Enjoy Fresh Tomatoes All Year

Enlarge Image Image Gallery You can eat tomatoes all year by using these strategies. LYNN KARLIN

Every day is a good day to eat homegrown tomatoes, so why not do all you can to make the dream of year-round fresh tomatoes come true? It’s easy to get a head start in spring if you use the right varieties and a few tricks. Then once the summer planting peaks, you can switch your attention to growing a fall crop that will finish ripening indoors after the first freeze. Plenty of light can keep a container-grown cherry tomato producing indoors through winter, which brings you back to spring.

Ready to get started? We’ll walk through the five basic steps with help from folks who share your passion for homegrown tomatoes.

1. Open the Season Early

At their five-acre organic farm in Davisburg, Mich., Diane and John Franklin have spent years in their quest to break and then hold the state record for the earliest ripe tomato. “We really push the envelope,” Diane says. With the help of a high tunnel (also known as a hoop house), their efforts pay off with ripe tomatoes in May, or in June using Wall O’ Water cloches in an open garden (see “Wonderful Wall O’ Waters”).

Though their last frost usually comes during the second half of May, the Franklins have found they can set out tomato seedlings in April if they use Wall O’ Waters and cold tolerant varieties. “We have ripe tomatoes when other people are just planting theirs, and a really good harvest starting in June rather than August,” Diane says. She suggests ‘Glacier,’‘Ida Gold’ and ‘Stupice’ for their cold tolerance, earliness and good flavor.

If you don’t like the idea of setting out seedlings in freezing weather, one alternative is to grow a few early plants indoors near a south-facing window, with supplemental light from fluorescents. Be sure to shift plants to larger containers as soon as roots begin to tickle their way through the pots’ drainage holes. Many gardeners adopt ‘Early Girl’ or ‘Sun Gold’ tomatoes as store-bought seedlings, grow them indoors until the first fruits dangle from the vine, and then set them out inside tomato cages wrapped with clear plastic during spring’s first warm spell.

2. Keep ’Em Coming in Summer

Summer is the time to experiment with new varieties that have caught your eye, but as part of your year-round tomato quest, do include at least one reliable indeterminate cherry tomato in your garden. (Indeterminate varieties produce vines and fruit until killed by frost; determinate bush types tend to set one big crop and then decline. Most heirloom and cherry tomatoes are indeterminates.) Small-fruited cherries often produce fruit despite stress from extremely hot or cold weather, and many varieties show good disease resistance. Your summer-grown indeterminates can serve as donor plants for rooted cuttings to start your winter crop (keep reading).

In climates with long growing seasons, spring-planted tomatoes often succumb to disease by late summer. You can replace them with new seedlings of slow-ripening storage varieties for winter eating, or grow plants propagated from cuttings of your summer varieties. Another option is to relocate volunteer plants that emerge in your compost. You won’t know what they are until they begin to fruit, but late-season surprise tomatoes are better than none at all.