Tag Archives: staking tomatoes

How To Grow Amazing Tomatoes This Year!

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Whether fresh or canned - we use tomatoes from our garden nearly every day of the year.

Whether fresh or canned – we use tomatoes from our garden nearly every day of the year.

Without a doubt –  tomatoes are the most important crop we grow in our garden.

In fact, we use our home-grown tomatoes and tomato based products nearly 365 days a year. In the summertime – we eat them right off the vine, in salads, hamburgers, sauces and more. In the fall and winter months, we enjoy the tomato juice, vegetable soup, chili, salsa, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, and ketchup that we have canned or frozen from the summer’s bounty.

Here are some valuable hints, tips and tricks we have learned over the years to grow a bumper crop of tomatoes:

1.  The When, How And Where Of Planting Tomatoes:

Pick a bright, sunny location for your tomatoes.

Pick a bright, sunny location for your tomatoes.

WHEN TO PLANT: Tomatoes are just about the last thing that get planted in our garden.  Tomatoes love warm soil and warm weather.  If you plant them too early in your growing season, they can really struggle. It’s not just about preventing frost. Cold, damp spring temperatures can make them more susceptible to disease, rot and lethargic growth.  Here in this part of Ohio, most of our garden goes in around the 15th of May.  If it’s nice and warm out – the tomatoes go in too. But if it’s still a little chilly and damp – we wait until late May to allow the soil to warm up!

Crush a few egg shells in each of your holes to help prevent blossom rot

Crush a few egg shells in each of your holes to help prevent blossom rot

HOW TO PLANT:  Tomatoes benefit from rich, fertile soil. When you plant - make sure to add a few cups of good compost in the hole along with the plant.  And start saving your eggs shells now! Crushed egg shells are an excellent supplement to add to your planting hole.  They add calcium to the soil as they break down – helping to prevent the all-too common blossom rot; those black spots on the ends of tomatoes that can decimate a garden.  We drop in a few crushed egg shells per planting hole.

WHERE TO PLANT:  Plant your tomatoes in the sunniest location you can find.  It can’t be said enough – tomatoes love sun and heat. The more you give them – the better your crop will be!  And remember to rotate where you plant them from year to year – if you keep planting those tomatoes in the same spot, they will rob the soil of all the nutrients needed for great yields and become more prone to disease.

Mulching and Weeds:

Tomatos mulched

Mulching around plants with compost gives the plants a boost and helps keep the area around your plants free of weeds

We mulch our tomato plants with a 1 to 2″ thick layer of compost – creating a 6 to 8″ compost circle around each stalk. It helps to regulate soil temperature, keep weeds to a minimum, and soil from eroding during strong rains.  Of more importance, it acts as a slow-release fertilizer as nutrients strain through it during watering or rainfalls.  Mulching also helps keep weeds at bay.  Don’t let weeds compete for the same nutrients your tomatoes need. Just a few minutes of daily maintenance pulling small weeds around your plants will keep your garden productive and neat!   Make sure  as you work in your garden to stay off the ground directly around your plants – stepping on and around your plant’s root zone compacts the soil and keeps them from fully developing.

One last note on mulching.  If the season and soil are still a little cool – wait a few weeks for it to warm up before applying the mulch.  If the soil is still cool, mulching can actually prolong the soil from heating up.

Pruning and Supporting

Pruning a few inches from the bottom of your plants allows for easy watering and increased air and light to reach your plants.

Pruning a few inches from the bottom of your plants allows for easy watering and increased air and light to reach your plants.

Whether you use cages, stakes, or a hybrid system like we do (See Stake a Cage), it’s critical to provide great support for your tomato plants!  It keeps them off the ground – away from pests and foot traffic, allowing tomatoes to ripen with good circulation and exposure to sunlight.

As the plants grow during the first month – we like to prune out the bottom 3 to 4″ of stems and shoots. Why?  It makes plants easier to water, and once again allows that all important air and light to circulate through the plants and rows.  It also makes it a little more difficult for garden bugs and pests to find their way onto your plants.

Watering

Water around the base of your plants, and not on the leaves. It allows water to reach the roots and prevents mold

Water around the base of your plants, and not on the leaves. It allows water to reach the roots and prevents mold

Watering tomatoes (and for that fact, your entire garden), is as much about when to water, as it is how much.  Never water during the heat of the day.  Not only do you lose much of it to evaporation, but you also can easily burn the foliage of the plants.  The absolute best time to water is in the early hours between sunrise and mid-morning.  Not only is it cooler and easier on the gardener, but your plants are not stressing from the heat of the day either.  Evening watering is your next best choice if you can’t water in the morning, although it can create mildew if the water sits on leaves through the cool nights.

How Much Water?  This is a big one.   When the plants are very young and for the first week or so, you may need to water daily to get them established.  After that – watering every day is a no-no. Established tomatoes need about 1 inch of water a week.  If mother nature can’t supply that  - then you need to supplement.  If you are experiencing a prolonged dry spell – water every two to three days with about a 1/2″ of water to the plant at a time.  This allows enough water to go deep into the soil and create longer roots.   Why not every day?  Plants that get a little water every day never send their roots deeper to look for moisture and nutrients – and you end up with a weak root system, leading to a weak plant.

Soil Fertility and Fertilizing

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Good fertile soil leads to deep green and healthy plants. If you do want a little natural boost – try watering the soil with compost tea.

Tomatoes need fertile soil to grow strong and healthy.  If you follow along with our blog, you know we’re not big fans of man-made fertilizers – so what is the answer when it comes to fertilizing?  Well, if you use compost in your planting holes and as a top dressing, work in green manure and cover crops to your soil in the fall or spring, and practice plant rotation – there really is no need for synthetic fertilizers to get a great crop of tomatoes.

If you want to give your plants an all natural boost – you can apply compost tea – a simple solution of water soaked and steeped in fresh compost.  The water absorbs the natural nutrients from the compost and becomes an “all natural” liquid fertilizer.  We apply it to the soil around the base of our plants (not the leaves – it can burn them) a couple of times early in the growing season to get our plants off to a great start.  (Well, truth be told, we also do it so our plants can look a little bigger and brighter than my brother-in-laws :) ).

Happy  Growing!

- Jim and Mary

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Mid Season Garden Review – The Winners and Losers

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The plan – how it all looked on paper in March

Way back when we were planning the garden last Winter, we made a point to make sure we would review our choices not only at the end of this growing season – but at the  midway point as well.  Why?  Because it gives us so much more information to help choose what varieties to plant in next year’s garden.  It’s important to know how the garden progressed and when – so we know what to expect in the coming years, and what to repeat and what to avoid.  So we have divided this review into four categories – Top Performers, Holding Steady, A Little Disappointing, and the Jury Is Still Out.  So here are our thoughts on the garden so far:

A Cajun Belle already taken from the garden. The peppers are crisp with little seed core- great for stuffing for appetizers

TOP PERFORMERS:

Mini Belle,
Cajun Belle and Tequila Sunrise Peppers,

The Mini Belle and the Tequila Sunrise we grew from seed -so a little bit of extra pride with how they are coming along.  Both varieties are topping out at about 18″ of good growth and of the 18 total plants – all of them already have at least two or three peppers hanging, with a lot of blooms as well.  The Cajun Belle – well it just continues to amaze us.  We have already picked four to five peppers that are crisp and have good heat…and the plants are just super healthy, and loaded with blooms.

Celebrity and Rutgers Tomatoes : Even though the Romas are still the workhorse of the garden (30 plants in the ground) – these two varieties are just booming in the garden.  Both the Celebrity and Rutgers have filled out the Stake-A-Cage’s with about 3 feet of solid growth.  They all have a good start of mid-sized green tomatoes on the vine – and should produce a bounty of nice, firm slicing tomatoes that are baseball size.

Purple Green Beans (Royal Burgundy)

The Purple Green Beans are off to a great start!

We are so happy with this variety – so far the bush beans are showing good growth and a lot of seed pods.  We had really good germination rates with the seed – so we are hoping for a bumper crop.  They are a beautiful shade of deep purple until cooked – so they add some color to the garden as well.  They also hold a little bit of sentimental value – my parents grew them growing up.

Roma’s are growing well with a good start of green tomatoes on the vine already

HOLDING STEADY:

Roma Tomato – A mainstay and workhorse of our tomato crop.  We use the Roma as a main ingredient in canning our sauces, tomato juice, ketchup and salsa.  The plants are doing really well – filling out the cages and filled with blooms and small green tomatoes.  With 30 plants in the ground – it should be another good crop to help us reach our canning goals.

Zucchini producing heavily

Zucchini (Elite)  Continues to be a good performer.  We have already picked a few nice sized fruits – and have a good 5 to 7 on each plant that will be ready soon.

A LITTLE DISAPPOINTING:

The cucumber plants are starting to produce – but we think an early frost stunted them

Straight Eight and Bush Cucumber – Although they are starting to come on strong and the plants are looking healthier every day – our cucumbers have lacked the size and strength of the other plants in the garden.  We did have a very close call on a frost a few days after putting them in the ground -and we both are starting to think they were hit and stunned with it.  Either way – we want to look into some other varieties for a fall crop and for next year.

GREEN BEANS (Blue Lake)

Very low germination rate on our Blue Lake variety – although, quite honestly, we were using left over seeds from last year.  We are going to plant some new seeds for a late summer crop and see if we like any better.

INTRIGUING….BUT THE JURY IS STILL OUT:

The Big Mama

THE BIG MAMA ROMA -

What can you say…the plant is producing…it has 5 to 6 huge tomatoes that are already turning red on the vine – way bigger and faster than any of our regular romas.  If it holds up to its promise of producing 12 to 16 oz. roma’s with little seeds- then it may quickly move into the TOP PERFORMER category for us.  So what’s holding us back from putting it in there?  Well, for one, we haven’t tasted any yet – and quite honestly – the actual plant just  lacks the good looks of a big leafy plant.  (how shallow are we? :) )

Hope you enjoyed the review – we would love to hear about how your garden is faring as well!

Jim and Mary

A Great Way to Stake Your Tomatoes

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Our Stake-A-Cage method - we even make smaller ones to hold up our peppers.

Our Stake-A-Cage method – we even make smaller ones to hold up our peppers.

You can see the tomatoes by mid summer have filled the cages to the max!

You can see the tomatoes by mid summer have filled the cages to the max!

Over the years we have tried several methods of staking and tying up our tomatoes.  As the tomatoes start growing by leaps and bounds, you don’t want to risk the plants becoming damaged by leaning over and touching the ground, allowing disease and infestation to occur.  So do we use a stake or a cage?

Well, we now use what we call our stake-a-cage method to support the tomatoes as they grow.  No, we didn’t find this on an infomercial, rather, we developed this method by pure accident.  Last year at this time, we had just moved the chickens into their permanent home after completing construction of “The Coop”.

Inexpensive, thick, super soft and flexible yarn is a great way to tie them up.

We had left over fencing wire from building the outdoor run, as well as large stakes that we had used to stake out the area where it now sits. With some wire cutters, u-nails, and a hammer – we built the ‘best of both worlds’ for our tomatoes.

We simply attached an 18″ wide x 30″ high wire grid cut from the fencing to the 4′ stake with the U-nails.  We now had the support of a strong stake, but also the support that a sturdy wire cage provides. Whala – The Stake-A-Cage was born!

With the open cage and yarn – it’s easy to tie them up and get at the tomatoes when its time to pick

The best part – the cage is open in the front, allowing us to easily tie up the plants to a broader area, it also allows for picking the tomatoes without dealing with the hassle of reaching through a cage during harvest time.

The staking system makes it easy to pick and tie up tomatoes

We then use a super soft and bulky piece of yarn to tie the tomato vines to the Stake-A-Cage. We simply cut 12-18 inches of the yarn, tie it around the stalks and wrap the piece around any of the metal grid area as it grows throughout the season.  The yarn is really an inexpensive way to tie up your tomatoes (we spent less than $3 for 86 yards of material), but there are other benefits as well.  Your family members aren’t missing their favorite old t-shirts anymore and the pantyhose that your wife needs for that fall wedding will still be in her dresser drawer! You can even buy your yarn in a green color so that your garden ties are camouflaged in the background, allowing for a neat and clean appearance to the garden!

For as simple as it was – it is amazing how much it has helped in our tomato harvests!

Jim and Mary

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The Farm and Garden in Pictures – First Week of June

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It’s hard to believe all the changes in just one month – but what a difference a week makes. This is the 2nd part of our Spring, Summer and Fall series called “The Farm and Garden in Pictures”.  June’s pictures have brought many changes – the garden has sprung to life – more work was completed on the barn and landscape – and all of the transplanted grasses and perennials are starting to really take hold.  So here is our little farm in early June :

Upper fence row – all the transplants have really filled in – an all in bloom

Sugar snap peas are in full production – most of the time they don’t make it home from the vines when we pick them!

Fresh Spring Onions from the Garden

The upper garden – all of the tomatoes and peppers are setting flowers and growing fast

The lower garden is growing well – potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, lettuce peas and green beans

The front landscaping and daylilies transplants are all starting to fill in

Still a good supply of Lettuce, Radishes and Onions to make this salad

The first jalapeno appears…

Zucchini has really taken off in the last few weeks.

Sherman surveys the farm from his front porch.

The upper pergola grass transplants are really taking off – we are really hoping they will form a back hedge for the pergola

The reclaimed brick patio nears completion – progress now extends out past the posts

The Cajun Belle pepper – baby peppers are now on almost all of the vines

The Big Mama tomato plant – so far our trial on this plant holds promising results – we already have four to five big tomatoes on the plant.

The tomatoes are all nestled in their stake-a cage’s – the rain from last Thursday and Friday has sent them into a growth spurt

5 Easy Tips to Grow Great Tomatoes

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5 tips to grow great tomatoes

Tomatoes are a big part of our garden – and over the years, through both the glory of success – and the agony of failure – we’ve learned a lot of helpful hints – Here are our top 5:

Our little garden planting secret tool – the post hole digger

1.  Use the post hole digger trick:

We plant our entire garden with a post hole digger.  We lay out the spacing of all plants – and then dig every one of our holes with the it.  This is great for two reasons – it creates a much wider and deeper hole for the plants (easily getting to a depth of 8 to 12″) – and it’s easy on the back!  We then fill the bottom of the hole with a few inches of chopped straw and a few cups of great compost.  We will then mix in the dirt we removed from the hole with the compost and drop in the plant.  It gives the new plant plenty of loose, fertile soil to spread it’s roots and the straw at the bottom helps to hold moisture around the roots.

A couple of handfuls of compost or even potting soil are a great mulch for plants.

2.  Mulch your tomatoes:

Tomatoes thrive on good moist soil – and don’t like to become dried out.

Use a couple of cups of compost or potting soil around the base of the plants as a mulch to keep the plants from drying out.  The  nutrients from the compost and potting soil leach through to the plant each and every time you  water – and it helps retain the water when you do.

We make slight well out of the compost mulch to help funnel the water directly to the plant- this way the water has a chance to soak down through and not run off.

Remove the spray tip from a sprayer and use to water your plants easily at the soil level.

3. Practice Good water habits:

Tomatoes need water!

Especially early on when they are becoming established.  Water often (at least every other day), especially during hot days when they are young.  Also make sure to water early in the day or in the evening, and try to water the roots – not the foliage –  so the water on the leaves doesn’t burn the plants from the sun.

We use a 2 gallon sprayer – remove the spraying attachment – and water directly to the plant’s base to conserve water and not touch the leaves.

As a general rule of thumb – tomatoes need at least 1″ of water a week.  When you do water – water deep enough that the roots are thoroughly soaked – allowing them to grow deeper in the soil and not stay near the surface where they will dry out quicker.

A mulch of compost or potting soil around the plants allows the water to hold near the plant, slowly sink in, and keeps the roots from drying out.

4. Fertilize your plants:

There are plenty of organic and natural fertilizers available to use safely on your plants.  You can even make a compost tea from soaking water in fresh compost.  But tomatoes can really benefit from a boost or two of fertilizer early on in their growth.  Not too much though – too much fertilizer can result in a whole lot of leaf growth – and very few tomatoes.

Give your tomatoes good support – it helps keep them disease free and helps them to ripen more better on the vine.

5.  Support them:

No – this isn’t about providing a room for them after college :)  Tomatoes and their vines need great support – so whether you use a cage or a stake – keep them tied up and off the ground – it keeps the air flowing through the plants – which keeps black rot and other diseases at bay, and also helps to promote growth and ripen the fruit quicker.

So good luck with your garden and your tomatoes this year -and we hope that these tips help your tomatoes reach new heights! Let us know if you have any great tips or hints that you have found to work in your garden! You can see our post on building your own inexpensive stake a cage supports here :   Make Your Own Tomato Supports

- Mary and Jim

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