering daily by the time you get into July, but it will do that. And then you can harvest a whole bunch. And if you wish, if you wish to be done with it at that point, that is the way determinate tomatoes are often used. Don't rush to take it out. They'll continue to set and ripen some, but if you're limited for space, that's certainly one option. It's definitely on my six-pack of varied tomatoes that I keep thinking, dreaming I'm going to someday produce and sell retail. Six varieties that you'll be able to buy all at once to be your six for this year, it would definitely be in that category.
Farmer Fred:
You scare me when you say “six-pack” when it comes to tomatoes.
Don Shor:
Well, what I really mean is six plants.
Farmer Fred:
Okay, all right, okay.
Don Shor:
Yeah, the six-pack of tomatoes is kind of going away, but the single plants are going to be a better way to go. But if people are looking for five or six varieties to cover the whole base, you know, you want a cherry tomato type, you want something for sauce, you want to get high yield for one so you can freeze stuff and put it away. You know having that diversity is always a good plan because some are more heat tolerant, some have greater disease resistance, and some you know. And various characteristics that we're looking for this would be one that would definitely be in there and i've been impressed with it year after year after year.
There's a couple others you mentioned: Rugby. We can't tout that one highly enough. It's being marketed as a sauce tomato but I've got customers who are slicing it and using it as a regular slicer. It cooks down great. It’s not going to be in garden centers, very likely, unless the buyer or the grower at one of the large local chains is listening. Rugby is one you should definitely put in your program because it's just not that widely known yet. But every year I grow it, every year I sell it and plant it, people rave about it. Yield is great. It takes the heat well, sets very well early as well as late, in my case, at least this year. So it's a really, really high quality tomato. You also mentioned...
Farmer Fred:
Well, let's recap first for people who may not have any idea about what we're talking about in some of these. The Principe Borghese is a small tomato, about one to two ounces, sort of a grape-shaped fruit, very dry, few seeds. Rich tomato taste, though, that does make for good sauces. So if you do make sauces, this is really one of the perfect plants to use, the Principe Borghese.
And I noticed that, by the way, if you're looking for a Principe Borghese, I've noticed that I, too, as you might have guessed, have a stack of catalogs next to me. And I see the Baker Creek folks, Rare Seeds, Carries Principe Borghese. It is an heirloom. So, yeah, that makes perfect sense. The Rugby tomato, I see that in the Totally Tomatoes catalog for 2025. And it's got the disease resistance to verticillium, fusarium, and tobacco mosaic virus. It produces early. It produces long season. And, yeah, I like to use it for slicing, too. And they're sort of a pinkish, heart-shaped fruit.
Don Shor:
Yeah, they describe it as pink and it's elongated kind of Roma shape, but it's bigger, way bigger than that. And it's become my go-to sauce tomato. It does turn darker red over time, but you can pick them and they pick quite easily, by the way. They just detach quite readily. Mine set early, kept setting even into the heat of July, which I'm sure we'll get to in a moment, and then a lot late in the season as well. So it was just another stellar year for this new variety. It's been around four or five years. It came from Bulgaria, I believe. And initially we had to order our seed from Europe. Now you can actually find it in this country and it's catching on. But Rugby is one you'll need to look for. And it has that built-in verticillium resistance and two strains of fusarium resistance as well.
Farmer Fred:
It'll be in my garden for 2025 again. One of the big lessons I learned this year, I planted, I believe, 12 varieties this year. I used to plant 40. This past year, I planted 12. Next year, I think I'm going to get that down to six or so because I'm tired of dealing with a jungle. I usually plant three tomato plants in their cages in a four by eight bed. But they just do so well and sprawl and get tangled in everybody else's cage that I would like some space between the plants. So I'm going to go to two plants per bed. And I think I will limit my planting to, I'm shooting for six. It'll probably end up eight, but I can always buy Smart Pots for them. You, on the other hand, have dozens of plants every year.
Don Shor:
Yeah, I have unlimited space. I always want to test new varieties. So I plant anywhere from 25 to 35 varieties each year. And a lot of that is simply to see how well they do. And also some fun ones. I mean, I planted the Galapagos Wild Tomato this year. Hey, guess what? It doesn't take the heat. I can tell you that it barely fruited at all.
Farmer Fred:
From the Galapagos. What a surprise.
Don Shor:
Just so that people can, you know, find out. So I can give them some information. They don't waste the space on it. I will say, a couple of things. The whole Chef's Choice series have been very, very consistent producers. I've been very impressed by all of them. So if you're looking for one really big tomato, almost any one in that series appears to be fine. I have not had problems with any of them. I still go back to one of the first, Chef's Choice Orange, which is firmer textured than the other. Each fruit is close to a pound. My count was that I got 60 on my Chef's Choice Orange, including a fair number early on and a really good crop late in the season because of the mid-season temperature issues that we had this year. But the Chef's Choice Purple also set very well, yielded very well. That whole line appears to be very, very good if you're looking for a large slicing tomato.
One that you and I have mentioned more than once, and again, one of my top producers this year, is Bodacious. The fruit's 12 to 14 ounces. Some of them are a pound. They set early. They ripened early. They set even into the heat pretty well, which was a big issue this year. And they produce a lot late in the season. Again, about 60 fruit on the vine of Bodacious that I planted. So another top-rated hybrid for me this year. Bodacious, 10 to 12 ounces, what they usually describe that one as another great slicing tomato.
Farmer Fred:
I did a mid-August report card for all the tomatoes I planted, and Bodacious did pretty good in that little exam, if you will, of tomatoes and how they did in mid-season, because that's what you're looking for, right?
Don Shor:
Right. Yeah, I did a count mid-August as well, and I can tell you, if I had based my full season evaluation on that, I would never plant another heirloom. They barely set at all early in the season. Pineapple, Mortgage Lifter, Hillbilly, everything. They're growing fine, hardly setting at all. Cherokee Purple. Then, thanks to our traditional August cool-down, which nobody ever remembers, but we had one. It was actually very pleasant for about 10 days in the middle of August as the weather kind of shifts. We got great fruit set, and most of the heirlooms pulled it out with 25 to 30 fruit per vine. That's okay. That's not a high yield, but they were, you know, fooled. They were heirlooms. They were interesting. And they did pull it out, so they didn't go on to the don't bother to grow again list. They went on to the “this heirloom did okay” list.
Farmer Fred:
Yep. Is it really an August cool down, or is it because there's a July heat up?
Don Shor:
Yeah, well, we need to talk about that. We do. We get a consistent pattern in August where the weather sort of shifts. We're getting more air from the Gulf. We often have the Gulf of Mexico. we often have actually a bit of monsoon weather, monsoon air pushing over us. August is generally milder, not the whole month, but we almost always in the years I've been here, we have seven to 10 days in August where we get good pollination weather. Good pollination weather, for listeners, is anything below 90 degrees. So July is pretty hot. You don't get great pollination even in normal July. This year, July was even hotter. So that's an issue. But in August, it cools down. We get a good fruit set here going into August. If you do your seven to eight week count from (blossom) set to ripen, I picked that data point up from a farmer once years ago, for example, 49 days for Early Girl tomato from blossom set to ripeness. That means that something that sets in mid-August, you're harvesting in early to mid-October. And many of your listeners, maybe outside of this area, early to mid-October would be too late for them. But in the Sacramento Valley, interior of Southern California, Bay Area, and most parts of lowland, California, we have good weather all the way into the second or third week of October suitable for fruit ripening. So that August cool down actually makes a huge difference for me. I had one of my best yield years ever this year, thanks to what I was picking in late September and into October.
Farmer Fred:
Yeah, I sort of rode out that July heat wave, and it was the hottest July on record here in Sacramento. According to the records I kept, we had 16 days in July of over 100 degrees, two days over 110. And June was no slouch. There were 17 days of June that were over 90. So that was a warm up. And things started looking bad here in July. But I figure, well, if it cools down a little bit, they'll bloom again and we'll get another crop.
Don Shor:
And that's what happened. Yeah, the conversation I've had with people, the most common comment was, I had a miserable year. The plants just withered. Well, that was almost certainly, unless it's a root disease, that was almost certainly was watering related. The other comment I got was, I hardly got any fruit because of the rats and squirrels. Well, that's a different conversation. But in Davis, our average high in July, the high temperature for the day, is 93 degrees. This year, the average temperature, high temperature in July, was 97 degrees, actually 97.7 degrees, which may not sound like much of a difference, but it's a pretty big difference. There were only two days in July that were close to average high temperature. The rest of the month was essentially three back-to-back heat waves. And the other thing you can glean from the weather data at the CIMIS weather stations, those of you that are weather geeks probably know this, but it's C-I-M-I-S, CIMIS weather stations, you can look at the daily evapotranspiration rate.
Farmer Fred:
Well remember, this is only for California. .
Don Shor:
We've got one in Davis. You've got one in Fair Oaks. You've got one in Sacramento. And they go back to varying degrees a number of years, depending on how long they've been there. Davis, of course, we go way back because we got a land grant university out here. And we looked at July and realized day after day, it was running 10, 20, or even 30% above average for the evapotranspiration rate. Of course, you have above average, below average, except in July, we didn't have any below average. The entire month was above average. So people who were normally good at watering, who normally watered correctly, weren't watering enough. That's what it came down to. Whether you're watering daily because you have raised planters or out in the garden, you're watering a deep soaking once or twice a week, you needed to up that at least 10 to 20% in July this year. If you didn't do that, the blossoms would drop from the temperature. The plants would struggle. You wouldn't have as many growing points. And the fruit that was starting to develop would either not develop properly or worse, if it was ripening and we had a heat wave, it would sunburn.
Because on drought stressed plants, the fruit sunburns worse than if they're properly watered. So the takeaway from this year, you need to water deeper. If you're out in the open garden, you need to water more often if you're in a raised planter or some combination of those two things. I was measuring 10 to 15 gallons a week per plant is roughly what I was providing them. And in some cases with day-to-day extreme heat, I was going ahead and watering daily, which I don't normally need to do with my farm type soil. But I was doing that just to keep the plants growing vigorously. Even though they weren't setting much. I was counting on that August cool down that we did get.
Farmer Fred:
And woe to you if you grew your tomatoes in a 15-gallon container. Oh, yeah. In a heat wave like that, you're better off keeping them on the north side of the house.
Don Shor:
You know, the question we got a lot was, should I shade the plant? And I don't think it's really good to shade the plant because that'll reduce yield overall. Shading the fruit, on the other hand, can be very helpful. If you've got a good fruit set in, say, May or June, and that fruit's developing in July, and we have a heat wave, putting some shade cloth on a panel to the west of the plant so it casts a shadow directly on the fruit, that can be helpful. If you shade over the whole plant, I guarantee you're going to reduce the yield overall. Bottom line is that I usually suggest if we're having a real heat wave, like a couple of those days, you mentioned 110, something like that. If you've got some fruit that's even close to breaker stage, even gone from green to off green, pick that, at least some of it, bring it in, set it on your counter inside. It will ripen correctly, just as it does for the grocery store. They're climacteric fruit. They go through a predictable set of stages and five to seven days after you pick it, you'll be able to eat that fruit. It'll actually ripen faster and more appropriately indoors than in the extreme heat. Extreme heat slows down the ripening process and, of course, can lead to sunburn. So if we've got a heat wave threatening, aside from the damage it does to your peppers, which is another conversation entirely, you should probably pick the fruit that's beginning to change color and bring it in. If it looks like a three or four day major heat event, at least get some of them indoors. You can protect them that way, especially the fruit that's exposed to the afternoon sun. Some tomato vines shelter their fruit better either you don't.
Farmer Fred:
Probably a better strategy too for protecting the plant if it is in a container is to put it in a larger container to shade the inner container and put some bark between the two containers to give it even further insulation from the heat.
Don Shor:
Yeah, and the bigger the better as far as that container goes. I've got, because oak barrels have become a little challenging to get a hold of, I've got customers who are using livestock water troughs. Well, those are great. Don't forget to take the plug out at the bottom. But they work great because they often hold four or five cubic feet of soil. So you've got even bigger soil volume. That's really the key. My bare minimum as I said at the start of the show, 15 gallon, that’s with one and a half cubic feet of soil. And you will be watering that daily in July if we have a heat wave. So that's kind of if you have to do it that way, not as a preference.
Farmer Fred:
So if you have a bunch of different size containers at home, one way to figure this out would be, go to the garden center and get yourself a 1.5 cubic foot bag of potting soil and bring it home and see which ones you can fit that in.
Don Shor:
That's a pretty standard size now. Nursery bags are usually one and a half cubic feet. And I can tell you that basically fills a 15-gallon container. A half barrel is about three cubic feet plus a little bit more. So that's even better if you can find them. But again, even a bigger container, you're talking about a tomato that wants to grow eight to ten feet, okay, with an extensive root system that's capable of going five feet deep if it can. But if it can't, it just gets root bound. And if it gets stressed in high temperatures, you're going to lose a lot of blossoms and a lot of growing points. But the key this year is just keeping them growing through July, even though they weren't setting. But we get to that August period and they did start setting. I did make notes about which ones set better going into hot weather. And it was kind of interesting to see some results. But in general, anything above 95 degrees, you're not getting a lot of fruit set. Above 100, you're definitely not getting fruit set. I did a test this year, Early Girl versus New Girl.
Farmer Fred:
Oh, okay.
Don Shor:
Side by side. And I will tell you, I could not tell the plants apart. New Girl grows like Early Girl. They are not super vigorous. They fill a six-foot cage where it doesn't go all over creation. And they're both a four to six ounce fruit. And they both did very well. They both set early, as expected. It was actually a race to the finish to see who was going to ripen first. And Early Girl won that by a couple of days. But overall, over the course of the season, New Girl gave me about 50% more fruit than Early Girl. It seemed to set a little further into the high temperatures. It set more in August. And I couldn't tell the fruit apart. I think most people could not tell the fruit apart. So I think we finally have a worthy competitor to the crown of Early Girl.
Farmer Fred:
I am going to plant New Girl again for 2025. The plant and the tomato production was excellent until the high winds of last Saturday blew the plant over. So I harvested all the green and the breaking colored tomatoes and put them in a cool, dry place to ripen and to keep the rats fed. Apparently, I'm doing that.
Don Shor:
That's very nice of you. Yeah. I had a couple of surprises. My absolute top producing normal tomato this year, you probably will never guess. Lemon Boy.
Farmer Fred:
You know, I was thinking about that. I was like, “OK, I'll have room for something I haven't grown in quite a while”. And I've always liked Lemon Boy.
Don Shor:
Yeah, it's very good. I stopped counting at 100 fruit. This vine. It was early season. It set into the heat. It didn't keep setting through, but I was still picking into mid-July and then set a ton of fruit late. This is a four to six ounce fruit, bright yellow. It's been around for quite a while. I mean, it's actually a pretty common hybrid. It's one that I've sold year after year and I always plant it because I like them for cooking and they've got great sweet flavor. And it just really outperformed everything this year. So that was one of my absolute top performers. It would definitely be, if you're looking for a list of six. Something interesting to have in there. There's a different color and is absolutely reliable. Lemon Boy was a very good one for me this year.
Farmer Fred:
Maybe we should complete that list that we started there where you were talking about the six tomatoes to definitely have in your garden that will take care of a lot of situations, a cherry tomato, a sauce tomato, a slicer, beef steak, and overall, good producer.
Don Shor:
Okay. Well, we talked about the Chef's Choice Series, and Chef's Choice Orange is my top-rated one in there. Rugby for sure and Bodacious for sure. I do like to mention this one that's from Seeds and Such, and you and I have both grown it. Itz a Keeper, and I planted my version of that, on July 15th. I do three or four tomatoes mid-July every year just to see. I'm always curious. And actually, this year, they went in, they need a lot of water if you plant something in mid-July. So I put it on the same line with my peppers, so getting that kind of frequency of irrigation. And it gave me 40 fruit in the first week of October. Very good. And this is one that is firm, great for slicing, and they hold. I mean, it stays firm. You can leave this on your counter for two or three weeks and continue to use them as they get a bit sweeter. But more to the point, they don't spoil. So Itz a Keeper is a very good one if you're looking for a late producer. So if you wanted Principe Borghese and you've got your Chef's Choice Orange, and of course you've got Rugby, and of course you've got Bodacious, you can now add It's a Keeper. I guess we're just missing one there, Fred.
Farmer Fred:
Well, let's go back a bit. Let's define our terms here because not everybody, you know, is growing their tomatoes in what is farm country like you are. So I imagine your plants are getting 10 to 12 hours of sun a day.
Don Shor:
Yes. Sunrise to sunset, basically. Although I did put a few of them where they get a little afternoon shade, which did help with that sunburn problem, by the way.
Farmer Fred:
OK, which ones did you do you keep in the shade? I know it's not full shade, but probably afternoon shade.
Don Shor:
I did a couple of the bigger ones. The Chef's Choice, one of those was in a little bit more shade just because I wanted to see if it would yield as well, and it did. It gave me 30 or 40 fruit. It was late planted. Several of the Brad Gates varieties went into light shade. His Michael Pollan, which is an interesting, elongated, yellowish-green fruit, it probably produced 300 fruit. It's one of those ones where people just won't even know what to do with all of them. That one, a little bit of shade was absolutely fine. The cherry types that I did, including one that's a new reintroduction from Brad from Wild Boar Farms called Tim's Taste of Paradise, was my most vigorous plant. Putting it in a little shade probably made that even better or worse, depending on your viewpoint. It was already eight feet plus by the first of July, and it produced hundreds, hundreds of small fruits. So cherry tomatoes in general, smaller fruited tomatoes in general, if you have to deal with shade, are likely to be good choices for you. Look for the two to four ounce types if you're looking for something for sauce. Look for the little cherry types if you just want, you know, for snacking, that kind of thing. But again, you know, something a little firmer textured. The Principe Borghese we've mentioned, but there is another one we did this year that I do think people might want to try called Cupid.
Don Shor:
Cupid, C-U-P-I-D. And it's one of these saladette type tomatoes. I hate that term, but it's a firm flavor. Tomato that's a cherry tomato size, and it's a little more elongated shape. Juliet is a good example in that category. This one was bright orange-red, really popular with everybody, picked really easy, which can be a hassle with some of the cherry tomato types. Really good, that kind of tangy, sweet flavor, and constant production all summer. So if you're looking for a new one to try, Cupid, give that one a try.
Farmer Fred:
I see that “Seeds and Such” carries the Cupid. You mentioned Juliet. Juliet is a good small standby, as is Sun Gold. Did you grow either of those this year?
Don Shor:
I didn't bother with Sun Gold because I was doing three other cherry types, and that's a lot of cherry tomatoes. Sun Gold is still very, very popular, and it has that really distinctive flavor that people like. If you like Sun Gold, I think you'd like Cupid. It's another one that's got a richer flavor than what I call old-fashioned cherry tomatoes. It's still the top-selling cherry tomato, but some of these new ones might give it a run for their money just because they're a little firmer textured. You can use, they're more versatile. I mean, if it's a meatier cherry-sized fruit, you can use it for salsa or sauce or for fresh eating, whereas your regular cherry tomatoes are really just to pick off the vine and pop in your mouth.
SMART POTS!
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DAVE WILSON NURSERY
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2024 TOMATO WINNERS (and losers), Pt. 2
Farmer Fred:
Let’s get back to our chat with Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California, about our tomato victories, and not so victorious tomatoes, in 2024.
Farmer Fred
It was a good tomato year for me as well. And in my little August report card,
Sweet Million got an A, a very productive, good size for a cherry tomato. Good flavor, and it was a sprawling plant, and I almost downgraded for that because it will fill a typical tomato cage.
Don Shor:
Some of these might be helpful. At least for those of us in California. Now, what did you think of the new purple genetically modified tomato that came out with so much fanfare this year?
Farmer Fred:
Well, let's read the Farmer Fred review here on August 17th for the Purple Tomato, which is a GMO. First one in the home market. “Serious leaf dieback, side cracking of fruit, yellow shoulders on the south side. Production was heavy. Good purple color throughout. The taste bland.” It got an F.
Don Shor:
An F. Well, I would not perhaps give mine an F, but mine kept going, first of all. I don't know what disease problem you were dealing with there. I don't think this was bred for disease resistance. We might want to look into that. The name of this one I wrote down was the Norfolk purple tomato.
Farmer Fred:
That would be more exact, yes.
Don Shor:
Yeah, we all just called it that Purple tomato. They're beautiful.
Farmer Fred:
They're expensive.
Don Shor:
Yeah, $2 a seed. Dark, almost black skin. You cut them inside and the flesh is indeed purple and quite beautiful. People really commented on that. Set a lot. They're only like one or two ounce. I didn't know that when I planted it. I was expecting something a little bigger. I got good yield on it. I had no disease problems. It was a pretty vigorous plant. It did produce right up to the end. And the consistent comment, we would put them out for people to try them. We wouldn't say anything. And they all said the same thing. Mild.
Farmer Fred:
Mild.
Don Shor:
Bland. Oh, that's pretty sweet. Someone said pretty sweet. That's not really high praise. I use the term insipid. One of my staff took them home and she has a dryer, actually sun-dried them, and they sun-dried great. So, you know, and they were really pretty that way. So it's kind of a dud in terms of all this hoopla and introducing it and the purple color and all that kind of thing. If the flavor isn't there, folks, it's not going to sell. I wouldn't grow it again at this point. So I think it failed the first test.
Farmer Fred:
If you own a restaurant and your whole point of view was presentation, that purple color all the way through the fruit really is beautiful in a mixed salad. .
Don Shor:
Correct. And that was very, very diplomatic of you. Toss it with some Sun Gold for flavor.
Farmer Fred:
Yes. Well, there's always that. Keep a salt and pepper shaker on the table. All right. By the way, that review I did of my tomatoes was on August 17th. On August 19th, I took the Purple tomato plant out, just because I gave up on it. Yes, it was in serious decline.
Don Shor:
So now, were there any heirlooms that did well for you this year?
Farmer Fred:
Well, let's go through the list here and see which ones might have been an heirloom. New Girl is not. Bodacious is not. Bodacious, by the way, got an A- from me. New Girl got a B. I love the fact that the New Girl produces early. it produces late. By the way, the Bush Early Girl that I planted on April 15th produced fruit, edible, regular-sized tomato, not cherry tomatoes, but regular-sized fruit by June 15th. Wow. And then it went in decline in July, and that's the way I grew it, was knowing that it would probably peter out by the time the heat hit in July. And that's the whole reason I grew it where I grew it was just to have an early tomato and thank you for your efforts in this behalf and we move on.
Don Shor:
And that gives you a time and a place to plant your brussels sprouts which need to go in in July. we actually never get brussels sprouts in early enough. i hope you got a good start on your brussels sprouts.
Farmer Fred:
I’m sorry, I gotta plant popcorn. If I'm gonna plant something in July, it's gonna be popcorn and I did that.
Don Shor:
I’ve had this conversation with people who want to conserve water because you know i mentioned 10 to 20 gallons per plant per week is what i was giving my tomatoes. And that's why I got such good yields. And people are thinking that's an awful lot of water to use. I said, well, there is another way to do this, which is exactly what you just described. Take one of these bush types. These are bush variants of Early Girl, or Champion. There's a Bush Champion, a couple of others out there, or a true determinate variety that's been introduced under that designation. Plant them as early as is reasonable, which I think April 15th is about as early as I consider reasonable. Even better, grow them in a pot in rich soil until the soil is warm enough, which might be the first of May, but you've given them a little extra start. Water them well, train them up three, four feet, let them fruit heavily, pick it all, and be done. If you're a person who processes tomatoes, freezes them, makes sauce, dries them, all that kind of stuff, you can get most of your crop out of the ground by mid to late July, use that space for something else or save it for your fall crops, and of course you've stopped watering at that point. So you can conserve water. Tomatoes yield best if they're never drought stressed. They're best deep watered, but you can conserve water by just pushing your season forward, not by planting early. I think at the Farmer Fred show, we will continue to suggest you not plant before the middle of April, but give them a good start. Get that crop out of there early if you're using the types that were bred and intended for that purpose.
Farmer Fred:
Yeah. And getting back to your question, what was my most successful heirloom? Probably the Principe Borghese.
Don Shor:
Yeah, it did quite well.
Farmer Fred:
Now, there's another tomato, though, that did well for me. I don't know if you've ever grown this one or not, called Jet Star.
Don Shor:
I have not. You've mentioned it before. So I'm definitely adding that to my list of 37 varieties to plant in 2025.
Farmer Fred:
Well, this was one of those little things from a seed company that said basically, “thanks for being our customer. Here's a packet of tomato seeds for you”. And so Jet Star was their giveaway at “Seeds and Such” probably a couple of years ago. I've got it. Might as well try it. See how it is. It was very, very good. Good interior coloration. It had some cracking. It's a medium-large fruit. There was not much early production, but the production increased as the season wore on, and it lasted to the end. That plant is still standing out back, and it has a very enticing flavor, but it is one of those sprawling 8 to 10-ounce tomatoes plants that do go everywhere.
Don Shor:
Well, they will go everywhere, of course. That's the key thing that people who are just starting with tomatoes need to know is that a true tomato that hasn't been bred or selected to be compact or dwarf or whatever, It's going to be a big plant, 10 to 12 feet with no problem. Every now and then I'll do a little experiment since I live on a farm. Plant a tomato, put it on a drip line. Don't cage it. See what you get. I can tell you what you get.
Farmer Fred:
You get West Sacramento farmland.
Don Shor:
You get about a six to eight foot diameter circle of tomato mass and a whole lot of fruit in there. The plant doesn't mind. It sets just fine. And the overwhelming majority of that fruit will be damaged, spoiled, or eaten by something from the ground level. Because if it's hanging on the ground, even the millipedes and sow bugs will climb up there and eat them. So there's a lot of reasons we cage tomatoes and they are potentially very vigorous plants. If you're limited for space, you do look for some of these compact types. And I don't know of any other heirloom types than the Principe Borghese that are typically that compact. So that will be an issue with heirlooms in general. There are exceptions, I'm sure. Someone will send you an email after this show. But for the most part, the heirlooms are pretty big. And my experience with the heirlooms this year was middle of the pack in terms of yield. And that was only because they pulled it out towards the end. The only one that actually gave 50 fruit was Costaluto Genovese. They had issues with the heat. The fruit was injured. It was one of those fruit cracking, which is usually a watering issue or a high temperature issue. And overall, my heirlooms cracked a lot more than my hybrids. And that's something that hybrids have been bred for is, I think, firmer skin, basically holding up better in the garden and perhaps, of course, in the marketplace.
Farmer Fred:
Now, our friend and avid listener, Charlie from Brooklyn, sent us some seeds in early 2024. So I started them. What the heck? You know, got to try them. And he sent along a couple of heirloom varieties, Thorburn’s Terracotta and another Thorburns tomato variety, Thorburn's lemon blush, along with a red mystery tomato. And the only one that had good taste to me, that I really liked the taste of, was the Thorburn's Terracotta. The problem was it didn't produce very much at all. In fact, all three of those plants only produced a few, less than a half dozen fruit each.
Don Shor:
So probably it has more heat sensitivity on the blossom, which is really something we out here need to be aware of. the dry heat that we get, the extreme temperatures that we get. I've been making notes over the years about varieties that did better into the heat. And anything from the East Coast, I hate to say this, particularly the eastern heirlooms, just don't take it. I mean, Brandywine is probably the best known example because everybody knows that one and every nursery out here sells it at some point. And then we have the experience of people coming back and saying, I only got five fruit on that whole plant. Yeah, that's kind of typical for Brandywine in the Central Valley in California. So I didn't get a chance to try all those seeds that Charlie sent. I got a few of them. I'm saving them for next year. I'll give you a report at the end of 2025.
Farmer Fred:
Do me a favor, Try the Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta.
Don Shor:
We will.
Farmer Fred:
Because I did get some good feedback on that from some Sacramento area Master Gardeners who do really like the flavor of it and did get plenty of it. So, you know, all gardening is local, as I'm fond of saying.
Don Shor:
The other thing we have to remind people is we really shouldn't judge a tomato until we've grown it two years ago.
Farmer Fred:
Oh, now it's two. It used to be three.
Don Shor:
Well, two at least. Okay. So, for example, Cherokee Purple. Two years ago, Cherokee Purple was my top producing tomato across the board. It produced at least 80 fruits. They were great. I was just raving about it. I'm thinking, wow, this heirloom has really done well. Well, this year it did 35. And that's not bad, but that's more typical. So you go up and down. Every year I get skunked by at least one tomato. Brandy Boy one year gave me 30 fruit each a pound. The next year it gave me zero. An eight-foot vine with zero fruit. So that was just mildly disappointing. I only grew something weird. This year, I grew the Galapagos Wild Tomato. It's a species from Galapagos. It probably produced 10,000 flowers. And I have my fruit count zero.
Obviously not heat tolerant. But there is a tomato out there called Sara’s Galapagos, which is a hybrid with that species and something else. God knows what. And it produced about 200 fruit that were bright yellow, very pretty, tangy, sweet, easy to pick, elongated teardrop-shaped cherry size, and really good. I mean, I'll do that one again just to see. But that was an unusual one that actually did surprisingly well in spite of, the Galapagos parentage.
Farmer Fred:
Well, I'm sure by now everybody is pouring over their catalogs, and I always wonder about the tomatoes that are featured prominently in all the catalogs that come out either on the cover or on the inside or one of the first ones mentioned when you go to the pages with tomatoes. And Burpee has one for next year called Groundswell. And they claim it's the first garden-sewn tomato bred to save you time and avoid transplant shock. So they're calling it an early ripening beef steak with heirloom fragrance.
Don Shor:
So the thing is that Burpee uses beefsteak as a marketing term. In one of their catalogs I counted 39 different varieties had some variation of beefsteak or steaky or meaty or whatever. So to them, that's a marketing thing that tells you there's good connective tissue and you can slice it well. When I see it, it makes me a little nervous because beefsteak parentage isn't great for heat tolerance in general. But there have been so many varieties derived from the old original beefsteak types that that's a little hard to generalize. Direct seeding, I'm not sure why that's such an advantage. I don't have a huge problem with transplant shock with tomatoes. As long as we wait until the soil is warming up, they just take right off when you put them in. But sure, we'll give it a try. Anything they're touting, I'll try it once because Burpee has a very good track record with new introductions.
Farmer Fred:
I bet they're coated.
Don Shor:
Probably.
Farmer Fred:
Yeah, that's to withstand the cold weather or cold soil. But they claim it's the first ever tomato seed bred for outdoor sowing.
Don Shor:
Bred for outdoor sowing. Yeah, they used to grow tomatoes out here in Yolo County from seed. Outdoors. Now they transplant them.
Farmer Fred:
Well, now, oddly enough, I don't think Burpee has quite updated all the pages of their catalog or not, because if you go to the instructions for planting the Groundswell hybrid tomato, if you scroll down the page, you'll see that they say “start from seed indoors from December through the latter half of December”, really, and “transplant February 24th through March 9th.”
Don Shor:
Where are they selling this, Florida?
Farmer Fred:
Well, now wait. there we go. Burpee does customize it for your zip code. So this would be for USDA Zone 9.
Don Shor:
I think in February. Wow. I know things are getting warmer, but I didn't think it was happening that fast.
Farmer Fred:
All they're doing is parking their cars at the nursery and see who comes in. And as we know, people start showing up for tomato plants the first nice weekend in January.
Don Shor:
Yeah, we start seeding our own tomatoes to sell in April. We start those in mid to late February because they come up so quickly. Now, we have heat pads and passive greenhouses, so that makes a huge difference. But we don't start them when we do the peppers and the eggplant, the things that really need a long run up to the season. We have found that if we start them too early, they're too leggy. And so we want to start them when they'll be nice, healthy plants ready to go out for sale. We aim for April 1, even though that's earlier than we like it. And just for the record, for those of you listening, we will have some tomatoes in March as well, even though we will tell you it's too early to plant them. But April is what we're really aiming for. We see those generally about the middle of February because they come up in a week and they grow very rapidly and they need to be transplanted very, very quickly. And this is really the key for you when you're buying them. If you buy them early, don't keep them in that little pot until the soil is warm enough, meaning they're getting more and more and more root bound. Transplant them. If you're going to spend money on something, spend your money on a good quality potting soil, get a used one-gallon container. This is my standard practice now. Shift them as soon as you buy them into that one-gallon container in the richest soil you can. Look for the one they're selling to the pot growers. That'll be the one you're after. And use that one. And by the time your soil is ready for planting, they'll be two to three feet tall. They'll be vigorous. They'll have good root systems. And it'll be late April. And they'll go into the ground. You won't have any transplant shock and you will have flowers usually already forming on them. So put the money and the effort into moving them along, keeping them growing, keeping them from getting rootbound rather than buying them because you're afraid you'll run out and then holding them in that little three or four inch pot for six weeks. That's not a great way to go.
Farmer Fred:
And of course, you'll have to dig a deeper hole come planting time.
Don Shor:
Correct. Yes. So you go and you get a soil auger. I've told you that I use a soil auger for this. There's my comment apparently got someone to reply to you at one point i like to plant them below the gopher zone yeah right and someone sent someone sent i think you or me an email that said how deep is the gopher zone, Don. Well okay i hate to tell you it's about 12 inches that the gophers mostly move in so i was trying to drop them down 16 to 18 inches in my soil. you can do that there may be places listening where they don't have soil that's that deep but the main point is do grow them bigger, get a big healthy plant, get a nice root system, drop them down deep butwait until the soil is warm enough. You'll gain everything you thought you were gaining from early planting by early transplanting instead.
Farmer Fred:
Yeah, we'll do another podcast episode probably in February or early March, sort of a 2025 preview show because we'll have a better idea of what's hot and what's not. And I see looking at the Park catalog, I see the tomato they're promoting first for 2025 is one of their old favorites, the Park Whopper.
Don Shor:
It's been around for a long time. Every couple of years, I grow Whopper, and it's still a very good, reliable, red, productive tomato. It slices well. There's Blue Ribbon, Original Blue Ribbon from Seeds and Such, or Totally Tomatoes. Another one, very similar. It's a pretty crowded market for those good red tomatoes, and some of them will kind of fall by the wayside. Delicious is another one that's very, very good. Big Beef. Whopper. Yeah, Big Beef. The Big Beef is a good early producer. I've been impressed with it for setting early and holding well, picking them as early as late June, early July in a good year.
So look for some of those. And Blue Ribbon, I plant it every couple of years. I got only 25 or 30 fruit, but they're all close to a pound this year. And they are all perfect. That's the other thing. They don't sunburn. They don't blemish. They don't crack. It just holds very well in spite of the vagaries of weather. So that's been a very good one for me as well. The original Blue Ribbon, every couple of years, I put it in again. Every year I come back, go, yep, B plus, good, consistent. But it never gets a lot of promotion because there's so many other good red tomatoes out there. Now, one of the things I'm noticing a lot in the seed catalogs is the alphabet soup that is after the name of so many varieties with all the different disease resistance packages they're building into a lot of these new varieties. For gardeners in California, the V, F, N are the three letters you need to look for. Those are the ones that matter to us. Verticillium, Fusarium, two or three strains if they have managed to get that disease package on there, And nematode tolerance. They are developing a lot that are resistant to late blights, not a huge issue for us, a lot of the other leaf blight diseases. So that's really more for people east of the Mississippi. But I am seeing a lot more focus on disease resistance on tomatoes and better yields for folks who are in more challenging climates.
Farmer Fred:
Yeah. And also, there's a lot of the changing of the letters, too, it used to be a VFN and T, T for tobacco mosaic. Now they're almost spelling that out with, I think it's TMV or something like that.
Don Shor:
Right. You know, I've never really seen a huge problem with that particular disease, but I'm sure there are places where it can be. These are companies that are selling all over the world. Leaf diseases, stem diseases, they happen here. I mean, I've had late blight once or twice. I see early blight sometimes on plants that come into my shop from growers. If that happens, if you see them out in the nursery yard, don't buy plants with spots on the leaves. Bring it to the attention of the staff if you think you can do that diplomatically. But in general, this is just not a huge issue in an area where we control the moisture and it's not raining all the time. So typically, we don't have a lot of problems with those. But we do have problems with verticillium, fusarium, now three strains, I believe. And of course, some people are dealing with nematodes as well.
Farmer Fred:
Right. Or alternaria or gray leaf spot. and think of things that happen in a humid climate. And that's sort of a red flag. If you're reading catalog descriptions of tomatoes and it says perfect for Florida, well, yeah, it probably would be a USDA Zone 9, but there's a big difference in humidity between that and California.
Don Shor:
Oh, and down there, they can plant in some parts of Florida in January in hoop houses and they can have marketable fruit in April or May and make a fortune on it. You can go to a farmer's market with a nice big red tomato in April. People will be fighting over that tomato. If you go to that same farmer's market in July, you can't give them away. So they're looking for early production. They're looking for good appearance. And they do, of course, need that leaf disease resistance as well. Because if you get a late blight on your planting in a rainy climate, there have been years where it's just spread all down the planting. I remember 2015, it was a big problem back east. People would plant and they'd watch the whole row just get wiped out after a rainstorm. We don't deal with that here. We just don't typically have that kind of a problem here. Growers should be aware of the problem. They should be growing with enough airspace in their greenhouses or even treating if they have to with copper or something like that.
But generally speaking, it's not a huge problem here, at least in the drier parts of California.
Farmer Fred:
You mentioned squirrels earlier.
Don Shor:
Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
And I got a very good tip. Go to a Dollar - type store. And if you go up to the checkout stand with a pile of these, they'll know exactly what you are growing. They say, oh, you're growing tomatoes and you're trying to keep the squirrels out, eh?
Don Shor:
What is it?
Farmer Fred:
It's an eight inch mesh wastebasket that's about eight inches wide and 10-12 inches long. And for a young tomato plant, you can just plop it right on top of the plant because it hasn't gotten that tall yet and it'll protect it from the squirrels.
Don Shor:
Oh, there we go.
Farmer Fred:
And they're only a dollar or a $1.25.
Don Shor:
And they last. You can use them year after year.
Farmer Fred:
Use them on your greens for your fall crop.
Don Shor:
Yeah, on social media, like Next Door, people will talk about what they started doing and they want to trap and they want to shoot them, they want to kill them. And I always try to step in at that point and say, you know, dealing with a rodent problem by trying to reduce the population is definitely not going to work. Their adaptive strategy is massive fecundity. The females produce several young at a time. They just take, what, a few weeks, and they can have multiple litters each year. You can shoot and kill as many as you like if you're so inclined, and it won't make any difference in the overall population. So while going out and trying to find where they're coming from can be useful. It's surprising where they can have their nests. We were moving some old stacked up pots around in the back of the nursery at one point, and some came running out of there. We hadn't cleared that pile out in just a few months, so that was something that came to our attention, having areas of cover. But really, in the long run, the only way you're going to deal with vertebrate pests of that nature is with a barrier, a physical barrier. Either what you're describing, or you can get this weird stuff called (Galvanized steel) hardware cloth rolled fencing, which is like a very fine-gauge chicken wire. And every hardware store sells it. They may not know it by that name, but once you see what we're talking about, it's pretty malleable. It's pretty easy for a couple of people to work with. Not too dangerous. It's not super sharp when you cut it. And you just sort of make it into a dome and you set it over the whole bed if you have to. It's a very effective way of dealing with white-crowned sparrows in the fall and winter garden.
And tree rats, roof rats, and squirrels with the summer garden are actually year-round, really, in those cases.
Farmer Fred:
I've noticed roof rats will chew through insect netting.
Don Shor:
They will. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if they can. Now, that's the other thing to remember with these animals. They don't want to be open to the sky. They don't want to be out in the open. They don't want to be visible. If you watch roof rats, they're out there at nighttime and the damage is usually closest to the nearby shrubbery or the nearby vegetation where they can scamper off when an owl flies over. So if your garden is right out in the open, you're less likely to have as much problem as if you put it over by the fence. So where you locate it can actually make a big difference. When people are finding this hardware cloth rolled fencing or whatever its official name is, hardware cloth is sort of a weird name for a wire product, but there you go. They find it pretty easy to work with. It's something you can do with a couple people. You can just make it cover that way. You don't even have to really frame it on anything. You just kind of make a dome and stick it in the ground over the thing. Yes, they can crawl under it, over it, through it. They're likely to want to do that if they're out in the open and kind of exposed. So just make it harder. Make it so they want to go to your neighbor's yard, not yours.
Farmer Fred:
Is this a little thicker than a window screen?
Don Shor:
Yeah. It's a wider mesh. It's about a half-inch mesh. So you've got to get it small enough that field mice, meadow mice, things like that can't get through it because they can be a problem at times as well. But it's malleable enough that you can work with it. I've had customers who are building raised beds who just left the taller posts on the corner and just use that to frame in a cover of some sort. But something simple to put over the seedlings in the fall and the winter, put over the young tomatoes when you first put them out. It's the same thing, by the way, that you would use to line under the roots if your other problem is go first, because they will typically not take the time to chew through that.
Farmer Fred:
Well, that's a different hardware cloth. That's a little thicker because you can line your raised beds with that.
Don Shor:
I've used that. It works for a while until they figure it out.
Farmer Fred:
Well, that's why you bring it up the sides as well as cover the bottom, too.
Don Shor:
Correct. Yes, that's correct.
Farmer Fred:
Well, there you go. A 2024 tomato review with lots of scenic bypasses. And Don, in a couple of months, we'll have to have a little 2025 tomato preview with more scenic bypasses.
Don Shor:
A checklist of must-have varieties for 2025. We'll talk in February.
Farmer Fred:
All right. Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California. Don, thanks for helping us out today.
Don Shor:
Fred, always great to talk to you.
BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER - 2024 Tomato Review
Farmer Fred:
What’s on my mind? Tomatoes. Planning the 2025 garden, especially choosing tomato varieties that I will enjoy that have done well here before, along with a new one or two.
“Going to try to limit my tomato planting to 6 varieties,” said the guy who has never planted less than 10 here in Suburban Purgatory; 30-40 in the old days out at the Radio Ranch.
This coming Friday I’ll have my holiday present for you: a special edition of the “Beyond the Garden Basics” Newsletter , which features a transcript of Friday’s Garden Basics podcast, in which Don Shor and myself talk about 33 varieties of tomato winners and losers in 2024.
To keep you from hastily scribbling down the names of the tomatoes while listening to the podcast, the transcript in the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter will feature catalog links, to all the tomato varieties mentioned. Quite a few pictures of them, too.
This way you can drive safely home from Grandma’s this coming weekend, keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the icy roads. Oh, you have a self-driving car? How does that perform on icy roads? Do you feel lucky? Well, do you?
Of course, I can’t help you out if you have to turn your head towards the back seat and shake your fist at your holiday sugar-infused offspring.
Anyway, settle back, have a listen on Friday, and then click on the links in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter for more info about the tomato varieties discussed…while you’re stuck in a snowbank.
If you’ve already signed up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, you’ll get a notice and link in your email this Friday, December 27, 2024. For others, you can find a link to the newsletter in today’s show notes, or click on the newsletter tab at the top of our home page, garden basics dot net. You can also find it on Substack, at substack.com slash garden basics. It’s the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter. Thank You, and Merry Christmas!
Farmer Fred:
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday and it's brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript of the podcast, visit our website, gardenbasics.net. And thank you so much for listening and your support.
Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.
Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike(s).
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