First Tomatoes of the Season!

I lied right there - in the blog post title. These aren't technically the first tomatoes of the season. We've already had a smattering ripen early, but they never even made it into the house for a wash. We just popped them into our mouths too quickly.

Here's the first photograph of the first (ish) tomatoes of the season. 

There are three varieties shown here. At 1 o'clock is the Isis Candy - very sweet. This lives in the back tomato patch. At 4 o'clock is the Early Ssubakus Aliana, also sweet. It's in one of the big planter boxes on our driveway. 6 o'clock features a small Cherokee Purple. There are monstrous ones hanging on the plant right now that dwarf this little one. It was a tasty tomato on my bagel! Finally, and 8 and 10 o'clock are two Black Cherries. This is the blighted plant, but it's producing well so far (I've trimmed off the offending leaves and stems). The plant does look scrawny, with super long stems and not very bushy, but the fruit is delicious so far.

Another Stab at a Brandywine Tomato

At the farmer's market yesterday, I also picked up another tomato plant - a red brandywine. Last year, I had a pink brandywine in a 5 gallon nursery bucket. It did unbelievably poorly - was very sickly, losing what few leaves it developed. Ironically, this was one of the most important plants to me last year, since my husband spoke of how much he missed his favorite tomatoes from Jersey and I was guessing that Brandywines were his variety.

Somehow the pink brandywine managed to squeeze out three mealy tomatoes. In the end, though, it looked a bit like a dog hanging on a choke chain --- I'd slung its one super-long and spindly branch up high, tying it to a bamboo stake to keep the last developing tomato from capsizing the branch and falling ***SPLAT*** onto the driveway.

Needless to say, I'm hoping this year's will fair better. In order to give this one a fighting chance, I put it in a 10 gallon nursery pot with fertilizer-rich soil and some sand at the bottom for better drainage. I couldn't justify putting it in one of the final coveted spots in our northern bed, considering how badly its cousin performed last year.

I've put the brandywine pot next to another 10 gallon pot that has garlic thriving in it from last year (see - that which I've totally neglected thrives -- the garlic was a companion planting for tomatoes last year as a means of keeping aphids away). Both are on the eastern side of the big boxes, so when I hook up the automatic irrigation next weekend, they'll be easy to include.

This year's unsuspecting brandywine experiment... Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!! (front right. Left is garlic)

Tomatoes are Finally In!

It took longer than expected, but the little tomato starts I've been tending since Tammy gave them to me back on March 25. It's been on and off cold at night, and we're still getting some winter rains, but I decided to get them planted out. They're pretty hearty by now and have gotten really big in their little cups!

This is the Early Ssubakus Aliana, in one of the big planter boxes:



Here's the Black Cherry in the other big planter (I put them on opposite ends for maximum spread, and intend to put bell peppers on the empty sides tomorrow).



Here are the Cherokee Purple, Tomatillo and Isis Candy (left to right):

Planting Out Day!!!

It's finally here! May 1st and we are planting out today! Of course, I still don't have the plants' exact locations figured in our garden spaces, so I have to do a last minute research mission online about plant spacing.

Tomatillo - 24 inches

Transplanting Out

Possibly because of the notorious variability of tomatillo plants, there seems wide disagreement about a good inter-plant spacing for them: the range offered runs from 15 to 24 inches. On the one hand, one wants them as close as practicable, to conserve garden space and to encourage the necessary cross-pollination; on the other hand, one doesn't want the plants competing for sun and space. We used 24 inches and were glad we did--they bushed out quite a bit.

Tomatoes - depends on variety
I found some info about tomato spacing here. Since all my varieties are indeterminate, I'm going to hedge my bets with 24-36 inches in between. It's funny, but I recall from last year that the plants with larger fruits stayed relatively smaller, while the littler varieties spread out more... I'll try to plant a small variety next to a large and see what happens! Perhaps I'll alternate with bell pepper plants. 

Transplanting Out

Transplanting out can be done in several ways. Some simply plant in the usual manner; with tomatoes, that means setting them deep, as deep as possible, so that the lowest leaves are just barely above the soil surface. Another technique is trenching: make a shallow trench, say 4 to 6 inches deep, then lay the seedling (which is, recall, 9 to 12 inches tall) on its side in the trench, gently bending the stem so that only the plant's top is above the soil surface (there are some illustrative photos on one of the sites linked below, well down that page). The virtue of this technique is that tomatoes will send down roots from any part of their stem that is in contact with soil, so this way one gets a lot of root, with much of it near the surface, where warmth and water access are better. But (there's always a "but"), on the other hand, the root system isn't as deep as with conventional planting. Dr. Male's recommendation is to trench only for those seedlings that look spindly or "leggy" and are scarcely able to stand upright on their own; the good doctor grows an immense number of tomato plants annually, but we who grow less than immense numbers can afford to overplant and be picky by culling leggy seedlings at transplant time. Still, both methods bear consideration. As you see, peat pots are not felt by experts to be the best approach; but if you're using them, be sure to bury their rims a good inch below the soil level, lest they wick out moisture from the soil to the air.

Here are the tomato descriptions:

Cherokee Purple
80 days, indeterminate — Given to heirloom tomato collector Craig LeHoullier by J. D. Green of Tennessee, it is at least 100 years old and was reported as originally grown by the Cherokee Indians. The fruits are large (twelve to sixteen ounces), dark pink with darker purple shoulders.  Excellent complex flavor, slight sweet aftertaste, perfect slicer for tomato sandwiches!

Black Cherry
65 days, indeterminate — This is a new variety that is very productive with cherry shaped fruits that have the dark, purplish coloring of 'Cherokee Purple'. Flavor is wonderful, very rich and sweet

Isis Candy ~ Warm yellow cherries are uniquely marbled with a red blush to full streaks, lovely and delicious, IND, 80 DTM

Early Ssubakus Aliana - no idea, but the rest look indeterminate, so I'll just go with that...

Fertilizing Tomatoes

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I seriously thought you couldn't fertilize vegetables in order for them to be organic. At least, not until this year. Apparently, that's cool. Here's the skinny on organic fertilizers:

In addition to increasing yield and fertilizing plants directly, organic fertilizers can improve the biodiversity (soil life) and long-term productivity of soil, and may prove a large depository for excess carbon dioxide. Organic nutrients increase the abundance of soil organisms by providing organic matter and micronutrients for organisms such as fungal mycorrhiza, (which aid plants in absorbing nutrients), and can drastically reduce external inputs of pesticides, energy and fertilizer, at the cost of decreased yield.

Nifty!

Anywhoo... Seeing as we're going to finally plant our tomatoes next weekend, I thought I'd brush up on Tammy's hints on tomato feeding. I've already been using the E.B. Stone Organics Tomato and Vegetable Food, but looks like I need to get some Dynamite Mater Magic.

Adding Dirt to the Tomato Starts

In other update news re: the tomato / tomatillo plants - yesterday my daughter and I added a lot more dirt to the cups. It's not getting consistently warm yet, so I don't want to plant them outside just yet, but they seemed so big that I wanted to give them more dirt.

Tomato Plant Update

It's official... I got Tammy's tomato starts just over three weeks ago, on March 25, and they're still alive!

The 2010 Tomato List, So Far

Last week, Tammy hooked me up with five starts - four tomato and one tomatillo. These are the types she gave me, along with the origination of the seeds:

Tomatillo Verde (Baker Creek)
Cherokee Purple (Winter's Own)
Black Cherry (Winter's Own)
Isis Candy (Winter's Own)
Early Ssubakus Aliana (Winter's Own)

The Troublesome Cherokee Purple

My tomato plants are 6.5 weeks old. I've had the starts for a week as of today and one of them is showing signs of faltering. The third tier of leaves, counting from the top down, on the Cherokee Purple has some issues...

Update on My Tomato Plants

Here are my little chalupas as of today, April Fools. Tammy started the seeds on February 13, which makes them now 6.5 weeks old. I pruned off the bottom suckers today, mostly because I'd heard it's not good to get the leaves wet and it was getting hard to water the plants without wetting the bottom sucker leaves.

Pruning & Tying a Tomato Plant

I was just looking for a good picture of a tomato plant to show the suckers, and I came across this handy site. Pruning is way down the road, but I like how well the article explains how to do it and includes three basic rules.

Tammy's Mater Magic

It's been a full week (almost) since Tammy graced me with five fledgling tomato plants and one tomatillo plant. Miraculously, all have been watered and sunned, put out in warm weather and brought inside at night and on chilly days... In short, they're all still alive and perky looking.

Tammy gave me some great suggestions about caring for them, which are basic... almost idiot proof. She noted that:

1. I might want to add some dirt along the way, as they get bigger, before it gets warm enough to plant them outside
2. When I do add dirt or plant them outside, I'll want to put them as deeply as possible into the dirt --- not just insert the roots alone, but plenty of stem. She pointed out how the stems have little "suckers" (feathery / prickly little looking feelers) that, if put in dirt, will become roots.
   
3. Tammy said if there were lower leaves sprouting off the main stem, I should remove them prior to surrounding that part of the stem with dirt -- otherwise they're likely to carry off on their own and become a separate sprout.
   

I've been given all this advice before from pretty knowledgeable gardeners, but it always seemed overcomplicated. Tammy made it sound so basic. Love it!