tomatoes

VarietiEs

    Tomatoes come in vining (indeterminant) and bush (determinant) types. Vining types produce lots of fruit that gradually ripen over the season. Determinant types are compact and perfect for containers, but the fruit tends to ripen all at once. Tomatoes come in many varieties: you can choose small and supersweet cherry tomatoes, large and juicy beefsteak tomatoes, or dense and flavorful paste tomatoes. 

WHERE TOMATOES THRIVE

RESILIENCE

  Tomatoes are highly sensitive to extreme temperatures - hot or cold. High heat can cause blossoms to fall off the plant and frost can turn your plants to mush overnight. Tomatoes adapt readily to drought conditions once they’ve matured. In fact, tomatoes grown without much water tend to be higher in nutritional value and more resistant to disease. 

BEST TIME OF YEAR TO PLANT:

Tomatoes need warm weather to grow, so start seedlings inside in the spring. To plant them outside, you’d have to wait until May or June, which doesn’t give the fruit enough time to ripen.

COMPANION PLANTS

Tomatoes grow best with chives, onion, and parsley because the strong-smelling herbs repel bugs. They also do well with marigolds and nasturtiums, which act as host plants for aphids, a common tomato pest. Raising them along with basil can actually improve their growth and flavor.

Growing

    These plants thrive in containers, especially when sheltered by a protective wall. They can also pump out juicy yet heavy fruits; I once harvested a single tomato that weighed over three pounds! For this reason, the vining variety benefits from support. 

Prune your plant back to one or two central stalks and tie each to a sturdy bamboo stake with tomato clips or strips of an old shirt or towel. As the plants grow, they’ll push out suckers or new branches where the leaf meets the stem. Remove the suckers so more energy flows into the fruit-bearing central stem, producing bigger, tastier tomatoes. Determinant types need less attention and can be left to grow as a bushy mess. If the plants get a little top heavy, use bamboo stakes in the form of an X to support them. 

To help your plants develop an extensive root system, plant them deep in the soil about one inch from the first true leaves. Tomatoes can grow roots from the tiny hairs that cover the stem, and burying the stem triggers more root growth, which makes the plants more resilient. You can also enhance root development by clipping the flowers until your plants are a foot tall. By delaying fruit production, you’ll encourage your plants to devote their energy to growing more roots.

WATERING

The secret to growing flavorful tomatoes is to go easy on the watering. Wet them thoroughly once a week as the plants mature. Unless you live in a very hot and dry region, stop watering once the tomatoes start to develop, which is usually by the beginning of August. They’ll continue to ripen into the fall even after the vines begin to wilt. In the sorts of places where the soil cracks from being so dry, you’ll have to water tomatoes even as the fruits ripen. But avoid watering on harvest days so you can pick the tomatoes at their most flavorful.  

Weeding

Weed your tomatoes regularly. Mulching helps keep weeds at bay.

MULCHING AND Fertilizing

Mulching is a great technique for tomatoes. Mulch helps suppress weeds, meaning less weeding time for you during their long growing season. Mulching also keeps the soil warm, which tomatoes love. Choose a biodegradable mulch like straw, leaves, grass clippings or compost and your mulch will double as food for your plants. 

Tomatoes are heavy feeders and require more nutrients than your average plant. Before planting, mix into your soil compost and a fertilizer high in nitrogen, like blood meal. To encourage an abundant crop, add a phosphorus fertilizer, like bone meal, after the first tomatoes have appeared. Tomatoes can suffer from blossom end rot when there’s either not enough calcium in the soil or the moisture varies a lot. If you notice black and brown leathery patches at the blossom end of fruits, add calcium in the form of lime. Infected fruit is still delicious—just cut out the brown spots.

CHALLENGES

Tomatoes are happiest when temperatures range between 70 and 95 degrees during the day and 55 and 70 degrees at night. If temperatures are too hot or too cold, the plants may drop their blossoms and no fruit will form.  

pests & DISEASE

Tomato hornworms are green caterpillars that can quickly devour tomato leaves. You can try picking them off, but their green color makes them hard to spot. Use an insecticidal soap or Bt to get rid of them.

The wireworm, the larval stage of the click beetle, is a silent assassin of newly transplanted tomatoes. The worms sever the stem from the root and damaged plants wither and die before you even realize what’s happened. To get rid of them I recommend burying a potato attached to a stick four or five inches deep in your soil. Wireworms love to tunnel into potatoes. After three weeks, dig up your potato trap and remove all the worms you’ve captured. 

Verticillium and fusarium wilts are soil-borne diseases that can kill plants fast. Once the soil has become infected with these dis- eases, it’s nearly impossible to prevent damage to tomato plants. If you spot signs of wilt, make sure not to plant tomatoes in that area for at least five years.

Blight is a fungal disease that can damage young and mature plants early or late in the season. There’s little you can do about blight once plants have it, but you can keep the disease from invading the stems by removing infected leaves. Don’t compost the infected leaves or the fungal infection will spread

Harvest

Pick tomatoes as they ripen so more of them will grow. They’re ready to harvest when they easily pop off the plant from just above the stem. I place my index and middle finger behind the nobbed joint, called the pedicle, and use my thumb to press down, snapping the fruit free. You can also use scissors. In the fall, bring any green fruit inside to protect against the frost. They’ll continue to ripen on your counter but won’t be as juicy or delicious as vine ripened fruit. 

RECIPES

Tomato and Peach Panzanella
Tomato Sandwich with Miso Aioli
Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

OUR BOOKS