By Amanda Moon.
Last year I finally decided to take my own advice and keep a garden journal of tomato experiments that my mother and I perform each year. We’re always on the look-out for ‘new’ varieties and old heirlooms, and new ways to boost production year after year.
By keeping records we are able to make adjustments each year without starting from scratch. Trying to remember from one season to the next what worked and what didn’t is never a sure bet, especially when we planted more than 60 tomato plants last year.
And not only did I keep a journal. . . I did the plant-nerd thing and drew a full map of the garden, enabling me to keep track of the location of each variety. I’m relieved that I did this, because we ended up with such a bountiful crop of beautiful red, pink, green and yellow tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. My freezer is still full of tomatoes!
We began our experiment by buying our tomatoes early. We didn’t plant them in the ground, but put them into one gallon containers between the middle of February and the first of March. They were set out in two phases.
The first were the 4” tomatoes which we purchased in February that had grown out enough to plant by mid-March. The second group were grown from seed and were not ready to plant until mid-April, which was too late we’ve decided. We had not planted the seed until late January and the tomatoes were not ready for an earlier planting.
This year we’re buying all of them as we missed the window again, which leaves our choices up to the mercy of other growers.
The bed for the tomatoes had been worked with chicken manure for several years and was pretty light and workable. We planted in rows and added a handful of turkey compost and TomatoTone to each planting hole.
A few of the smaller plants were eaten by rabbits or rats, so we collared their replacements with tin cans the second time around. Tin foil around the stem base works too. Two weeks after planting we applied Hasta Grow and Superthrive as a foliar feed and then top-dressed with more TomatoTone at the one month mark.
We watered the plants three to four times a week with soaker hoses and we got lucky with the first tomatoes (mid-March planting) and it was still raining, which helped make a huge growth difference over those planted in mid-April. As the heat intensified, we increased the watering to keep them in production and finally stopped altogether in early July and let them go.
Planting early does not mean ‘plant and walk away.’ Unfortunately on several nights we had to get out there and cover the plants with buckets and frost cover. By leaving the cages off the first month we were better able to protect the young tomatoes from late winter/early spring weather.
It takes two people to get the cages on, but it was a small price to pay for ease of wind and cold protection early on. We always protected when temperatures dropped below 40°F, especially if any wind was forecast.
Some of the best of the best included Lemon Boy (my favorite, a large yellow), Porter (smaller red), Pink Ping Pong (rare smaller pink heirloom), Sun Gold (yellow cherry), Arkansas Traveler (medium red/pink), Green Zebra (smaller green/yellow), Homestead (medium red), and Cherokee Purple and Black Krim (dark purplish popular heirlooms).
We’ll be planting most of these again this year as they were so amazing. We actually had fruit on the smaller tomatoes – Green Zebra, Porter, Ping Pong, Cherokee Purple and Sun Gold – into July.
We found that the Roma/ Paste tomatoes did not really do much of anything until it got hot. The San Marzanos put out malformed, inedible fruit until the temperature were consistently in the 80’s.
A couple of varieties that left us unimpressed were Ruby’s German Green (fruit spoiled too fast after picking) and Mortgage Lifter (zero production even though planted with the earlier group).
This year our tomatoes are bought and growing out in gallons and the garden is tilled. We will be adding horse manure, rotating the tomatoes to another part of the garden and sticking with the fertilizing routine we set in place last year.
However we will install a new watering system. The soaker hoses failed in the back part of the garden and some of the tomatoes were lost prematurely, so we’re putting in new removable PVC water lines. The hope is that we can control the water easier and direct it straight to each plant instead of watering the plants and the paths too.
We are also adding another half-dozen or so new varieties to experiment with in the hopes that a new favorite will emerge for next year. Until then happy gardening everyone!
If you have a question for Amanda or Chris, send it via email to [email protected]. Or mail a postcard to It’s About Thyme: 11726 Manchaca Road, Austin, TX 78748
www.itsaboutthyme.com
