Grow The Best Tomatoes Storeys Country Wisdom Bulletin A – 189 – John Page

As the plants get bigger, repeat higher up the stakes. If your row is very long, add a center support stake, or your middle plants are at risk of keeling over, bringing down the whole trellis. A zigzag fence is one way to trellis your tomato plants. Twine woven between stakes is an effective tomato trellis. Hanging Tomatoes Last, there is the hangman’s method of supporting tomatoes, used by frustrated derrick operators.

Here we run a tight wire above the tomatoes, then we lasso the tomato now and then and pull it up toward the wire and let it hang there until we get a new hold. A variation of sorts on this is the espalier method, where we keep the branches pinned and shaped to a fence or a wall: beautiful and effective if you have a place and the time to really put your heart and talent into it.

OceanofPDF.com Controlling Leafy Growth In the fall, you often see tomato plants nearly bare of leaves, just a stalk and the ripening fruit. The theory here is that with less green to support, the plant puts its energy into the fruit. Also, fewer leaves offer less shade, an advantage in the dwindling sunlight of autumn.

You can start the process while the plant is still growing, if you have the time and energy. Suckering People ask me if I sucker my tomato plants. I tell them no. It’s hard to sucker plants that grow on the ground as they get larger and denser. Many people ask this because they don’t know what a sucker is and are trying to find out because somebody they know attached some degree of importance or urgency to getting rid of suckers.

Suckers are simply the little vegetative growths that arise at the junctions of the stem and the side branches. They have no useful purpose, as far as I know. Prune them if you are a sucker-pruner.

The tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, is a fruit that we use as a vegetable. It is one of the few vegetables native to the Americas. It was first known as a food in Peru. Until a couple of centuries ago, it was grown only as an ornamental and was dubbed the “love apple.” For a plant that was thought to be deadly poison in colonial times, the tomato has made up a lot of ground.

It is now the most popular vegetable in our gardens. Why shouldn’t it be? It can be used in so many ways, from eating single ripe ones in the garden, to frying them green, from making preserves from green and ripe ones, to pickling green and ripe ones, on into mincemeat, paste, juice, stew, soups, salads — the uses are endless.

Delete the tomato from all of your cookbooks, and you’ll leave a hole that you can drive all the other vegetables through. OceanofPDF.com The Nature of Tomatoes The tomato is actually a perennial; if the weather never got cold and if summer or tropical conditions continued to prevail, it would keep on growing for a long time.

But as it is grown in virtually every part of the United States, the tomato acts more like an annual, and is treated by gardeners as if it were annual — which means it has to make it from seed to seed in a single growing season. We consider the tomato to be a heat-loving crop. It doesn’t do well until the soil warms up to 65°F or more, and until nighttime temperatures get up into the 50s.

This occurs in late May in our northern areas; but if we planted seed at that time, the season wouldn’t be long enough to get ripe tomatoes most years. Therefore, we have to lengthen the season by getting the plants started indoors or under protected conditions so that they are already several weeks into their growing season when soil and air reach optimal temperatures.

As we go south and reach the rough climatic equal of Chesapeake Bay, it becomes possible to start with seed in the garden and get ripe tomatoes each year. But even in these warmer areas, why not get your first tomato plants started inside, before the outdoor weather is ready? They will ripen earlier, and you can also plant seed when the time comes.

Then you can have fresh tomatoes over a longer season.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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