Grow Better Veggies

Class: Tomato Masters 2009

July 12, 2009 (Sunday) 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Sorry, July 12 class is now full, please register for

August 23, 2009 (Sunday) 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  OR

New class date added: September 1, 2009 (Tuesday) 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

This is a hands-on seminar on advanced backyard tomato growing.  Learn the latest techniques for fertilizing, pruning, and soil amending for maximum production, health and taste.  Yes, you CAN help your tomatoes taste better.  Yes, you CAN achieve results to make even your most doubting relatives and neighbors envious.

We'll also talk staking, proper garden siting, mulching, watering, disease and pest control, harvesting, the heirloom vs. hybrid debate, and seed saving.

Classes are held here at Love Apple Farm, where you can observe over 100 tomato plants growing.  Cynthia will take you through the garden and discuss her tips and tricks to help you grow better tomatoes.  You need not have experience growing tomatoes to get a lot out of this class.

Cost:  $45 (advance registration is required)

To register and pay, click on the Paypal button below.

Choose a class date

August 23 2009 $45.00 Sept. 1, 2009 $45.00

Cynthia offers discounts for bringing a friend, as well as if you've taken prior classes.  Email Cynthia at loveapplefarm@gmail.com if you'd like to ask a question about how the discount process for buddies and returning students works.

Re-post: How I Plant a Tomato

This post was originally published last year. I'm putting it up to the top again, as we go into tomato season. Don't forget folks: Love Apple Farm's tomato plant sale is in full force, each Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday, from 10 to 3. Click the photo to the right for more info. In the meantime, take notes on what you should be saving (fish heads and eggshells) and buying (read on), preferably at my favorite source: Mountain Feed in "downtown" Ben Lomond on Highway 9.

How do I plant a tomato, you might ask?  With a ridiculous amount of stuff in the hole, is the answer.  When someone ropes me into telling them and I start the long answer, I eventually see their eyes glaze over.  That's the point where I say, "Then you throw in the kitchen sink and cover it all up."  To date, no one has laughed at that joke. I think they're just either too overwhelmed by the real stuff I put in there, or they actually believe I'm throwing in a sink.

This is how I plant a tomato.  First off, let's take a look at our sexy specimen here on the left.

I started this beauty here in our heated greenhouse in late January. I potted it up too a gallon container about 3 or 4 weeks ago.  It will go into one of my freshly prepared beds, shown to the right.  For instructions on how I prepare garden beds for replanting, click here.

The tomatoes are placed three feet apart. I've learned over the years that spacing them closer than that means less fruit.  I dig a nice deep hole to accommodate all the additions - the exact depth is dependent upon how tall the seedling is.  I want the plant to be almost completely submerged into the soil, and the fish head and amendments put into the hole need to be covered with a bit of soil, so I plan accordingly for the depth.  This particular hole ends up being almost two feet deep, and is ready for our first goody, these impressive fish heads.I get them from the restaurant I grow for, Manresa.  You might be able to get them free from a good butcher or fishmonger.  I even know of someone who called a few restaurants in their area and was quickly rewarded with a nice bounty of juicy fish heads.  Fish tails, spines, guts, as well as shrimp, crab, or lobster shells are all good as well.  Some of you may worry about critters digging these up later.  I've never had a problem with animals digging up my tomatoes, and I've got two dogs, four cats, and what seem like an endless supply of raccoons living on my property.  I stress the point that this is the first thing that goes into my very deep planting hole.  That may help keep it from getting dug up.  You can see the six inch long fish head staring up at us from the bottom of the hole here:
The next thing that goes into the hole are a couple of aspirin tablets and some crushed chicken egg shells. The aspirin is to help jump start the plant's immune system.  You can read more about that science here.  I'll put three or four crushed egg shells into the hole as well. You can see our three colors of eggs from our fancy chickens - yes, those are green eggs in there. The eggs supply a nice calcium boost, which will help prevent blossom end rot, that nasty brown patch on the bottom of tomatoes that lack calcium (the fish head bones and bone meal also help with that).

Bone meal is the next to go into the hole.  I put in a heaping handful of bone meal.  This is a nice organic phosphorus source, which is essential for blossom production.  More blossoms, more fruit.  Bone meal also increases calcium availability for the tomato.

I then put in two handfuls of Sustane (trademarked name) all-purpose slow release organic fertilizer.  I use the 4-6-4 type.  You can use any type of slow release all-purpose fertilizer.  The key is that it's got all three macro-nutrients (the 4-6-4- designation) and that it's timed-release.

I also recommend putting a handful of pure worm castings in the bottom of the hole.  I amend my beds with worm castings and I also spray a worm casting tea on my plants while they grow.  Really great stuff.  Another post on worm castings will be coming along shortly.

The hole is complete (sans kitchen sink) and I'm now ready to pop in the tomato plant.  I trim off the lower leaves, be there one,two, three or more, leaving only the top-most leaves.

I put an inch or two of soil on top of the amendments in the hole.  The plant is eased out of the pot, and before it's placed in the hole, I sprinkle the rootball with a product called RootZone, which is a mycorrhizal fungi that attaches to the roots, growing as the root ball grows.  It protects the plant from some diseases, such as verticillium and fusarium wilts.  The product is sold under other names, such as Power Organics Mycorrhizal Root Booster. 

Once the tomato is in the hole, I double check the depth by judging how far out of the ground the plant will be sticking.  If it's going to be too far down, I'll add some more soil.  If it looks like it'll be up above the soil more than I want, that's too bad because I ain't gonna be fishing them fish parts and all that other stuff up out of that hole and digging it deeper.  No siree.  So I try my  best to gauge the depth of the hole according to the height of the plant I'm putting in.

We then back fill GENTLY - only one quasi-firm push settles the soil around the plant. Please do not man handle the soil around the plant by stomping on it or pressing too hard.  That's not necessary and it expels all the air out of the soil.  Believe it or not, the roots need oxygen down there just as much as they need nutrients and water. 

A temporary well is then made around the plant base to catch the first watering.  The first watering is the most critical.  I do it multiple times.  Water it in once, twice, three times at least.  Wait a few minutes to allow the water to drain through.  If you have a deep hole, likely way more than 12 inches deep, you will be amazed at how much water it will take to wet the root ball a foot or more under the ground.  So don't be stingy with the water the first day. Thereafter, you can back off the watering, and we'll talk more about the watering needs of tomatoes in a later post.  Here's our finished bed.  You can see the tomatoes are spaced pretty far apart:

Drip irrigation will be repositioned on the bed, and staking and mulching has yet to be done.  You can find out more about those items here.  In the meantime, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below with any questions.

Good luck, folks!

Tending Tomato Seedlings

This time of year, we're busy sowing, pricking out, and tending thousands of baby tomato plants, also known as seedlings or starts.  These are for our annual tomato plant sale which begins on March 14. 

Keeping track of and keeping happy over 125 different varieties of tomatoes is difficult.  Right now, we are keeping all the babies in my small greenhouse while our big one is being readied.  We need to bring in every night and take out every morning about 50 flats of starts.  Lisette is on the job taking the flats out into the sunshine.
My heat mat is on the left, with smaller drill flats full of germinating seeds on it.  I keep that mat around 80 degrees, about 5 degrees over the optimal temperature for the tomatoes, and about 5 degrees under for the pepper seeds also germinating there.  Each flat holds 20 "drills" or rows.  I sow about 50 seeds per drill.  Each flat represents close to one thousand plants.
Once the true leaf emerges (the second "set" of greenery), we prick each tiny plant out into its own pot.
Then begins the arduous process of hauling them outside each sunny morning and bringing them in each night to the heated greenhouse.  That's a lot of tomatoes.
We can't wait for the big greenhouse to be retrofit.  This process gets old pretty fast.  But it is the way I've been doing it for a long time.  These babies need babying.  That's why it's called a nursery!

If you want to learn how to get a tiny tomato seed up and growing strong enough to plant out to the garden, consider one of my tomato growing classes.  I've only got two left this season.  You choose varieties from my exotic tomato seed bank of over 125 kinds, and take home a sown flat.  You'll soon be bringing outside and taking back in your own fledgling plants.

Morelle de Balbis, also known as the Litchi Tomato

Beautiful flower, isn't it?  Somewhat familiar, you say?  For you veteran gardeners, you'll recognize that it's probably a member of the nightshade family, and you're absolutely right.  For those of you whom I talked into buying a seedling of this plant this past spring, you'll also recognize it, as you should have it handsomely growing in your gardens by now.

For those of you who have grown tomatillos before, you'll find its husk-covered fruits somewhat familiar (without those thorns, of course).

This plant is an interesting sister of the tomato and of the tomatillo.  It's called Morelle de Balbis, or less elegantly, the Litchi Tomato.  A member of the Solanacea family, its proper name is Solanum Sisymbriifolium.

I received the seeds of this beautiful plant from Sylvain, Alan Passard's head gardener when I was fortunate enough to visit the chef's farm outside of Le Mans, France.  Out of all the plants Sylvain was cultivating for Passard's world-famous restaurant, L'Arpege, he wanted me to have these seeds.  Sylvain doesn't speak English, and I don't speak French, but I could tell just by looking at the seed that it was a nightshade plant.  The seed looks like an exact cross between a tomato and a pepper.  He told me through an interpreter that the fruit tasted like a cherry. I was in.

I hid the precious seeds in a side pocket of my suitcase, and forgot to declare them when I came back through Customs in the States (this is actually true, I ignorantly declared all of the other seeds I had carefully selected and purchased while traveling through Europe; and watched in horror as the Customs agent wordlessly grabbed the hefty stack and threw it into the trash).

When I got back home to California, it was too late in the season to grow it for 2007, but I eagerly started the smuggled seeds in the greenhouse in February.  Their care must be just like a tomato, I surmised, and yes, they grew and flourished exactly like one. Except for the thorns.  Take a look at these thorns!  They're on just about every surface of this plant: the stems, both upper and lower sides of the leaves, even the fruit husks!

I don't know how the heck I'm going to harvest it when it comes ripe.  They tell me it will be red when it's mature.

Here is a picture of ripe Morelles that I found on an interesting French blog called Lugar do Olhar Feliz.  Poking around their blog, I do believe they give permission to reprint their many gorgeous photos (noncommercially, of course) as long as they are properly credited.

Somewhat like a tomatillo, the ripening fruit will burst the husk, revealing that it's ready to pick (with heavily gloved hands, no doubt). I really hope the chef isn't expecting me to husk those babies...

Looky what I got! Juicy Yummy Tomato Goodness

First "real" harvest of tomatoes this season!  Woot woot!  I had spied these sweeties enticing me in the garden this past week, and I knew they needed a few more days of "hang time."  That's the time most fruits need after their mature color occurs.  They LOOKED ripe, but I was fine with letting the sun do its photosynthesizing "thang" and bring out their full sugary goodness.

When people send me emails asking why their tomatoes don't have any flavor, I usually send them back a list of questions to answer, one of which is, "How soon after they colored up did you pick them?"  Sometimes this is the problem.  People are so eager to finally eat their home-grown tomatoes, that the first day they look ripe, they pick them.  Tomatoes need warmth, light, and vine ripening to bring out their real full flavor.

The tomatoes in the picture I picked July 3.  That's kind of early for my area in California.  Don't feel bad if you don't have any ripe tomatoes yet.  All of these tomatoes were from starts I planted in my gigantic hoophouse on April 4th.  Many of you couldn't plant that early, due to late frosts and what not.  I didn't put  any tomato plants outside the hoophouse until the first part of May.  That's because here in the mountains of coastal central California, we will get frosts in April.  In fact, our last frost here this year was on April 24.  It got down to 27 degrees.  If any of my tomatoes had been planted outside on that date, they would have died.  So I am not expecting any ripe tomatoes on my outside plants for another few weeks.  Don't fret if you don't have any either.

In the meantime, rest assured that the Brad's Black Heart, Virginia Sweets, Grub's Mystery Green, White Cherry, Tommy Toe, and JD's Special C-Tex, all pictured in the photo, will all go to a very good home ---- mine!  (except for one gorgeous black oxheart - it went home with my new very loyal volunteer, Hannah).

How I Plant a Tomato

How do I plant a tomato, you might ask?  With a ridiculous amount of stuff in the hole, is the answer.  When someone ropes me into telling them and I start the long answer, I eventually see their eyes glaze over.  That's the point where I say, "Then you throw in the kitchen sink and cover it all up."  To date, no one has laughed at that joke. I think they're just either too overwhelmed by the real stuff I put in there, or they actually believe I'm throwing in a sink.  This is how I plant a tomato.  First off, let's take a look at our sexy specimen here on the left.

This strapping beauty is the size of seedling I like to plant.  It's about 12 to 16 inches tall, and was potted up into a gallon container about 3 or 4 weeks ago.  It will go into one of my freshly prepared beds, shown to the right.  For instructions on how I prepare garden beds for replanting, click here.

The tomatoes are placed three feet apart. I've learned over the years that spacing them closer than that means less fruit.  I dig a nice deep hole to accommodate all the additions - the exact depth is dependent upon how tall the seedling is.  I want the plant to be almost completely submerged into the soil, and the fish head and amendments put into the hole need to be covered with a bit of soil, so I plan accordingly for the depth.  This particular hole ends up being almost two feet deep, and is ready for our first goody, these impressive fish heads.

I get them from the restaurant I grow for, Manresa.  You might be able to get them free from a good butcher or fishmonger.  I even know of someone who called a few restaurants in their area and was quickly rewarded with a nice bounty of juicy fish heads.  Fish tails, spines, guts, as well as shrimp shells are all good as well.  Some of you may worry about critters digging these up later.  I've never had a problem with animals digging up my tomatoes, and I've got two dogs, four cats, and what seem like an endless supply of raccoons living on my property.  I stress the point that this is the first thing that goes into my very deep planting hole.  That may help keep it from getting dug up.  You can see the six inch long fish head staring up at us from the bottom of the hole here:
The next thing that goes into the hole are a couple of aspirin tablets and some crushed chicken egg shells. The aspirin is to help jump start the plant's immune system.  You can read more about that science here.  I'll put three or four crushed egg shells into the hole as well. You can see our three colors of eggs from our fancy chickens - yes, those are green eggs in there. The eggs supply a nice calcium boost, which will help prevent blossom end rot, that nasty brown patch on the bottom of tomatoes that lack calcium (the fish head bones and bone meal also help with that).

Bone meal is the next to go into the hole.  I put in a heaping handful of bone meal.  This is a nice organic phosphorus source, which is essential for blossom production.  More blossoms, more fruit.  Bone meal also increases calcium availability for the tomato.

I then put in two handfuls of Sustane (trademarked name) all-purpose slow release organic fertilizer.  I use the 4-6-4 type.  You can use any type of slow release all-purpose fertilizer.  The key is that it's got all three macro-nutrients (the 4-6-4- designation) and that it's timed-release.

I also recommend putting at least a large tablespoon of pure worm castings in the bottom of the hole.  I amend my beds with worm castings and I also spray a worm casting tea on my plants while they grow.  Really great stuff.  Another post on worm castings will be coming along shortly.

The hole is complete (sans kitchen sink) and I'm now ready to pop in the tomato plant.  I trim off the lower leaves, be there one,two, three or more, leaving only the top-most leaves.

I put an inch or two of soil on top of the amendments in the hole.  The plant is eased out of the pot, and before it's placed in the hole, I sprinkle the rootball with a product called RootZone, which is a mycorrhizal fungi that attaches to the roots, growing as the root ball grows.  It protects the plant from some diseases, such as verticillium and fusarium wilts.  The product is sold under other names, such as Power Organics Mycorrhizal Root Booster. 

Once the tomato is in the hole, I double check the depth by judging how far out of the ground the plant will be sticking.  If it's going to be too far down, I'll add some more soil.  If it looks like it'll be up above the soil more than I want, that's too bad because I ain't gonna be fishing them fish parts and all that other stuff up out of that hole and digging it deeper.  No siree.  So I try my  best to gauge the depth of the hole according to the height of the plant I'm putting in.

We then back fill GENTLY - only one quasi-firm push settles the soil around the plant. Please do not man handle the soil around the plant by stomping on it or pressing too hard.  That's not necessary and it expels all the air out of the soil.  Believe it or not, the roots need oxygen down there just as much as they need nutrients and water. 

A temporary well is then made around the plant base to catch the first watering.  The first watering is the most critical.  I do it multiple times.  Water it in once, twice, three times at least.  Wait a few minutes to allow the water to drain through.  If you have a deep hole, likely way more than 12 inches deep, you will be amazed at how much water it will take to wet the root ball a foot or more under the ground.  So don't be stingy with the water the first day. Thereafter, you can back off the watering, and we'll talk more about the watering needs of tomatoes in a later post.  Here's our finished bed.  You can see the tomatoes are spaced pretty far apart:

Drip irrigation will be repositioned on the bed, and staking and mulching has yet to be done.  You can find out more about those items here.  In the meantime, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below with any questions or comments you may have.  Good luck, folks!

Newly Revised How to Grow Better Tomatoes Booklet

I've been promising people for a few weeks that I will revise my Grow Better Backyard Tomatoes Booklet, and now I've finally done it.  I even made it a whole separate page.  Click here to go there.

If you think that it's basically the same as my previous versions, don't think that.  There are a lot of new tips and techniques in there, different from previous years, that will help all of you grow better tomatoes.

There is also a whole separate section (near the bottom of the document) that is dedicated just to growing tomatoes in pots.  If you've ever wondered how to grow tomatoes in pots, please read that.  Growing in pots is trickier and requires know-how and extra effort. 

I'm dedicated to helping people grow better tomatoes, so please feel free to forward the page to your tomato lovin' friends. 

If you have additional questions after reading the page, don't hesitate to email me at loveapplefarm@gmail.com to inquire further.

Good luck to everyone on a great tomato season.

Announcing our 2008 Tomato Plant Sale

It's getting to be that time of year again, folks!  Love Apple Farm will start selling tomato plants (also called starts or seedlings) Saturday, March 15, and continue selling them three days a week.  Our open hours will be every Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  We should have plants for sale through May (or while supplies last). Click here to go to our page that details special appointment needs, a map to the farm, and our complete list WITH description of the 125 different tomato varieties we will be selling this year.

Photo courtesy of Tana Butler.

Class: Grow your own Tomato Transplants from Seed

Learn how to sow and care for young tomato seedlings. Participants choose from over 125 varieties of heirloom tomatoes from my seed bank, sow them in seed flats and soil (supplied), while receiving direction and instruction on proper soil to use, heirloom variety selection for your individual growing conditions, germination conditions, care after seedlings emerge, proper transplanting techniques, and more.

Gardening Class: Grow the Earliest Tomatoes

I finally have my schedule of spring gardening classes set!  The hard part is trying to figure out what sort of classes people want.  One of the classes I thought people might like, "Grow the Earliest Tomatoes," necessitated me running out to my greenhouse and sowing seeds of my earliest maturing varieties:

This is the earliest I've ever sown tomato seeds.  My intention is for these babies to be ready to give out to participants in the "Grow the Earliest Tomatoes" class on February 2.  Students will learn the newest technology to get their tomatoes to fruit and ripen in early summer, rather than having to wait until mid to late summer for their first ripe tomatoes.  Class participants will take home varieties bred to mature early, such as Matina, First Lady, Siletz, Stupice, San Francisco Fog, Oregon Spring, and Early Girl.  I also sowed the varieties that turned out to ripen first in my garden last year, which were Lemony, Homer Fikes, Camp Joy Cherry and Sungold.

This class won't be for wimps or people not willing to put in some work.  If you want ripe tomatoes by the end of June (instead of the end of August, which sometimes happens here in Coastal California), then you'll need to fuss over them quite a bit and know what you're doing.  But if you want to do the work, I'm more than happy to show you how to do it.  This should be a fun and interesting experiment for those of you who want to be the first on your block to have ripe tomatoes.

For a full class description and tuition information, click here to be directed to my Upcoming Events/Classes page.  You will also find my other newly added classes to the schedule.  I'll talk about each one individually as the days go on.

Last Tomato of the Season - Merry Christmas to Me!

This tomato was not purchased from a grocery store, in fact, I seriously doubt you can buy an Orange Russian 117 (the name of this variety) at any store.  But wait, Cynthia, you might ask: "How is it that you have ripe tomatoes on Christmas day?"  The answer is that this tomato was picked two months ago, in mid October, after our first mild frost.  That spelled the end of our tomato season here in central coastal California, so we took down all of our tomato plants (over 100) and stripped the plants of all of their green viable fruits.  "Viable" means no breaks in the skin and large enough to make them worth saving.  The four large flats of tomatoes spent the next 8 weeks or so in my south-facing laundry room window slowly ripening.  We've been using them one or two every day, on my son's sandwiches he takes to school and in our salads.  Today marked the last of the batch.  And although it was 24 degrees Fahrenheit in our garden this morning, I had a little slice of summer right here in the kitchen.

Introducing my Tomato Photo Album

In the left column you'll see the latest addition to my website: My Tomato Varieties Photo Album.  Here is a  sample: 

There are 87 different tomato cultivar photos there, all taken by me.  I'm a poor photographer and even poorer Photoshopper, so the pics are basically for informational purposes.  You'll also notice that over the years I've displayed the tomatoes on many different backgrounds and chosen to label them various ways.  That's only because from year to year I can't seem to remember what I put the tomatoes on to take their pictures.  You'll also notice my funky fancy way of  labeling them within the photo - sometimes I've written down the variety on a piece of paper I stick next to the tomato; sometimes I write it down on a piece of cardboard.  Now that I've got a fancier camera,  I bet if I looked at the instruction encyclopedia booklet that came with it, I might be able to figure out how to label the photo as I take it.  But since I struggle every day to figure out this blogging thing, I fear that the technology-holding part of my brain is nearing a dangerous melt-down level.  So perhaps the funky rustic cardboard labels will have to suffice for now.

Two of my favorites:

I also try to take photos of the tomatoes I bring to the Carmel TomatoFest.  Those are easily identified by the plate that Gary Ibsen displays them on; he'll put a whole exemplar tomato on a little pedestal in the center of the place and surround it with cut tasting samples of that variety.  It's always a thrill to see my tomatoes on the massive tasting tables:

By no means is my photo album complete. I've neglected to take photos of probably another hundred, at least, of varieties I've grown over the years.  I promise to be better, and make sure that each cultivar gets its out of focus shot in the album.

I welcome you to look at the album and let me know which are your favorites, either by a comment or via an email.  Your feedback is instrumental when I choose which varieties to grow for our spring tomato plant sale.  Don't see your favorites?  Let me know anyway.  I also invite you to send me your pic of a variety not in the album.  If it's the tomato off a plant I've sold you, it'll make the album and get credited to you.

I hate Tomato Fruitworms

Check out the chutzpa of this guy who hatched inside my kitchen last week and got some good chompin' in before I noticed him. 

These tomatoes were brought into the house to ripen up.  Since the nights were getting colder, there was no hope that the tomatoes would finish ripening on the vines.  So as we were taking them down, we stripped off most of the green fruits.  We then brought the trays inside to ripen.

The trays were just hangin' out on my kitchen counter, and I must have passed them by a hundred times a day.  I don't know why I didn't notice this guy sooner, but all of a sudden, I caught sight of him, and Gack!  Where the heck did you come from?

If this were earlier in the season, and the tomato fruitworms were starting to attack my tomatoes, I'd have to move pretty quickly to protect them.  One year, I lost about a third of my crop because I didn't do anything to stop them.  It was the first time they had ever been a problem in my garden, and so I kept thinking that they'd just go away.  Not a good idea!  Now, when I see the first signs of an infestation, I immediately go on-line and purchase eggs of the predatory insect, the Trichogramma wasp.

The Trichogramma wasp's favorite food source are caterpillars like this voracious fruitworm.  But don't freak out, the wasps are so tiny, you cannot even see them.  I prefer using predatory insects rather than spraying or dusting, because it's much safer and quicker.  I don't have to take up valuable time mixing and applying an organic pesticide.

Fortunately, I don't have to do anything right now, though.  It's the end of the tomato season, and this little guy is the last of the tomato fruitworms.  For this year, at least.