16,949 Garden Web Discussions | Growing Tomatoes
Know the characteristics of your growing season so that you can adapt to it. Not just USDA zone, but also length (number of frost-free days), the temperatures you can expect over the season, and heat intensity.
Here in Northern NV, on the wrong side of the Sierras, we have a short, intense, highly variable season. Length of frost-free days has a range of 90-120 days, but they are not necessarily consecutive. It's normal to have a 30-40 degree swing in temps over one day/night . Last frost in mid-May. Planting out sans protection (WOW, plastic, cloche, etc.) shouldn't happen any sooner, and most people wait until June. But this means that the plants have as few as 4 weeks to grow, flower, and set fruit before the convection oven of July and August is turned on (temps in July and August rocket up past 90, and there's that ever-present desiccating wind).
So you adapt by either planting as big a plant as you can get in early June, or by planting smaller plants earlier (say mid-April) and working a bit more to protect them from the cold nights. Black plastic to warm up the soil, but that has to be removed before July and a good layer of mulch added to keep the beds from drying out. Regularly watering any bit of dirt out here will be a siren song to weeds, some of which have giant taproots and the rest of which are prickly and spiky and just painful, so weed control is huge. Soils here are always lacking OM and are generally pretty alkaline, so add compost every year and either amend with sulfur or bring in better soil and grow in raised beds.
Find and make friends with experienced gardeners in your local area. If you have one, your cooperative extension is a valuable resource.
Mine, the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, has literally hundreds of searchable publications and staffs master gardeners to answer the phones. They also offer free lectures and classes on everything from pruning to composting to growing veggies. You can walk in with a picture or sample of a sick or diseased plant and they'll help to diagnose the problem.
Don't be afraid to experiment and take calculated risks. Diversify.
Growing from seed lets me try a couple new varieties of tomato each year. I grow both cherry and slicers, which lets me harvest all season long. I plant half my tomatoes early, and the rest at the normal time, which is insurance against early disaster.
Alright. We see that different climates have different set of tricks. For example, in our PNW we have different set of tricks than in Southwest Texas and South Florida. While we try to beat the cool weather, you are fighting the heat. While we try to provide more air flow by pruning, you might need that foliage to shade the fruits and the sol underneath. We pray for more sunshine and you try shade your plants.
The morale of the story is : KNOW YOUR CLIMATE !
Sey
I've heard that, but in the seven years I've been raising tomatoes, I've never once gotten them to last past August. I'm in the SF Valley and the combo of heat and pests just destroys them. Ordinarily, I get tomatoes between late May to early August. It's wonderful, but it's brief.
Up in PNW we have some disadvantages , as compared to the south, East, NE, mid west, .. but we have an advantage: We never get any storms. Hurricane is never heard of here. Well, it is no accident . The PACIFIC ocean is pretty gentle and calm.
Sey
Hi ncrealestateguy,
Your reaction is expected.
In Boston we have frequent rains. I believe one can duplicate my experiment in similar climate and soil. The key is to have deep garden bed with lots of organic matters. The plants will find water deep down and nutrients made by worms.
Be sure the soil is moist but not soaked. Take it out of the "greenhouse" for good and start in the house by a window that catches morning sun (continuing supplemental lighting the whole time). I'm thinking your "greenhouse" is some sort of plastic dome, which should have been removed shortly upon gemination. When it holds up to that for several hours indoors, then start it gradually outside, and always begin use morning sun when it is more humid and lower in the sky.
Pictures would help as mentioned but I think the answer will still be the same. Hopefully the plant is healthy and has had sufficient light to develop so far. A fan or breezy place is also helpful if you have one by a window. Good luck :)
PC
if by greenhouse you mean you have a seed starting system with plastic dome as sold in the stores. then the dome must be immediately removed as soon or even before the seeds poke above ground and fresh air from then on. putting the dome over the seedling will make it unable to survive. it will most likely get damping off disease from the high humidity and flop over and die. look closely at the stem at the ground level. if the diameter of the stem is smaller then it has damping off and will die. no way to save it once it gets damping off.
damping off is why people use sterile soil to germinate seeds. they are looking for soil that is free of the damping off disease.
Gary,
I don't know if the links are still active, but so far as I know the Pink Gourmet originated in Columbia, MO at the Wilkerson nursery and garden center which is gone now.They might have gotten it from UMC. I worked for the garden center in college and we would have people come in from all over the country for these plants. I would like to find some myself, I hope they are not extinct. They were a large pink, low acid tomato, very good. Many claimed they could eat these and not be bothered by the acid like other tomatoes.
If you've found them please let me know
Thanks,
Sue
It's my understanding that tomatoes are sexually mature and start producing flowers once they have grown 5-7 true leaves. Flowering is not an indication of stress, instead it indicates the seedling had good growing conditions.
Stress, if severe enough, will cause a delay in flowering. Deprivation of water, light, warmth, nutrients, transplant shock and the presence of pests and diseases are all stressors.
Regarding the pinching of early flower buds, it's kind of a wash. A young, soon-to-be-transplanted plant takes longer to produce a ripe tomato compared to the same plant when it's fully settled into the garden. Having said the above, I never pinch early flowers. It's too risky since we can get heatwaves in June & July which cause later flowers to not set.
Sharon, are your plants still inside?
I planted all my tomatoes on May 3 this year. Last year the tomatoes went into the ground on May 8 and I harvested the first Sungold on June 22.
Daren
I'm a newb at this. I had a garden many years as a kid and now getting back into it as an adult. I've started several batches of tomatoes from seeds. I've read the comments about the purple underside of the leaves and the purple stem might be due to cold. My guess is that it doesn't have much, or anything, to do with the temperature. My seeds have been indoors in my office where the temperature is around 75 degrees.
My uneducated guess is that the purple is a good thing as has to do with getting light. I say this because my seedlings had germinate for about 6 days before I got my grow lights. During those first 6 days they only got a couple hours of direct sunlight and the rest was indirect. At that time the stems were green and a bit translucent. After I installed the grow lights, which I keep on 24/7, the stems started to turn purple.
Nick
Yes, It has to do with getting light and there are also other factors, me thinks.
Somehow, it has to do with the uptake of "P"., as well. The experienced growers will tell you that ignore it ! The seedling will come out of it, as the time goes on. This is given that the starting soil has adequate nutrients or you supply them, when the seedlings start growing true leave. That is like the time the chick breaks the eggshell and comes out..then it needs foods and drink.
Sey
1.76 oz. 4th of July. (Almost 4th of August, actually.)
NOT happy with the taste, size, productivity, and DTM .
Well i was debating on what to plant in some un-used corners of two plots, i guess it won't be Fourth of July. I now have over a dozen slightly overgrown FOJ starts that i'll try to give away.
I'll probably throw some leftover purple-pink hearts into those spots instead, they should be a bit better for canning blends. Or come to think of it, i have a couple of extra Joe's Portuguese , maybe i'll just go with both.
Thank you for the heads up on FOJ all.
Steve