True Love and TOMATOES

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

After any chance of frost, set determinate seedlings out in well-prepared soil in rows a yard apart, with plants 2 1/2' apart in each row. When planting, strip lower leaves. Bury the root and most of the bare stem straight, 2" under in the garden soil. To encourage the plant to grow vertically, bend the leafed top up (gradually so it doesn't snap) at 90° and hammer a 5' stake in beside the growing tip. Place a side dressing of Chilean seabird-guano superphosphate around the plants' roots then and every month thereafter. Roots will grow unseen from all along the stripped stem, and the exposed stem will begin growing up. Tie loosely every 3 inches with strips of old rag. As you see suckers sprouting out of leaf axils (not the flowering spikes that grow from midstem), pinch them out.

When rain begins getting scarce in July, lay soaker hoses along the rows and mulch soil 6" deep with leaves or old hay. Turn the soakers on when unmulched soil begins looking dry a half shovel-blade down. After 60 to 80 days, each stake will hopefully support a column of evenly-ripening - fruit most of it destined for the kitchen on canning days.

Plant "rank-growing" indeterminate varieties three to each crib in a row of 4' high circles of fence wire lined up 2' apart at the top of the garden. Plant their roots inside the circle. They too get a monthly feeding of superphosphate all around the wire. Place living compost of mowed grass, pulled weeds, garden trimmings and trash inside each circle and tie the plants to the wire. Let side stems grow semiwild. By summer's end, the wire will be buried in a jungle of tomato vine. Expose ripe fruit to the sun by pruning away covering foliage, and har vest till frost. Well before then, nip growing tips off and make sure the still-green fruit gets as much sunlight as possible.

These tomato hedges will be the source of your green tomatoes (use only the blemish-free). Wrap them in newspaper and let ripen on the cold back porch. When they show a touch of pink, transfer them to a sunny windowsill. We often have still-ripened tomatoes in the green salads served on Thanksgiving Day. Those green tomatoes that threaten to rot can be tossed into the fridge or the next batch of green tomato relish - sweet or sour depending on the cook's mood that day.

The Hydroponic Option

No food plant responds more satisfactorily to hydroponic culture (inside, under high-powered lights, fed specially concocted nutrient solutions) than tomatoes. The Whippersnapper variety, from Johnny's Selected Seeds, turns out up to 100 succulent. 1"-oblong fruit per plant in only 52 days; Johnny's Sun Gold produces clumps of cherry tomatoes in 57 day. Modern greenhouse hybrids from Europe or Israel such as cool-climate Cobra, high temperature-tolerant Abigail or clump-bearing, long-keeper Camelia, all from Stokes Seeds, produce 7- to 8-ounce fruit, although seed is gene-spliced and expensive (up to 5 cents per seed).

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print