What "Determines" Your Tomato?

"Determininant" or "Indeterminant"? That is the question.A Shakesperean tomato question.

This is the big dividing line for tomatoes.

Determinant tomatoes grow up, set fruit, pump out the tomatters, then give it up.  It's time to give the plant the old heave-ho, and put something else in the garden.

Indeterminate tomatoes are the Ever-ready Bunny of the garden, they just keep going and going.

Determinant varieties are Celebrity, Roma and others. Indeterminant are most of the cherry tomatoes, Arkansas Travelers, and many others.

It's not a matter of which is better; it's just understanding what you have.

Here in Texas, you really ought to have your tomatoes in by now. If you plant either variety now, your babies will just come into maturity during the heat of the summer. Fruit doesn't set when it's consistently over 85 degrees. So it's just a battle to survive the summer.

But you Yankee farmers (or Canadians) are blessed. Put in your tomatoes now (or whenever it's frost free in your neighborhood) and reap the benefits!

Personally, I tend to like the indeterminant varieties. Up north you'll pop those tasty cherries all summer long. Down here, I'll get some before the heat, then hopefully in the fall! Last year we ate Arkansas Travelers till Christmas!

Houston, We Got a Problem

Trouble in tomato city.


Trouble in Tomato City



I told you I'd be honest, and report all my failures as well as success. We just hit our first problem of the season.

Note the pinholes in my babies' leaves.


I took a sample over to Dick Broussard, GM at Wells Brothers in Plano.

"You got bugs," he said elegantly.

He suggests a homemade concoction of soaking tobacco of any form in a liter or so of soda pop, the sugary stuff. Let it sit for a day or so, then strain out the tobacco, and spray it on the plants.

"The sugar in the soda will attract them, and the tobacco is a deadly neurotoxin."

I'll give it a try.

It's been a sketchy spring here in North Texas since I put in tomato seedlings a few weeks ago. Late frosts, then temps zooming up to the high 80's yesterday. Wet sometimes, dry others.

One or two of my seedlings show brown tips on the leaves, a possible sign of some kind of fungus or blight. Hopefully consistent sunny days will kill the bad, grow the good.

Richard also showed me a great sight for self-diagnosis. http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/vegetable/tomato-problem-solver/leaves/ But like a hypochondriac, I think I have every disease known to man, farmer or gardener.

But it's a great site.

Don't Just Stick It in the Ground, Show it Some Love!

It's getting late to plant tomatoes here in Texas, but maybe you Yankees can use this tip. (Friends in Fargo say they're still getting snow.)

Assuming you've been following my suggestions, you dug the hole nice and deep. Dig extra deep, cause we're going to "pump you up" as Arnold used to say.

The most important thing is to put lots of compost into the hole. Compost has loads of nutrients, and keeps the root system damp when water is scarce.

Then be sure to add some fertilizer. This year I added the famous "Rocket Fuel" (3-6-2) and some stuff the guy at the nursery sold me call "Biotome." I'd like to try one product on half of my plants, and the other on half, but I'm too chicken, so I put some of both in. 

If I were rich, I'd add expanded shale. (It's not that expensive, I'm just broke.) These little rocks help break up our heavy clay, and even have some moisture retention potential. When I was planting a few weeks ago it was discouraging to see that after all the compost I've pumped into the garden, it still tends to clump together. 

Mulch for Moisture

One of the keys to great tomatoes is moisture.

My synthetic mulch experiment. It's not very pretty, but hopefully
it will keep in the moisture, and keep out weeds.

That's why it's so hard to get a nice tomato in your garden in Texas in July and August.

The hot, dry days, and watering restrictions are rough on our favorite crop.

What's a gardener to do?

Along with starting smaller tomato varieties, put lots and lots of mulch around the base of the plant.

If you're using natural mulches like wood chips, or hay, three to four inches isn't too much!

You can get creative. I tried paper out of my office shredder last year. It worked OK, but it takes a long time to break down, and it's not the prettiest thing in your garden. I've heard of people using newspapers laid flat and wetted down, or coarsely shredded newsprint.

The idea is for the mulch to hold water as long as possible, then protect the soil from our scoarching sunshine, which bakes it dry and lifeless for Mr. T. Good much also knocks out weeds. As much as we all love gardening, I haven't met anybody that actually likes weeding.

This year I'm trying a synthetic sheet, which I laid out over my tomato patch, and cut holes in to plant the bushes. Then I used some of the dirt from the holes to weigh down the sheet. (most the hole gets filled with seriously amended materials. More about the potting soil tomorrow.)  

I have some doubts about this "rug." It's black, won't that just suck up the heat from the sunshine and cook the soil faster? So, I set aside part of the garden mulched in composted wood chips to serve as a control, for my experiment.

Just one warning about mulch: be careful not to use fresh grass clippings, wood chips or sawdust. It's too "hot" (basically it's in the first stages of composting.) It will eat up the nitrogen and/or burn up your plants. Partially composted wood chips are my favorite. It's a little expensive, but it looks neat, and continues to break down and eventually improve the garden soil.

  

Stake It High & Watch It Fly!

Tomatoes are kinda strange.

They started in Peru as a little bush, but almost every modern variety that we love is a tall leggy monster bearing beautiful fruits (at least, that's what we're shooting for.)

Problem is, they still have a rather thin stem, that gets stressed by the wind, and easily breaks.

There's a very simple solution here. Like a 50 Shades of Grey fan, most tomatoes love bondage. Tie them to a stake or a cage, and they seem to respond with love and big tomatoes.

The taller the better. I've been using stakes, but some of my tomatoes will outgrow a four-foot stake, and heavy fruits will break the branches.

Most cages I've seen are far too short, a yard or so.

This spring I found the solution at the Plano Community Garden. Tomato cages made from rebar, about five to six feet high, and sturdy as the concrete they were made to reinforce. 

Tip #4: As Tony Romo Says "GO DEEP!"

Real deep.

Tomatoes need a lot of water and nutrients from the soil. A nursery plant has been grown in a little container to make a good impression on you at the store. The grower has pumped a lot of nitrogen into that plant to make it look green and leafy on the shelf.

With most transplants your inclination is to plant it so that the soil in the little planter box (the crown) is just about the same depth as the surface of your garden. That might be fine for trees, but it's way too shallow for tomatoes.

"Otherwise you get this great big plant, and little bitty root system to feed it," says Erin Hofer, education coordinator at the Plano Community Garden.

Look carefully at the transplant in the store. See the little "hairs" on the plant stem? Each one of those is a potential root that can feed the plant.

How deep? Tommy Tomato at the nursery said three inches over the crown.  One of my transplants had directions to bury 80 percent of the plant.

Erin has the most radical plan of all.

"Dig a trench, and put the tomato to bed. water the trench,, lay him down, and cover him up, all except for the top two leaves! Then water the top." 

Erin said concievably you could just dig a hole straight down, exposing the top leaves, but with our heavy clay or caliche so near the surface, that might be tough. A trench and bury system should be enough.

I'm going to try it with half my tomatoes this summer. The second half will be buried three inches above the crown, and the third half will go in with 80 percent buried.     

Tomato Tip #3: Don't Let Your Tomato Go Naked, Put a Boot On It!

Cut the bottom out of a one or two gallon plastic bucket that your new azalea or rose came in, and put it around your newly planted tomato.


Brenda Steib of the Plano Community Garden with her tomato's "bootie." 


It will protect the tender little guy from nasty chills or vicious spring winds, which might break off a  branch.

This tip comes from Erin Hoffer, environmental education director with the City of Plano.

"Several people put their tomatoes out a few weeks ago," said Erin, "and they lost them when we had a late frost last week!"

Probably no more frosts around here, but the high here today was only in the 50's, and it's cold, wet and windy tonight. Wouldn't your babies do better in a bootie?    

This is a great tip for you Yankees that have several frosts to come.