For the best tomato growing season ever, we have tips. Just a few tips.
Today’s newsletter podcast features excerpts from two episodes of the Garden Basics podcast, Episode 93 with America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, and Episode 259 with Don Shor, proprietor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, CA. two tomato chats with these scenic bypasses for tomato success.
As the sign posted at Don Shor’s Redwood Barn Nursery proclaims: IT’S TOO EARLY.
Wherever you live, wait until nighttime temperatures are steadily above 50 degrees and the soil temperature where you’ll be planting is approaching 60 degrees. Less stress on the tomato plant means earlier, better growth. Note to tomato growers in the desert southwest: how were the tomatoes this past winter?
If you have never “moved up” your young tomato plants into larger pots, start that habit about a month or three weeks before you put them in the ground. Those tomato plants in their original three or four inch nursery containers (or HEAVEN FORBID! in a six-pack) may already be root bound. By the way, why would you want to plant six Early Girl or Better Boy or Sungold tomatoes, all of which would ripen at the same time? As Don Shor is fond of saying about your tomato garden: “Diversify your portfolio!”
Another tomato choosing task: if those tomato plants have been sitting in the nursery for more than a few weeks, or look like there about to tumble off the shelf, always turn over a tomato plant container at the nursery and make sure the roots aren’t coming out the bottom. Ditto for those tomato plants on your back patio, waiting to be planted. Watch for protruding roots! Root stress can set a tomato plant back. Sure, it will recover after it’s finally been planted in the ground, but it will take awhile. Meanwhile, tomatoes that have been repotted into larger pots can stretch their legs for a few weeks, putting on height and vigor to give you a “ready-to-grow” tomato plant once it is in the ground. Athletes warm up before an event. So should your tomato plants.
Even though the calendar says “April”, your soil is just beginning to wake up from winter. Early April is a great time to go shopping for tomato plants. Late April, and continuing through June, is the time to plant tomatoes into the garden. By the end of this month, the weather will be more conducive to rapid tomato plant growth because of more sun, warmer nights (steadily above 50 degrees) and warmer soil (60 degrees and above). But be prepared for sticker shock when shopping.
Checking out the garden center shelves of tomato plants recently at a big box store, tiny tomato plants in four-inch pots were selling for nearly six dollars; six-packs of tomato plants, which were even smaller, were approaching seven dollars.
“Yes, the prices have definitely gone up,” explains Don Shor, owner of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis. “And there are a couple of reasons for that, besides the increasing cost of labor. One is the cost of heating greenhouses. You don't get tomato seedlings available in March and early April if you don't have a heated greenhouse. If you do it at home, you've got to start them indoors, move the young seedlings outdoors during the day, and then move them back in during the evening. They're not doing that in big commercial wholesale nurseries. They're using propane or natural gas to heat those greenhouses. Plus, greenhouses aren’t very effective when it's cloudy. And we've had a lot of cloudy days.”
Shor emphasizes a few rules for beginning tomato gardeners: don’t buy too many tomato plants, and “diversify your portfolio”. For the first time gardener, start with perhaps one plant per family member, maybe a total of five tomato plants. And those tomato varieties should be easy to grow hybrids (not necessarily heirlooms) of varying sizes, including a cherry tomato, a paste tomato, an early ripening full size tomato, a reliable main season tomato, and a variety that strikes your fancy, which could be an alluring heirloom variety.
“There's a whole group of red tomatoes that are classic and reliable,” says Shor. “Better Boy, Champion, Red Delicious, and Whopper. Those are four that I find very similar in their performance. The most consistent, year to year, has been Champion, which has an easy to remember name. But all those are good. Better Boy has been very consistent over the years.”
The key is: plant several different sized tomatoes that vary in ripening times as insurance in case of wild weather swings. Gardeners may remember last September, when the first nine days of the month sizzled with temperatures above 100, including three days above 110, with high temperature records falling by the wayside. For many tomato growers, including myself, most of the medium to large tomatoes shut down production for the year after that September heatwave. That was highly unusual for our area, where serving homegrown tomatoes on Thanksgiving is not uncommon. The ones that made it through that heat? The smaller, cherry-sized and slightly larger paste tomatoes.
“Diversify your portfolio,” says Shor. “Get some interesting sauce tomatoes, because in my experience, a lot of those are just very consistent. One of the best-known ones is Roma, which will produce almost no matter what you do. You can't go wrong with cherry tomatoes such as Sungold. Juliet is a variety that is a bit bigger than cherry sized, but firm and incredibly popular. But try to mix in different kinds and a couple of early ripening, mid-size varieties, such as Early Girl and New Girl.”
In our garden, consistent performers over the years have included the Sweet Million and Sungold cherry tomatoes, the slightly larger Gardener’s Delight, mid-season favorites Early Girl, New Girl, and Valley Girl, and a larger, long-season slicing tomato variety, such as Big Beef or Orange Oxheart.
One tip that many tomato growers are familiar with: plant your tomatoes horizontally, in a trench. Why? I will let Dr. Rick Sommer, PhD in Mathematics from University of California, Berkeley, and over 30 years experience teaching mathematics and logic at Stanford (and apparent tomato-head, as well) explain:
Trench planting is a special technique for the advanced tomato grower. It involves planting in the ground horizontly, and bending the stems so only the top portion is above the surface. Roots will develop along the length of the stem, forming a more massive root system, capable of supporting a larger plant. Also, more of the root mass will be near the surface, which means the roots will be warmer (this induces plant growth). Of course, having a substantial root system that reaches several feet below the surface is important for healthy plants, and trench planting is meant to contribute to that. A large healthy plant above the surface requires a correspondingly substantial root system below the surface.
I recommend that you bury the horizontal stem at least three inches below the surface. It is extremely important not to ever walk on the soil above the horizontal portion of the stem. Generally, walking too near your tomato plants will damage your root systems. It's good to have well defined walkways sufficiently close to the plants for tending and harvesting, but no closer than necessary. Establishing a walkway with stepping stones is one recommended way to help insure that no one will step too close to the plants.
Pictured here are the roots of one of my plants (Sun Gold) from last year; on this one about 14 inches of stem was buried horizontally. When it was full grown, the length of the stem on this plant (above the surface) was over 13 feet. It grew to the top of my 8 foot stakes, and then along horizontal bamboo polls on my overhead trellis.
They tell me that growing tomatoes is an addictive hobby. Nah…
A Garden Tip Every Day on Substack Notes
Thank you for also 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.
Share this post