Nice Post, JohnnyK. I am going to try the paper bag idea.
I grow mostly Roma and San Marzanos, along with peppers of all types for my chili and spaghetti sauce. This year the plants started out looking the best they ever had. Then North Central Ohio got two weeks of nothing but rain. The leaf mulch I put down to keep moisture in and suppress weeds turned into a swamp. Some plants died and others looking no so great, I still should have a decent crop, but not the bumper crop I was expecting.
Next year I will be doing mounding with the leaf mulch between rows and grass clippings on top of mounds.
I buy them from a family owned nursery about a half mile from my house. I have to ask them to order them. They get many of their plants from a large semi-commercial nursery which is about 20 miles away. It’s huge and has everything.
My wife does cherry tomatoes as she likes them small for salads, I’m not a fan of them, and Peppers in a small greenhouse, as we have a small garden we grow pototoes and carrots in tall bags. When we in our early twenties and there were four of us I grew almost everything on a plot of 1/3rd of a acre, Potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, peas, green beans, broad beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes, cucumbers, a few other things. It was far cheaper than buying them but you had to be patient.
But the flavours of any of them were superb as soon as they were harvested and cooked!
Store/supermarket Veg sometimes have no flavour because they are produced in such huge quantities flavour didn’t come into it.
I’ll bet you won’t find a tomato that color in the super market.
This is the fertilizer that I used this year. Rich in calcium to prevent blossem end rot (this stuff really works). Made from bat guano (bat poop), worm casts (more poop), kelp, mycorrhizar (fungus that feeds the plant’s roots), hurmic acid (decomposed remains of organic life), enzymes and minerals. I wouldn’t eat this stuff but the tomatoes seem to like it.
One more important tip regarding tomatoes. NEVER put a tomato in the refrigerator. The cold temperature will suck the flavor out of the tomato. That is one reason why market tomatoes have no flavor. They were transported in refridgerated railcars or refrigerated trucks. They were probably stored in a cooler.
So I moved the tomatoes out of the green house, rigged up some fine bird netting to help keep the squirrels out and re-plumbed the drip system. After a couple of weeks we now have 8 tomatoes that I can see! They definitely like the cooler temps - great tip.
When I was a kid, my dad kept a garden and we grew tomatoes, among other things, and we found that the best fertilizer was horse manure. We had a friend who kept horses, and every spring, we’d muck out his stables and get a truckload of manure. We tilled that into the patch, and it gave really good, crumbly, fertile soil.
This is caused by a lack of calcium in the soil. I used to have a real proble with blossem end rot until I started to fertilize with “Texas Tomato Food”. Texas Tomato Food has a lot of calcium which completely stopped the blossom end rot.
Manure is good stuff as long as it is “well rotted”. Fresh manure is too hot and it can burn the plant’s roots. There is a horse stables about five miles from my house. They offer manure for free. However, I have no way of getting it from the stables to my house. Putting it in my Lexus SUV is not an option.
My wife makes tomato sauce with most of them. The cherry tomatoes make a sweet sauce. And of course lots of salads and sandwiches. Nothing like a home grown tomato.
Well, it’s the end August and, as usual, the tomato plants look like trash. However, they are still growing tomatoes like crazy. I estimate the the six plants will produce over 300 tomatoes. That is a new record for me.
Tomato gardening season is over. I estimate that my six tomato plantes produced about 350 tomatoes.
I am a strong believer in growing a Winter cover crop in my Tomato garden. I plant Hairy Vetch in early September.
Hairy Vetch is an easy to grow, cold-hardy legume that is planted in the Fall and plowed into the soil in the Spring. It’s greatest benefit is that it absorbs Nitrogen as it grows and fixes the Nitrogen into soil when it is plowed under. It will release about 100 lbs. of Nitrogen per acre. When plowed under it improves soil structue, increases the soil’s ability to absorb nutrients and moisture. Hairy Vetch needs to be plowed under in the Spring before it gows to seed.
Thanks for a very informative and entertaining thread. I planted my tomatoes about 6 weeks ago, way too early. But now they are putting on new leaves and growing. I prepped the soil with very old compost from my chook shed and dug it in well, but I never thought of planting them that deep. A lot of good advice there Johnny. I will take on some of your other tips and let you know how it goes.
