Tomato Growing

Mr Greenthumb aka Stan de Freitas of Willow Tree Nursery in St Petersburg, Florida is so clever when it comes to horticulture that it’s scary. In a video just 1 minute and 34 seconds long he explains the techniques of organic tomato growing.

What is organic? asks this bon vivant and provides an instant answer: It’s growing plants without using chemicals.

Which doesn’t mean you aren’t going to use anything at all. Instead you are going to use nursery products that are friendly to the environment and not harmful. Of course these will contain chemicals, but of the natural kind and not out of the factory.

Mr Greenthumb says you should use Black Kow cow manure, which is not very high power when it comes to fertilizing, with a make-up of just .5 (N), .5 (K) and .5 (P). But it’s very good at “keeping the good stuff in the soil”. Also you should use peat moss to retain the moisture and the good stuff, and you should also use fish emulsion “because it’s organic”. Presumably none of those fish were contaminated in any way by chemicals.

Stan then puts a positive spin on organics by asserting that the Amish have wonderful gardens because they improved the soil with organic matter. So save all those grass clipping, kitchen waste, coffee grindings and feed them into your soil like a man in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, says Mr Greenthumb. He ends by adding that you should start your plants healthy with Hi-Yield Dipel Dust. What is that stuff? Hope it’s organic.

Barbara Pierson, the nursery manager at White Flower Farm in Litchfield, Connecticut, is a true professional. This might just be the best video (5:02) out there on the subject of growing tomatoes in containers. Barbara says that White Flower Farm supplies over 100 varieties of tomato seed, so it might be worth visiting www.whiteflowerfarm.com to take a closer look.

Once you have a seedling, you need to plant it in full sun. Container gardening means you can move the plant around, which is great for tomatoes, which need 6 – 8 hours of sunlight per day. You place a potting mix in the pot in a ratio of 2:1 with compost. Make sure there are no lumps.

Remove the seedling from the seedling pot without breaking up the root ball. You plant the seedling deep, after removing the leaves that will be below the surface. These stems will produce roots where the leave were. Tamp the plant in gently.

The time to stake a tomato plant is at the time of planting, says Barbara. She likes a simple spiral stake for a container tomato. Push it right to the bottom of the pot. Now water the plant well. Check regularly for moisture by sticking your finger in the soil. When the plant starts producing fruit, don’t over water or the fruit may crack and the taste of the tomato may be insipid.

This is advice for a very specific tomato grower: one growing tomatoes in a poly tunnel in bottomless pots over growing bags, with a drip irrigation, which is called ring culture, in a climate where the sunlight is weak. If you are that brand of tomato grower, and you can understand a deeply British provincial accent, the watch Steve Ott, editor of Kitchen Garden, in this short video (1:34) showing how he tears leaves off tomato plants.

You have to make sure that the tomato fruits are getting enough sunlight, so strip off the lower stems to let in the sunlight. Don’t tear off too many, though. The leaves are where the tomato plants manufacture their food. The plants in the video are Roma tomatoes. This plum tomato is good for soups and sauces, says Steve.

Danny Botkin of Franklin County, Maryland is not just any organic farmer. He and his family are committed to a bigger picture: Laughing Dog Farm is “an ongoing quest for community and connection, as we have sought to incorporate some of that legacy of tribe, family, land stewardship, social activism and co-creative inter-dependence. That’s always been the ulterior goal, the idealistic Bigger Picture, per se. However, like everybody else, we’re practitioners, working, growing and learning daily — imperfectly attempting to do it better each time.” Wow.

This video is a quick, easy lesson in getting seeds from tomatoes. Have you ever wondered how? It’s easy. You cut open the tomato and squeeze out the pulp (seeds and gel) into a glass or ceramic dish. You add some pure water to create a slurry and leave this on a warm window sill.

In ten or twelve days a thick scum will have formed. The gel will have fermented away from the seeds. Now rinse the seeds in a sieve until they are clean and leave them for about two weeks in a warm place to dry. When you wrap them, or double wrap them, or place them in jars, make sure they are totally dry or they will rot. Store them in the freezer or another cool place until the planting season.

If you are growing tomatoes at home, or even if you have access to fresh tomatoes in abundance from another source, you might want to store them for use during the winter months when tomatoes are scarce and expensive. There is a limit, after all, to how many tomatoes your family can consume each week, so why not keep them for later use?

You can make sauces and freeze those, or make chutney, ketchup or other preserves, but have you thought of freezing tomatoes? In this compact little video (3:35) Rita Heikenfeld of AboutEating.com discusses ways to freeze tomatoes.

Traditionally, says Rita, people have blanched tomatoes before chopping and freezing them. Blanching means they have placed them in hot water and then pulled off the skins. Common wisdom has it that this needs to be done so that the enzymes in the skin are removed, inhibiting the tomato from ripening further.

Without saying it in so many words, Rita says this is hogwash. You can freeze regular size tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and pear tomatoes (the canning kind) whole just as they are, skin and all. When you are ready to use them just run the frozen tomatoes under tepid water and the skins will come away easily. Chop up the tomatoes and add to soups, sauces, etc. It’s a great time and energy saving tip.