248 Garden Basics Greatest Hits 2022 Pt. 1 Tomato Mania

Show Transcript

GB 248 Greatest Hits, Pt 1 “Tomato Mania" TRANSCRIPT

Farmer Fred  0:00  

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

It’s the first month of 2023, and we have a look back, well, actually, it’s a listen back, to the most popular Garden Basics segments of 2022. It’s those chats that got the biggest audiences last year. It’s our Top 10 of 2022, and it’s going to take four weeks to get through all of them. We have thoughtfully divvied them up by subject matter. And guess what garden subject got the most downloads? Tomatoes took four of the Top 10 positions in 2022. So, today’s greatest hits, Part 1, includes four segments all about tomatoes: the easiest tomatoes to grow; should you prune out the earliest forming flowers on tomato plants for better production; the best tomatoes for patio containers; and strategies for dealing with the never ending question of beginning tomato gardeners - why are the bottoms of my tomatoes turning brown and wrinkly? That would be blossom end rot, and we will tell you the ways to thwart this abiotic disorder, which is a euphemism for, there’s a good chance it’s your fault but maybe not. We can always fall back and blame climate change. Maybe.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

This may be one of 2020 two's greatest hits from the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast collection. But it certainly is timely right now. Especially if you're trying to figure out which tomatoes you want to grow this year. You might be salivating over all those enhanced pictures and flowery descriptions of tomato varieties that are in all those garden catalogs that are filling your mailbox. But let's get even more basic. What are the easiest tomatoes to grow? Let's find out. 

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Farmer Fred   

Would you like to know the easiest tomatoes to grow? So would I. So would Don Shor from Redwood Barn, nursery in Davis. But we have some ideas for you on some slam dunk tomatoes, that if you think you can't grow tomatoes, these are going to give you the luck you need to have a successful tomato garden. The easiest tomatoes to grow. There's a catchy title for you. Let's pursue it. Don Shor is here from Redwood Barn nursery in Davis, California. Don, you grow tomatoes, I grow tomatoes. We're happy growing tomatoes, we have our favorites. And there are some that do well for us year after year after year. Does that kind of consistency make them easy?

Don Shor   

I think easy refers to a couple of different things. One is, do they produce reliably in your area? So if you have listeners all over the country, they do need to find which varieties are suited to their climate. So that's the first thing. Tomato varieties are often very local. But there are some time tested hybrids we are going to emphasize that do well in most parts of the country. And there are just reliable varieties they'll just come up again and again. If you ask a group of gardeners almost anywhere, what are the varieties that do well in your area, there's certain ones that come up almost anywhere: in New England, Mid Atlantic, California, (the South and Midwest) all these different places where tomatoes are grown. But to me, "easy to grow" isn't just yield. It's how easy is it for the gardener to manage this thing in their garden. Because the tomato, as you and I know, is a very vigorous vine in nature, which will grow 10-12-15 feet, and run all over the place. And as someone who sells tomato plants, I really want the person who walks out the door to know how to train it, make it easy for themselves to manage that plant, make it easy for themselves to water that plant, that's crucial here in the arid west; and choose ones that are just time-tested varieties for the region.

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, there you go. That's basically all you need. And with the introduction of more and more smaller growing tomato varieties, it's making it easier for those who have limited space, especially limited sunny space, maybe just a sunny patio, where you can grow a tomato bush that only gets two or three feet tall, and yet produces full size tomatoes, or more than likely cherry tomatoes. And I think that might be a key for national success for any tomato variety: Is it a cherry tomato? Then chances are, it's easy to grow.

Don Shor   

I think the smaller fruited ones, in general, are going to be easier for most people. The cherry tomatoes, one to two ounces. There are a lot of tomatoes in the two to four ounce size range and a whole lot in the four to eight ounce range. If you've ever grown Early Girl tomato, that's typically 4, six, maybe eight ounces at the bigger end of the scale. As someone who's grown a lot of varieties of tomatoes, I've had more things go wrong, typically with very large fruited varieties, in spite of the fact that you and I like to grow those because they're fun and they're impressive. They're the bragger type of tomatoes. And it really is cool when you get a one pound tomato and you can put it on a scale and take a picture of it and send it to all your friends, posted on social media. But things can go wrong with a tomato that has to expand to that size, to get that full takes 80 days from the time you plant it to ripening, and little more prone perhaps to blossom end rot and some of the other problems. So smaller fruit and cherry types are going to be your first place to go for easy to grow tomatoes. Obviously cherry tomatoes are the best known in that category, arieties like Sun Gold, red Cherry, Sweet 100, Sweet Million, whatever version of the Sweet you're up to this point, and those are all great performers. But there's a lot of other small fruited types out there that are also reliable. They're a little bit different. Juliet is a really good example of a small fruited sort of pear shaped tomato that's more meaty. I'm going to use an Italian name here. Principe Borgheze. It is an Italian variety that's grown primarily for sun drying, and has been a very reliable when it's a one ounce fruit. So if you're a novice gardener and you're buying a bunch of tomatoes, please make sure at least one of those is one of the small fruit of types, whether a cherry type, or one of those other unique ones.

Don Shor   

Yeah, we'll get into some more of the names of the popular cherry tomato varieties. But let's spend a minute talking about the Principe Borghese or however you say it. You like that tomato, you talk about it a lot. And I was going through my garden diary that I've kept since 1990. Going through all the April and May records of all the tomatoes I've planted over the years. What is that? 32 years worth of tomatoes? You're just getting started. 

Farmer Fred   

in 2002, it was voted one of my best performing tomatoes: the Principe Borghese.

Don Shor    

Yeah, it's Principe Borghese, primarily used for slicing in half and sun drying. That's it's, you know, the catalog description. It's a nice little meaty tomato. And I've tested this one, grew it in a 15 gallon container. Last year, I grew it in a 15 gallon nursery bucket with good quality potting soil. It grew about four feet up a fence about six feet across the fence, produced at least a couple 100 fruit for me. So it was one that did well in a container and container gardening of tomatoes is challenging. It has been reliable for me every year. It's one that I like to use for sauces and salsa, but also the classic use for sun drying.

Farmer Fred    

I think the reason it won for me back in 2002 Was it was producing tomatoes, it says here, in November. So yeah, that's that's a keeper. .

Don Shor    

It keeps on going.

Farmer Fred  

You touched on a very important thing too, that a lot of gardeners would consider being easy. And that is, it produces early. Because everybody wants that Fourth of July tomato, if you will. And those are hard to come by, considering that most of them have a 70-80 day maturation process, whereas the cherry tomatoes are 55 to 65 days.

Don Shor   

Yeah, and you should probably describe what that 55 days means.

Farmer Fred   

To me, it means that after I plunk it in the ground after it's a few inches or so, it'll start giving me tomatoes in 55 days, or 60 days or 65 days,

Don Shor    

From the time of transplant, and most tomatoes are in the 80-day range. There's always been a very famous earlier ripening tomato, probably the best known one in the world, being Early Girl, which I believe is 60 days . You mentioned Fourth of July. Well, as it happens, that's a tomato variety. It's a very, it's a very early producing tomato variety that I believe it's listed at 45 days or something like that. And so out of curiosity, I've grown it a couple of times and marked my calendar. And indeed it's only about six or seven weeks out that you are starting to harvest some it's about a three or four ounce fruit, very rich red, you know the good color grape flavor on that one. And so this is something to look at when you're buying tomatoes or choosing tomato seeds to start for for your at the beginning of the season. How long do they say to harvest and if it's 45-50, even 60 days that's early, and listeners in places with short seasons will do well. The other thing is even if you're not really good at growing tomatoes and early ripening, one pretty sure to get something to the finish line. Before the plant fizzles out from lack of water or whatever your problem is. Early ripening ones tend to produce very well, very quickly. Early Girl is famous, Fourth of July is famous, but wherever you are, there's probably an early variety that's well known. There's varieties grown in in Europe or Russia or places where they are way to the north, where they have that short season. So there's a lot of cultivars out there. Whenever I ask on a nursery group, what's your best selling tomato, invariably Early Girl on that list, as are the cherry tomatoes that we've mentioned.

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THE EASIEST TOMATOES TO GROW PART 2

Farmer Fred    

For our friends who are listening who live in the frigid north, there are a lot of good tomato varieties you can grow that mature in less than 60 days. Bush Early Girl, 54 days;  Clear Pink Early, 58 days; Oregon Spring V, 58 days; Polar Baby, 60 days; Prairie Fire, 55; Siberia, 55; Siletz, 52. And there was one other: Tumbler, 49 days.

Don Shor    

Yeah, Tumbler is a great container tomato. It's bigger than a cherry tomato, but not by much. And it, as the name implies, it can be planted even in a hanging basket. Here in the Sacramento Valley it's too hot and dry for that one. But if you're in a place where hanging baskets are an easy thing for you to grow, you can try some of those. There's a lot of new ones out there. This is the thing I keep noticing, as I look at seed catalogs, these companies have figured out there's a lot of people that want to grow tomatoes in limited space in a limited season and the early ones and the more cascading or compact growing ones are really a good way to go if that's your goal.

Farmer Fred   

I'm going to throw a curveball into this whole thing because I bet some gardeners are thinking, "well ,yeah, growing from seeds  is nice... but I said easy. What can I go buy at a nursery that's easy?" So that brings up things like Sweet Million, Gardeners Delight, Sweet Gold, Sun Gold.

Don Shor  

Really any of those cherry types are going to do well and actually Gardeners Delight is one I'm pretty sure that was an all America selection. Very good tomato for a wide range of of circumstances. Almost everyone who planted it comes back and gives me good feedback on it here. And I've also heard that from more harsh climates, shall we say, we happen to be podcasting this from one of the best tomato growing regions in the world. We have a season that starts in let's say April, and goes all the way into November. So we've got six whole months that we can grow tomatoes and it's very common for people here to have varieties ripening well into November. I should mention those early ones also typically keep going. So Early Girl ,it may stop when it's extremely hot, but if you keep that plant growing, keep it watered properly , it'll put on a whole other bunch of flowers as we get into August. Those will set and it's about six to eight weeks from set to harvest and so you'll be harvesting those August blossom set fruit in October, and typically that's my big month for harvest here.

Farmer Fred  

 there are two of these cherry tomatoes that I plant every year: Sweet Million and Gardeners Delight . Gardeners Delight I really enjoy because it's slightly bigger than what you may consider a cherry tomato. It's about an inch and a half to two inches. It's a dark cherry red, it's delightfully sweet. They resist cracking, and they produce throughout the entire growing season.

Don Shor   

Well and you mentioned the Sweet Million which I believe started out as sweet 100, So now we're up to even higher yield. And  that group has, I believe, pretty good disease resistance. The other top seller still far and away is Sungold. Sungold blew away all the competition when it came on the market a couple of decades ago, continues to be the number one selling cherry tomato out there. It starts yielding 35 or 40 days after you plant it very commonly. It's usually one of the first ones someone posts a picture of, hey, my first tomatoes are ripe. it's usually Sun Gold. That's kind of cheating, but it will produce hundreds and hundreds of fruit under well grown condition,s and at least several dozen even under adverse conditions. And I think that goes for most of these cherry tomato types. I should mention if you're in a region where Brad Gates has Wild Boar Farms tomatoes are sold, his Barry's Crazy Cherry. I don't know if you've grown that one. It produces huge clusters, enormous amounts of fruit, very sweet and people are really raving about that one. So that's turning into a regional Favorite and his seeds are available now in other areas. So those of you listening outside of the Sacramento Valley could certainly find the seed next winter and get that one going in your own garden as well. Barry's Crazy Cherry, I think, will be one of his real legacy tomato varieties.

Farmer Fred   

It's an interesting color. It's sort of a pale yellow.

Don Shor    

Yeah, I call it blonde. A Blonde  tomato. 

Farmer Fred    

Yes, it's  not a red ripe tomato. It's it looks more like a grape.

Don Shor  

When I brought in bowls of them  three different times, people said, Ooh, this is even better than Sun Gold. So That's high praise. 

Farmer Fred   

Yes, it is. Now speaking of gold, there is another cherry tomato that is easy to grow. It's very early, and it's an indeterminate. So you're gonna get tomatoes throughout the entire growing season. It's Sweet Gold. And I had great success with Sweet Gold over the years, as well. So if you're at the nursery shopping for tomatoes, and you're looking for Sun Gold, but you see Sweet Gold, don't bypass Sweet Gold. Pick one up

Don Shor    

Plant both. Yeah, there you go. So you mentioned determinate, and indeterminate. And of course, that's jargon that we toss off all the time in the nursery biz, and we find that we do have to explain it to people.

Farmer Fred    

 I think we should.

Don Shor    

 Okay, so an indeterminate tomato is your typical tomato. It's a vine. A tomato plant is a vine, that will continue growing and continue flowering continues setting fruit under the right temperature conditions, all the way until frost kills. I mean tomato plants are not true annuals, they're subtropical plants that as gardeners in frost free areas know will continue to grow and produce even right on into the winter if they can. So these are big plants. And this is one of the parts of making tomato growing easy is how you're going to manage the plant. Stick it, cage it, train it somehow and plan for that when you buy the plant. Not a month later when it's running all over the ground, plan ahead for this large plant. But if you want to have an easier experience and you're not a full on avid tomato grower, you just want to try it out. Perhaps for the first time look for the determinate types, or the dwarf indeterminate types and let's back up here, determinate tomatoes tend to grow to a certain size, about three to four feet, typically flower a whole lot, set a whole lot of fruit. And then they're pretty much done. I'm out here in Yolo County, near Solano County, where tomatoes are still one of the number one crops. These are what you see in the field, they grow to a certain size, they only get a couple feet by a couple feet, they flower, they fruit all at once, machines come through and harvest them. They're done for the season. They do produce typically a lot of fruit, all at once. And so if you're into canning, processing, freezing, all that kind of thing. Planting determinate tomatoes, if you're limited for space especially, can be a real simple way to get a reasonably good number. Process them all, pull them out and plant your brussel sprouts, you know that's mid July, early August, it's time to move on to another crop. You don't have to worry so much about staking or caging Ace tomato, which is a classic large fruited, very good quality, very sweet tomato typically grows to about three to four feet, produces a pretty good crop of 20 to 30 fruit, all in close to three quarters of a pound, sometimes bigger. And that's generally almost, yet I'm not saying they completely stopped, because they can flower and produce a few more but they tend to be all at once in the season. And that can be very handy for someone who just doesn't have a giant wire cage or structure to train all these indeterminate vines on.

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, I think Ace is a good choice for a large size tomato that's easy to grow. But ultimately growing is local. So like you said earlier, Don, wherever you live in the country, check with your local nursery and find out which are the big tomatoes that people are raving about in your area. 

Don Shor    

yes, everybody's got a favorite. And then when he got to limited space, but you want him to continue, you look for this rather more complicated term. The dwarf indeterminate tomatoes, the Husky series, are well known for this. They continue to grow. They have short internode distances, which simply means they're more compact plants, which means that those tomato cages that we sell at garden centers that most normal tomatoes would grow out of by the middle of June would hold the Husky series.

Farmer Fred    

You mean the pepper cages you're talking about?

Don Shor   

Tomato Cages 32 inches tall? Yeah, no tomato is gonna stay in that typically, except for a determinate tomato or one of these dwarf indeterminate tomatoes. This is kind of a new category in some ways. The Husky tomatoes have been around for a while: Husky red, Husky gold, there's a couple of them. They're great. They're  about four ounces of fruit, good flavor, nice compact plants, but there's a whole bunch of new ones that I don't even know that well yet that my growers have them, the wholesalers I buy from, and they've got these funny names. I'm growing Little Sicily and Little Napoleon this year . I have never grown them before. I'll give you a report next year. They supposedly grow about three to four feet and continue to flower and produce so this is the difference. They don't stop like Roma does or Ace does, like those canning tomatoes out in the field, but they stay relatively small plants and continue to produce right through the summer into the fall, or even here, sometimes almost into winter.

Farmer Fred    

On the subject of cages, we should point out that part of having an easy to grow tomato is making it easy for the tomato to grow. And one of the ways to do that is to put it in a cage. Now, these cylinders that they sell, and the big box stores like  Don says is like, Oh, they're perfect for peppers, they're only two or three feet tall. Most, of these big box stores are getting wiser now and they're stocking more of the tomato cages that are five feet tall, six feet tall, those are the ones to get.

Don Shor   

Minimum 48 inches. 52 is a pretty common size. Look for heavier gauge wire, be prepared to spend more money on a better quality tomato cage, but it will last for years. Most of us at some point, go out and buy concrete wire and then make our own five and six foot cages because we want something even more substantial, but that's a pretty big undertaking. So just look for the bigger ones, those small tomato cages just make me laugh every time I see them a tomato that would fit and that doesn't need to be caged. I've grown Roma, for example, which is a very compact plant, it's  a cool little tomato, people like it for sauces, it gets about two to three feet by two to three feet, you can just plant it like a bedding plant, maybe get it up off the ground, so the fruit isn't touching the soil, a little bit of straw or something underneath it. And it'll produce just as a freestanding little plant. Bigger tomatoes, particularly any of the indeterminate types, I've actually let them grow across the ground to see how big across they would get just as a curiosity, a 12 foot diameter circle. So that's not real practical for most home gardeners. And going vertical is the easy answer to that.

Farmer Fred  

I have reached the age where if I was considering leaving a tomato to sprawl on the ground, I would immediately start counting in my head, all the pairs of reading glasses I would lose that would fall out of my pocket and get buried underneath a tomato plant.

Don Shor   

Yeah, that's a big plant. In nature, these are plants that are at least six to 10 foot diameter and sometimes bigger. So we're just trying to suggest getting the smaller plants. and then really the main thing is, plan at the time you buy it, or at least within about a week, how you're going to cage it, and how you're going to water it. Customers plant them and then they come in, you know, two or three weeks later, the poor plant is struggling and  they put them in a raised bed. So it's drying out so quickly now. Most of us go to a drip irrigation system. And when I say that I see eyes glaze over. And people think oh, big project, complicated. This is now getting beyond what I really wanted to do. It's not. Drip is easy. It just pushes together. There's nothing complex about it. But you don't have to use a drip system, Fred and I both do. And most people here do eventually start going over to drip for their vegetable gardens because it's just simpler to be able to turn on a hose and let it run for X number of minutes or hours. But you can make a nice wide basin, two to three foot diameter basin, around the tomato plant so that you can set a hose there at a moderate flow and give it at least a couple of gallons of water. That's really key. A good, thorough, soaking each time you irrigate it. Filling up that basin. that is not complicated. doesn't cost a lot of money. But it does require that you go out there and move that hose from plant to plant. So it's easier, obviously,  to put in a drip system or a soaker hose or something, we prefer that you not be spraying on the foliage. So it's better if it's just watering at ground level. And you can certainly do that with a hose or a ditch or whatever works for you. Just make sure you plan at the start how you're going to water it deeply. And increasingly deeply, as the season goes along. A 12 foot vine has a root system that we know could go four feet deep and five to six feet out or more. And if you're not watering that root system, you're not going to get the vine, and you're not going to get the yield. So the most common problem we have here in the valley where it's completely dry from April through November and sometimes more, is people not watering adequately, not watering deep enough when they do, and they have made it so that it's complicated for themselves to try and keep things watered. In other words, having to set a sprinkler, that's not great. Having to move the hose from plant to plant, well that's okay, but  it takes time, so you have to plan for that. Drip irrigation is simpler in the long run and is really pretty easy to install. You do yours yourself. You don't even  probably paid someone to come in and do a drip system for you.

Don Shor  

People think it's complicated. It really is something simple that a homeowner can do and you can even buy kits that are already great.

Farmer Fred   

And there are battery operated water timers that you can hook up to an outdoor faucet, hook up your drip system or your soaker hose or your sprinkler or whatever to that. And the water will come on automatically for a set amount of time on the schedule that you set: twice a week, three times a week, whatever. And I think that is one of the big problems  with a lot of new gardeners: they get the burr up thir butt to garden in April or May. And then comes July and August, and it's too hot to go out there, oh, we're going to France or whatever. And so they kind of lose interest in the garden. At least if you've got an automated watering system, it will keep those plants alive till you get home.

Don Shor   

Yeah, even avid gardeners would have trouble hand watering their whole garden consistently. And that's the key thing is consistent, deep soakings. Tomatoes can take less frequent irrigation as the season goes along. You can water them deeply and infrequently if your soil allows that. And that's really a crucial thing. I'm in an area with great silty loam, I'm not gloating, I'm just happy. I can add, I can put a whole week's worth of water on a plant all at once, a good deep soaking. That's all I need to do. But as I've learned as a retailer, if I'm talking to someone, and I'm talking about giving a deep soaking, and then all of a sudden it clicks in my head to ask, do you have a raised planter? Because if you have a raised planter, you've got Fred's problem:  water runs through very quickly and doesn't spread out very much. And so you do need to learn how your soil is going to hold water, how you can apply it effectively, you may have to water more often, if you have a raised planter bed, you almost certainly will have to, the first year or two when you just bring in that fancy soil that you filled it with. And that's where that drip system was really going to make your life a lot easier. So I really do recommend it's more of an expense at first. So maybe skip the first year if you just don't want to spend the money. But I think in the long run, you'll get better results, better yields if you do put in at least a simple soaker system whether you go to a full on drip irrigation system or not.

Farmer Fred   

When you're looking for a drip irrigation system, look for inline emitters, the emitters are already built into the tube, you can't even see them. So you're not going to be spending half the time punching these emitters into a half inch tube. they're already built in, it makes it much easier. There's no chance of you weed whacking them off because you can't see them. they're built into the inside of the 1/2" or 1/4" pipeline.

Don Shor  

I've never done that. Turn on the system and see the fountain over there. Yeah, that's right, I mowed those weeds. I will mention one thing about that. There's some great brands out there. They're very well known. They have some different models. And I want you to save the box that you bought them in and put it in your garage so that when I ask you what's the output of the emitters on that inline tubing, you can answer that because it'll determine how long you run it. Most common is a model that has about a half gallon an hour output. It's actually a little less than that. And I've calculated this with people that they're going to need to run that for either about 35 or 40 minutes every single day, or an hour and a half to two hours every few days in a typical raised planter bed in order to give it adequate watering, that drip irrigation is great because it puts out water slowly. So it's efficient. It soaks in, it penetrates the soil. But the drawback to that is that you have to run it for a long time. And when I tell people an hour, an hour and a half, they're aghast because they're imagining their lawn sprinklers. It's a very efficient way to water but you have to use it correctly. How long, for example, do you run the drip system on your raised planters?

Farmer Fred   

I have improved the soil slowly but surely in my raised beds, so the moisture is remaining there for a longer period of time. I've amended it with a lot of compost, a lot of mulch, and it does well. The drip lines, the parallel lines in a four foot wide bed, there are four lines in that parallel line system in that four foot wide bed. So basically they're overlapping the water footprint by about three to four inches in that water footprint. So I'm getting equal coverage by putting in 4. You don't just put one line down a four foot wide bed, you shouldn't have more than 12 inches between parallel lines.

Don Shor    

Yeah, and you probably have to run in the first year when you first fill that bed. And this is a very common situation we ran into during the pandemic. A lot of people jumped into gardening, built raised planters, called the rock yard, had them deliver something called topsoil or something called planting soil or who knows what, usually sandy loam soil with some compost added, and they would put two or three lines down the bed and they'd run it and they'd have two or three strips of wet soil. You don't hydrate the whole bed when you do that. So you have to add one. You have to improve the soil and its ability to retain moisture and you did all the right things by adding organic material. I believe growing cover crops makes a big difference because the roots actually contribute to the organic material. One thing that I'll throw in is, cut the plants off, typically at the end of their season, rather than pulling them out, except perhaps to inspect the roots. Mostly I just cut things off. Let the roots disintegrate right there and they add to the soil, the soil moisture retention and then top dressing if you got some in it and it doesn't really matter at that point, good inexpensive compost you buy in bulk wherever, another inch or two on the surface, regularly shading the soil gradually working its way in. You can go from having to water daily, the first year, hey, you notice it holds water better the second year, the third year so in two or three years in you're getting something that's more akin to actual soil. If you don't water deep enough, and I get pictures of this  every summer about mid July is typically when they start coming in, they're showing me pictures of plants that are getting drought stressed every single day, they're not watering deeply enough. So the poor roots of that tomato can never penetrate 2-3-4 feet as they would like to do. And so their poor plant is just barely eking out an existence, and they tell me, I only got five or six tomatoes at the end of the season, the roots couldn't develop. And so you do need to water deeply to get those roots down, and hopefully even down into the native soil below if you can possibly water that deeply. Or if you have that opportunity, or if your soil allows that kind of thing. A Slight digression: I have had conversations with the customers who are doing Square Foot Gardening, you're probably familiar with.  It's a wonderful way to get started with gardening and in the Sacramento Valley, and places like that it works great for your winter vegetables. But it's a mix of I don't know peat moss, vermiculite and compost, I think is one of the iterations of it, that's going to dry out very very, very quickly. And it's only a foot deep. So that's basically growing something in a container, which you can do, I do a lot of that. But I can tell you, it's not the easiest way to grow something as big as a tomato plant.

Farmer Fred   

Yeah, exactly. By the way, Don, I don't know if you noticed or not. But we're in the 21st century now. And they have this nifty device that I keep in my soil. It's called the Rainpoint Bluetooth Soil Moisture Meter with Indoor Monitor. Basically, it's about a four by five inch blue rectangle, with three spikes on it about eight inches long, you stick that in the soil, you go back in the house, you look at your indoor monitor, and the indoor monitor tells you how wet is the soil. And it also gives you the soil temperature. So you don't even have to go outside and pull down your pants and sit on the soil to see what the temperature is, this device does it for you. And there are many other devices that are Bluetooth enabled. And they can be internet connected as well. And they even have systems that you can hook up to faucet to turn the water on when the soil actually needs the water.

Don Shor 

So for those who are listening and don't know why your teeth should be blue, you can also just take a trowel after you irrigated, dig down there and see how far the water penetrated. That's the old school technique. But water moisture meters are really a very handy way to deal with this problem that you have with the raised planters and  what you might call the artificial soil mixes. Now native soil, if you've got good garden soil, that is by far the easiest way to go, because you can give a good deep soaking, and go several days between waterings. But in any event to make it easy for yourself, plan ahead for how you're going to water. And I love your idea of a timer because that really can make it simpler just to have the whole thing happening automatically. Obviously check on the soil moisture, make sure it's working. Because I always say when someone's buying drip irrigation and stuff, the plant performance is your best guide to whether things are working. That's some calculation you did or your engineer friend who told you what the evapotranspiration rate is and how exactly  long it should be running and all that kind of thing. The plant performance and a little inspection of the soil will be your best guide whether you're watering deeply enough and whether the plant is getting what it needs. 

Farmer Fred   

The proof is in the tomato. Well, I think we've exhausted the topic of what are the easiest tomatoes to grow. Don Shor is with Redwood Barn nursery in Davis, California, Redwoodbarn.com. He has a slew of information on a website that looks about as old as farmerfred.com. ,

Don Shor  

Yep, been around for a while. There's a lot of articles there. Yes. Old old classic HTML coding. 

Farmer Fred  

yes, indeed. And hey, it works. Just like growing cherry tomatoes works.

Don Shor   

 I've got one more thing out there for novice gardeners: hybrid tomatoes are going to be reliable. So be sure when you're going out and choosing your varieties, you get at least one or preferably more of the garden hybrids because they've been bred for yield, performance, and reliability. And the heirloom types, as fun as they may be, can be very challenging. And just lots of feedback that I've gotten over the years where that heirloom didn't produce well or you know, my Brandywine only gave me two fruit, or I tried this variety and it just didn't do well. We know Champion will work, we know Early Girl will work. We know Celebrity will work. And there's a reason that they are so popular. They work in a wide range of conditions and they also tend to have built in disease resistance. 

Farmer Fred   

That's right, hybrid tomatoes. For the easiest tomatoes to grow. You can't beat them. If you're looking for something strange looking with maybe incredible flavor try an heirloom or two. 

Don Shor    

Yep, balance your portfolio. 

Farmer Fred    

Good financial advice from Don Shor from Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, CA. Don, love to talk with tomatoes with you. Thanks a bunch.

Don Shor 

Thanks very much.

SMART POTS!

Farmer Fred:

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Should You Prune Out the First Tomato Flowers?

Farmer Fred

You’re Listening to Part 1 of a Four Part Garden Basics podcast series, the Greatest Hits of 2022. And this episode contains four interviews, and it’s all about tomatoes. One of the most listened to segments involved the answer to the perennial spring time question, Should I Prune Out the First Flowers that Appear on a Young Tomato Plant? Yes? No? Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour says: it depends.

Farmer Fred  

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. We are at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in Sacramento County, talking with Master Gardener and vegetable expert, Gail Pothour. And Gail, we've got some vegetable questions that are right up your alley. And I always know when it's spring, when these questions come in. George writes in to Fred at farmerfred.com and asks, "Does picking off the immature flowers encourage or discourage future crop production of tomatoes? The tomato plants are six inches tall."  We get this question every spring. People read somewhere, usually it's online, that picking off the early flowers on a tomato plant will give you more tomatoes later on. True or false?

Gail Pothour 

It depends. If you're growing a determinate tomato and you start picking off the flowers, you're going to be reducing your yield because determinate tomato varieties only have a certain number of flowers that they produce. It depends. I personally would pick off flowers on a small plant like that. But once they're transplanted in the garden, I would not pick off flowers at all. Indeterminate varieties are going to grow until frost kills them or disease kills them. And so you're going to have a plethora of flowers and fruit anyway, so I don't think there's any reason to pick them off. If the plant is small, like if you started from seed, and it's now in a four inch pot, in order to encourage the root system to really grow, and it has flowers on it, I would take them off. But generally a plant that small won't have flowers yet, and they're going to have to be a little bit taller before they start getting to the flower production stage.

Farmer Fred  

For those who don't know, explain the difference between a determinate tomato and an indeterminate tomato.

Gail Pothour   

Determinate tomatoes typically are your paste tomatoes, the ones you'd cook with. They are commercial varieties that they grow out in agriculture, they want to be able to harvest them at one time. So determinate plants grow to a certain size, they're generally shorter three to five feet, they will set their flowers typically at one time or kind of in the same same time period set fruit and then that's it, they harvest all at once. So they're good if you want to can  a lot of tomatoes at one time from out in the fields. They want to be able to come through and harvest the whole plant at one time. So they are programmed genetically to grow to a certain size, produce flowers, fruit, then stop. Some of them would continue to grow a little bit, continue to produce a little more. Indeterminate plants are ones that are seven or eight feet tall that will flower and produce all season until frost or disease kills them. So determinate plants may or may not need to have some support when you grow them, depends on the variety. We typically grow them in some kind of a cage. We don't want any fruit on the ground. Indeterminates absolutely need to have some structure, because they're going to be 6, 8, or 10 feet tall. You need a big sturdy cage or stake or something to grow them on.

Farmer Fred   

 I love using cages. Get a sheet of what's called Concrete reinforcement wire, six inch mesh wire, and the sheets are usually four feet by five feet. You can bend that into a nice, tall cylinder and secure it with zip ties. And you have yourself a tomato cage that'll last for years.

Gail Pothour   

Absolutely. I'm still using tomato cages that were built after my house was built in 1974. They were leftover from the construction project. So I'm still using those cages and what that's 40 some odd years ago, So the cages lasts a long time, they will rust. But yeah, they last forever.

Farmer Fred   

I have heard and seen on the internet, people who talk about pruning the flowers off tomatoes, for staking purposes, if they're tying it to a single stake, but everything I've read about that seems to imply that way you'll get earlier tomatoes, not necessarily more tomatoes, and you look at the research from places like Cornell University, and they just say, Well, if you cut off the flowers, you're gonna have fewer tomatoes.

Gail Pothour   

Right. Typically what I have read on the internet about pruning tomato plants is more of pruning the foliage. If you're growing on a stake or something like that, you don't want to have this huge, robust indeterminate plant that would take over your yard supported by a single stake. And so you start pruning some of the branches. We have not done that out here, we prefer to grow them in a tomato cage, and let them just grow rampant. The only time we do any pruning of foliage is anything that's touching the ground. So we'll prune off any leaves or branches that are down touching the ground. And if we have a variety that is super dense, and you can hardly get inside to get the fruit, we might do a little bit of pruning that way. Towards the end of the season, in August or so, we'll start pruning the tops of the plants. We don't want it to set more fruit, if it's August pushing into September. We want all the energy going into ripening the fruit that's already on there. So we'll give them a hair cut along the top. Our plants won't stay in much past September, early October anyway.

Farmer Fred   

Again, that's pruning off stems in order to halt new production in late summer. The other thing about removing foliage too, you don't want your tomatoes exposed to the full sun, especially here in California, especially if they are South facing or west facing sides of the tomato. They can take a beating if there's no foliage to protect them.

Gail Pothour   

That's absolutely correct. A lot of the information that I find on the internet even if it's from university sites, are based on the East Coast where they don't have the intense sun that we have. So in the Sacramento area, because our summer afternoon sun is so intense and we have a lot of heat, we need as much foliage as we can to protect the fruit. A lot of the fruit will be outside the cages, so it's good to have the extra foliage. I have even provided  shade cloth occasionally.

Farmer Fred  

So George, there you go. Don't cut off those flowers, put those shears away. Gail Pothour, Sacramento County Master Gardener is with us. We're here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, where Harvest Day is the first Saturday in August. Come on out here. If you're in Northern California. It is one of the greatest garden events in Northern California for learning about gardening. It's a beautiful demonstration garden here in Fair Oaks Park. It's the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center's Harvest Day. You can look it up on the internet. Hope to see you here. Thank you Gail. 

Gail Pothour    

You're welcome Fred. 

THE BEST TOMATO VARIETIES FOR CONTAINERS

You’re listening to the Garden Basics Greatest Hits of 2022, the top 10 most downloaded segments. And because we go into such depth on the topics, it’s going to take four episodes of Greatest Hits to get through all of them. This edition is Part 1, A Deep Dive into Tomatoes. Parts 2, 3, and 4 of the 2022 Garden Basics Greatest Hits will cover such topics as improving your garden soil, growing berries, how to start your first garden, watering tips, garden myths and more.  Those podcasts will come out during the next 3 Fridays.

It is no surprise that this chat with America’s Favorite Retired Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, turned out to be one of the most downloaded segments of the Garden Basics podcast during 2022. We tackle the question about growing tomatoes in containers, especially useful for gardeners who don’t have much space for a food garden. Which varieties are best for a pot on the patio? Which containers are best? How do you water tomatoes in containers for the most success? How to Grow Tomatoes in Containers, one of the most popular segments on the Garden Basics podcast during 2022.

Farmer Fred   

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast, a lot of ways to get them in .Speakpipe.com/gardenbasics. E-mail? Sure, Fred at farmerfred.com. You can phone, if you have a phone, you can phone it in with a question: 916-292-8964, 916-292-8964. But I got to tell you, SpeakPipe has better audio quality. speakpipe.com/garden basics. And again, you can always do the e-mail, Fred at farmerfred.com. Or social media. And that's where this question comes from, on the Farmer Fred Facebook page, where I was talking about tomatoes, about good, award winning tomatoes to plant in your garden. And a reader had the question, what are the best container tomatoes? That's a good question. Oh, Debbie Flower is here. Our favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie, maybe some general guidelines for tomatoes in containers, I would think they need to be small.

Debbie Flower  

That would be the number one criteria. They're not going to get too big, some tomatoes can get 12-15 feet tall, and spread four or five feet wide. And that's not the tomato that you want to grow in the container. Use a big container, a 15 Gallon Container. You'll read, in some places, they say you can do it in smaller and you can for a while, and then your tomato will peter out. So if you want a good, long season out of that tomato, use a 15 gallon. A half barrel would be really good. Make sure there are drainage holes in the bottom. And then you pick the tomato. And in your tomato list, Fred, you put a tomato vocabulary. And that's a very useful thing to have. Because one word you in particular want to look for is determinate. Determinate means the tomato will stop growing at a certain size. They're often used in the canning industry grown in the field. They don't always need to be caged or staked, and they produce a lot of fruit all at once. But they do continue to produce. So it isn't a once and done kind of plant. So you will have a long season of growing, you'll just have a whole bunch of tomatoes right at the beginning. And then you'll have continuous production after that, a little bit slower production. a little bit slower.

Farmer Fred  

 However, it does pick up late in the season. It's like you get a big crop early in the season, then a few along the way. And then towards the end of the season. Another big crop.

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, and I can speculate why that would be, but I don't know for sure. Weather? weather, right. That's what I was thinking. Cooler weather. It's very expensive for a plant to produce flowers and fruit. Because the flowers and fruit do not photosynthesize, they do not make their own food. And so they have to rely on the other green parts of the plant to produce food for them. And so that first heavy crop on the determinate plant can really take it out of the plant and it needs some time to recover, collect more nutrients, collect enough extra sugars, make enough extra food in its green parts to produce another crop. And have the right conditions. Yes, and then the weather cools off. At the end of the summer it's hot and yucky and the plant is just sitting around trying to keep itself cool. And then things start to cool off naturally and it has the extra energy to make some fruit. So determinate is one word we're going to look for. Another is Bush. Bush  tomato plants are typically determinate. But they're often the small end of the determinate scale. There are some determinate plants that can get very large. 

Farmer Fred   

Most of the bush tomatoes are probably around two or three feet tall.

Debbie Flower   

Using those terms, you've got the Bush all star, the Bush champion, the early girl Bush. There are some plants that are even named things like patio tomato. So that gives you a hint that the plant is really meant to be in a container. For a sauce plant, if you want tomatoes for sauce, really meaty tomatoes. The Roma is an old reliable determinate plant. And so if you're going to Google, use these terms, use "determinate Bush", look for those other names that indicate that it would be kind of small, like a patio, you can get some really small tomatoes, ones that only grow about a foot by a foot.

Farmer Fred 

 It's not the fruit. 

Debbie Flower  

THE PLANTS. Yes, yes, yes. So you get some really small tomato plants that only grow maybe a foot by a foot, and they're fun, they take up less space than most and they are productive. So that may be really beneficial for you. There are some vining ones that do well hanging, do a little bit of research, but use those terms we talked about,

Farmer Fred  

if you remember blogs... Remember when blogs were popular? Mine still exist out there in the blogosphere, the "Farmer Fred Rant" blog page, and one of the more popular posts is called "Fall and winter tomatoes from your greenhouse". I spent a couple of years attempting to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse during the winter. And you obviously have limited space in hobby greenhouses. So I was growing them in five and 15 gallon containers. And I was choosing determinate varieties that would ripen fairly quickly, usually within 55 to 65 days, which for tomato is pretty darn quick. 

Debbie Flower   

It is very quick. 

Farmer Fred    

But there are plenty of varieties available. Among the ones that I planted that I had success with, as you mentioned, Bush early girl, the Bush beef steak and some heirloom tomatoes like Grushovka, Manitoba. Others like Oregon Spring, Pilgrim. Two of the ones of the smaller tomatoes, that actually really did quite well, Polar Baby and Prairie Fire. One more, the 506 Bush also did did quite well. Now, the problem with growing tomatoes in the greenhouse in the wintertime in a greenhouse that you keep above 60 degrees or so: you got the energy bill to think about. The taste? It's a notch above supermarket level. do you want to do that much work? 

Debbie Flower  

That's a lot of work. 

Farmer Fred 

...to get something that's just slightly better than a supermarket tomato, but the thing is, you grew it yourself. Right? And the other thing is, you're gonna get white flies.

Debbie Flower    

Well, yes, yeah. I was gonna ask you about that. Notice that a lot of the names of the tomatoes you mentioned, not all of them, but indicate coldness.  Manitoba, Polar Baby, Siletz,, which is a place in Oregon and Siberia. There's another term I don't know, didn't check if it was on your list. Parthenocarpic. Parthenocarpic means producing without pollination. It's like a navel orange, never gets pollinated. It just produces fruit. It's like a false pregnancy. 

Farmer Fred   

So it's a perfect flower?

Debbie Flower   

They do flower, navel oranges, but they don't get pollinated. They just produce a fruit. It's like a false pregnancy. And there are parthenocarpic tomatoes or parthenocarpic. Cucumbers. They won't have seeds in them. And they don't need to be pollinated. So, so you don't have to have bees in your greenhouse to produce the fruit.

Farmer Fred  

I had a fan to move it around.

Debbie Flower   

Shook the table? Yeah. Tomatoes can be self pollinating, meaning that if temperatures and growing conditions are right, the pistil and stamen will pass each other at just the right time to transfer pollen and cause fruit to form.

Farmer Fred   

I used to use old battery operated bedroom toys for pollination purposes. and it works. You can actually see the pollen move around. 

Debbie Flower   

Electric toothbrushes, those things? 

Farmer Fred   

Yeah, sure. But yes, there are a lot of good container tomatoes of a good size. You just got to shop carefully.

Debbie Flower  

You do. You got to read the seed packets, or read the description in the catalog. It's so hard to be disciplined looking at those catalogs. 

Farmer Fred   

I think from a container plant, the biggest tomato that you might get might be an eight ounce tomato, which is not bad. That's a half pound. Most of them are 2-3-4 ounces. They're small tomatoes. But hey, you grew it yourself. Hmm. So yeah, go for the containerized tomatoes. Now, one warning about the list: I read you those lists with very cold sounding names of tomatoes. How are they going to do in a hot environment in the summertime?

Debbie Flower    

 I would not grow some of those. I wouldn't even attempt to grow some of those in our hot environment. I would expect that they would suffer.

Farmer Fred    

However, in the season before the hot season, you could probably be successful seeing how they mature in 50-55 days or so or towards the end of the season, too.

Debbie Flower   

You could have them maybe in February. Yeah, start and grow them indoors and be done by May.

Farmer Fred    

Well, you could move them out probably by April. Mm. They could finish off their life outdoors. Right. And, and produce a lot. But yeah, and there's a lot of, as you said, tumbling varieties of tomatoes that look great cascading from their container. Yes. So you got all that going for it. containerized tomatoes, sure. Give it a try. Just make sure it's a good sized tomato.

Debbie Flower    

It's a determinate.

Farmer Fred    

It's a determinate. Bush, maybe. Yep. And it gets water. 

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, you gotta watch that, they're going to need more attention to watering in particular, than something that you put in the ground.

Farmer Fred 

One way to get around that sometimes too. And it can also maybe buy you a few extra days when the weather gets warm, is to take that five or 15 gallon container, stick it in a bigger pot so that there's an airspace between the outer pot and the inner pot and that keeps the sun from directly hitting the pot that you have the tomato growing in.

Debbie Flower 

Right. And if you don't have that bigger pot, fifteens are quite large. The other bigger pot would have to be even larger, perhaps a 30 gallon.  Wrap the outside of the pot in aluminum foil. Yes, wrap it in aluminum foil so that the light reflects off it. Light hitting a black pot, takes 30 minutes and heats the media up to 140 degrees and that kills the roots.

Farmer Fred    

And of course put a sign on the outside of your aluminum foil wrapped pots, saying, "Do Not Disturb - UFO research in progress". We learned a lot about containerized tomatoes. Thank you Debbie Flower.

Debbie Flower    

Oh, you're welcome Fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred

The weather may not be perfect for outdoor gardening, but it is perfect for planning your 2023 garden. Now’s the time to plan the what and the where of you want to plant for the future. To help you along, it pays to visit your favorite independently owned nursery on a regular basis throughout the fall and winter, just to see what’s new. And coming soon to that nursery near you is Dave Wilson Nursery’s excellent lineup of Farmers Market Favorites of great tasting, healthy, fruit and nut varieties. They’ll be already potted up and ready to be planted. 

And we’re also talking about a great selection of antioxidant-rich fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, Goji berries, Grapes, kiwi, mulberries, gooseberries, figs and pomegranates.

Wholesale grower Dave Wilson Nursery has probably the best lineup of great tasting fruit and nut trees of any grower in the U.S. Find out more at their website, DaveWilson dot com. While you’re there, check out all the videos they have on how to plant and grow all their delicious varieties of fruit and nut trees. Plus, at dave wilson dot com, you can find the nursery nearest you that carries Dave Wilson plants. Your harvest to better health begins at Dave Wilson dot Com. 

HOW TO STAVE OFF BLOSSOM END ROT IN TOMATOES

Farmer Fred

You’re listening to the Garden Basics Greatest Hits of 2022, Part 1. And to wrap up more than an hour’s worth of tomato talk, we tackle a tomato disorder that hits every backyard tomato grower at least once. From last April, let’s dive into blossom end rot.

If you just planted your tomatoes and peppers, or if you will be doing so in the weeks ahead, this episode of the Garden Basics podcast is for you.

If you want to possibly head off one of the most vexing problem facing tomato and pepper growers: the late spring-early summer onset of blossom end rot. You know, when the bottoms of your tomatoes, and some pepper varieties, might turn brown, wrinkly and soft. 

However, if your tomatoes and peppers have been in the ground for awhile, it may be too late. But listen anyway, because you might be able to minimize the damage before its too late by modifying some of your gardening habits.  

Tomato plants with blossom end rot show small, light brown spots at the blossom end of immature fruit. Remember, the blossom end is the portion of the fruit opposite the stem, in other words, the bottom of the fruit. The affected area gradually expands into a sunken, leathery, brown or black lesion as the fruit ripens. Hard, brown areas may develop inside the fruit, either with or without external symptoms.   

According to the tomato heads at UC Davis, the problem occurs when tomato plants have grown rapidly during the early part of the season and are then subjected to hot, dry weather when the fruits are in an early stage of development. You know, sort of like the weather in late June.    

Some tomato varieties are more susceptible to blossom end rot, including plum and pear-shaped tomatoes.  Although the weather and the variety of tomato sets the table for blossom end rot, many other factors are major contributors.   

Mainly, you, the gardener. Yes, blossom end rot is related to a deficiency of calcium in the tomato fruit, but that occurs for several reasons that can be classified as “operator error”. 

Among them:  

• Too much water. 

• Not enough water. 

• Irregular soil moisture, brought on by irregular watering. 

• Too much nitrogen fertilizer. 

• Planting in soil whose pH is not conducive to calcium uptake by the plant (below 5.5 or above 8). 

• Planting in poorly drained soil. 

• Planting in too sandy of a soil. 

• Improper planting (spreading out the roots when planting helps the plant adapt better) 

• Excessive levels of potassium. 

• Excessive pruning. 

• Lack of an organic mulch. (organic mulch helps moderate soil temperature and moisture fluctuations) 

• Using a plastic mulch which might raise the soil temperature too high. 

• Planting certain tomato varieties that are prone to blossom end rot, especially narrow paste tomatoes.  

The most critical mistake gardeners contribute to blossom end rot: not monitoring the soil moisture at root level.   

Although the surface of the soil may appear dry, the moisture level a few inches down may be correct. If more water is added at that time, then the soil becomes so moist that oxygen is unavailable for root growth and calcium will not be absorbed. Why? Excess soil moisture, combined with a lack of soil oxygen, speeds the formation of Casparian strips, deposits on the young root tips that have become suberized, waxy substances through which water and nutrients cannot move.  If the soil in the root zone is too dry, then the calcium will not move to the roots. Dry soil and hot, dry, windy days create a water and calcium deficiency in the plant. Even a brief soil water deficit can disrupt water and nutrient flow in the plant. If this occurs while fruits are developing, blossom-end rot will likely develop.  Automatic irrigation timers may save you time, but it may not save your tomato plants from blossom end rot. Watering schedules need to be adjusted to the weather to maintain even soil moisture.   

And when it comes to garden problems, many folks think the answer is, “buy something and put it on the plant”.    

Buying stuff won’t necessarily end blossom end rot.   

Among the “store-bought remedies” that are frequently suggested that have been proven to be of little or no value to ending blossom end rot:  

• Applying a foliar calcium spray to the tomato leaves. In University tests, studies showed that calcium does not move from leaves to the fruits. Thus, foliar sprays of calcium won't correct blossom end rot. Nor do tomato fruits have openings in the epidermis (skin) through which calcium can be absorbed. Contrary to past belief, the direct application of calcium as a spray is ineffective.  

• Adding a calcium supplement to the soil, such as gypsum, limestone, or eggshells might work. Perhaps. But it depends on your soil.   

• Limestone can raise the pH in soil to a range more favorable to tomatoes and calcium uptake, around 7.0. But if your soil is already in that range, adding limestone may raise the pH to the point where calcium uptake is again, slowed.   

• Adding crushed eggshells to the soil well before transplanting time may help overcome any calcium deficiency already in the soil. But it’s not gonna help your tomatoes if they are already in the ground.  

• Gypsum (calcium sulfate)? Dr. Linda Chalker Scott of Washington State University's Horticulture Department, and author of the award winning book, “The Informed Gardener”, says home gardeners are wasting their money. “Most urban soils are not improved by adding gypsum,” she states in her on-line newsletter, “Horticultural Myths”. “Adding gypsum to sandy or non-salty soils is a waste of money, natural resources, and can have negative impacts on on plant, soil and ecosystem health.” However, she points out, gypsum can improve the structure and fertility of heavy clay soils; but consider another undesireable result to adding gypsum: Gypsum can have negative effects on mycorrhizal inoculation of roots.  

Maintaining the proper balance of potassium, phosphorus and other soil nutrients and avoiding excessive growth due to over-fertilization with nitrogen is recommended. 

Several university studies, including a study from Cornell University and one from North Dakota State University, suggest that a low nitrogen, high phosphorus, low potassium fertilizer (such as a 4-12-4) may help control blossom end rot.  Excess levels of ammonium (NH4-N), magnesium, potassium and sodium have been reported to reduce the availability of calcium. A University of Nebraska  study reported that the use of nitrate nitrogen (NO3) stimulates Calcium uptake while ammonium nitrate (NH4) reduces the uptake of Calcium. You’ll have to read the label, closely, of your favorite vegetable fertilizer to see if their source of nitrogen is nitrate nitrogen or ammonium nitrate.  The experts’ best advice: A soil test should be conducted to help determine what needs to be added and what should not be added to your garden soil.   

Don’t believe me? Listen to what Northern California Nursery Owner, Don Shor, told us last year:

Don Shor  

First of all, let's be optimistic. We're in an area where it's really easy to grow tomatoes in general. And in most of California we have a climate that allows us to grow them without using a whole lot of pesticides and other remedies. But you're referencing BER, blossom end rot, which shows up almost always on some of the very first tomatoes that set, the ones that people get so excited about. They set early, they planted early, because they want to beat the season, they get some fruit set on there, and then they look on the bottom. And if it's still green, they sometimes notice a little discoloration or a little oddity to the bottom or the blossom end of the fruit as it ripens. That part is soft and mushy and unpalatable. Yes, you can eat the rest of the fruit, but it's very disappointing. When that happens with the very first fruit that's set. Notice, it's usually on the first fruit that set. And we know now about blossom end rot that it is primarily a disorder related to low temperatures during the fruit expansion phase, and sometimes keeping the soil too wet when the nights are cold.

Farmer Fred    

Ah yes. And of course, people will rush to the nursery and look for your shelf of calcium sprays because they keep hearing that blossom end rot is due to a calcium shortage when it really is just an inability of the plant to uptake that calcium because what's going on in the soil, as you mentioned, with cold wet soil, it can't uptake calcium. How's that calcium spray shelf doing? 

Don Shor  

Well, I have it up there for the people who won't listen to me. And we not only get requests for calcium spray, we get requests for gypsum, which is a calcium product. We also get requests recently for some reason for Super phosphate, rock phosphate potassium products. And of course, the inevitable Epsom salts, somehow going to solve this problem because they're focusing on some kind of cation, and some kind of fertilizer remedy for what is actually a physiological disorder of the plant. So the bad news is, you don't have an on-the-shelf product that's going to solve it. The good news is, as the soil warms up and the plant grows and you water deeply and evenly, the next fruit will be fine. One thing many gardeners have observed is that some varieties are way more susceptible to blossom end rot than others. Roma, which is a very popular home garden tomato variety, the first fruit almost always get blossom end rot. Just plan on it. And actually you can  see that discoloration even before the fruit ripens. If you see that my suggestion is just pick those off, dispose of them, the next ones that come along will be fine. So this is a problem that the plant basically outgrows.

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, blossom end rot, for the most part, is operator error. And it could be a number of things like you mentioned, uneven watering. Too much nitrogen fertilizer can also lead up to that as well. Or if your soil pH is wrong, I think tomatoes prefer a soil pH usually in the range of what six to 6.8 or so. 

Don Shor   

Yeah, and most of us on our side of the valley are dealing with even higher pH issues and so that might be a factor. Ammonium based fertilizers are definitely correlated with it. So if you're using ammonium sulfate, that could be a factor. Again, the most common correlation I've observed is people planting early. And they may not be listening to this podcast, which tells him to plant on April 27 (April 28). Well,  he may be here in this area, waiting until the soil temperature is about 60 degrees or nighttime temperatures are about 55 degrees, you can plant earlier than the plants will grow fine if the temperatures don't fluctuate too wildly, but that early fruit will be affected. And so one of the most common things I find when I asked people, when did you plant? Is these are the folks who planted in March, early April in this area, the plants are growing fine, but that first fruit may just have to be sacrificed. Good news, we got a very long growing season, plenty of time for good fruit to develop.

Farmer Fred   

Yeah, exactly. Have you asked the question when people are complaining about blossom end rot if they are growing in raised beds? Because sometimes if you plant in too sandy of a soil that can lead to blossom end rot.

Don Shor   

I'm sure that's a factor. And we have more and more people doing that and honestly managing the soil and the soil moisture especially. And in fact, the nitrogen in raised beds is more complicated than just out in the open garden soil. So that does become an added factor as well. So blossom end rot becomes one of those things that we just have to move through. And I watched the weather and I've noticed a strong correlation of blossom end rot about eight weeks after we have a unusually cool period of night temperatures. As we record this show, we're going into a period when the nights are going to drop below 50 degrees for three or four nights here in the Sacramento Valley. That's not harmful to the plants. But my guess if I marked my calendar for about eight weeks out because that's how long it takes for from blossom to pick for most varieties about eight to nine weeks, for the fruit to ripen from when it first sets, I'm guessing some of those fruit will be affected by those nighttime temperatures. Only suggestion would be to gardeners to water more carefully, water deeply, thoroughly, and then have intervals between watering so you're not keeping it constantly soggy. That really is the key anyway to successful tomato growing. But it really seems to be a very important factor in blossom end rot.

Farmer Fred   

And I think a lot of these purchased alleged cures for blossom end rot puts in the gardeners' mind that they work, when in reality what they're doing, is they're now paying more attention to their plants. And they may spray on a calcium spray that basically just rolls off the plant, doesn't do any good. But they're watering more carefully.

Don Shor   

They're  watering more attentively, which is really what we're trying to get at. Also the placebo effect is a real phenomenon in horticulture.  It is. "I did this and I did this. It worked. Therefore I'm going to do it again next year." 

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, we usually do more combination attempted cures than just one and then we go back and think oh, well that one thing worked. Maybe, maybe not.

Don Shor  

The Tums tablet underneath the plant, when it was planted, right?

Farmer Fred    

Oh, don't don't even say that.     

Don Shor  

Let's back up. We don't recommend Tums for planting tomato plants and Epsom salts don't do anything for blossom end rot.

Farmer Fred    

One nice thing about using mulch around tomato plants is that can help a moderate blossom end rot because what mulch does it helps to moderate soil temperature and moisture fluctuations.

Don Shor    

Yeah, we want to keep the soil moisture even and I'd keep the roots saturated and not let them go dry. It  seems to just be a stress reaction more than anything. 

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER  Winter Tomatoes

Farmer Fred

In the latest edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we have more tips for growing tomatoes in the winter, indoors, preferably in a climate controlled greenhouse. Which tomato varieties do best?

Check out the Friday edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter.

For current newsletter subscribers, look for the Growing Winter Tomatoes newsletter in your email, it’s probably waiting for you now.  Or, you can start a subscription, it’s free!  Find the link in today’s show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, garden basics dot net.

I hope you enjoyed today’s first episode of four, of the Top 10 most listened-to segments of the Garden Basics podcast with Farmer Fred during 2022. Next Friday, we’ll hear your favorites about lasagne gardening (it’s not what you might be thinking) and the most listened to segment during 2022, how to grow berries, such as blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries. In two weeks, we’ll have information on how to start your very first garden, which includes tips for long time gardeners if you move and have to start over with a garden, tips that you may never have considered. Also how to reuse old potting soil. And then in three weeks, it will the fourth and final part of our 2022 greatest hits, featuring Debbie Flower, tips for getting ready for your spring garden, which was recorded in front of a live audience.

Farmer Fred  

We'll have links in today's show notes with even more information about blossom end rot in tomatoes and peppers. In the latest edition of the beyond the garden basics newsletter, we have more tips for growing tomatoes in the winter indoors, preferably in a climate controlled greenhouse or the indoors of your house. If you have the right equipment, which tomato varieties do best. Check out the Friday edition of the beyond the garden basics newsletter for current newsletter subscribers. Look for the growing winter tomatoes newsletter in your email. It's probably waiting for you now or you can start a subscription it's free, find the link in today's show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, garden basics.net 

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's first episode of four of the top 10 most listened to segments of the garden basics podcast with farmer Fred during 2020 to next Friday, we will hear your favorites about lasagna gardening. It's not what you might be thinking and the most listened to segment during last year, how to grow berries, blackberries, raspberries and boys and berries. That in two weeks we'll have information on how to start your very first garden, which includes tips for longtime gardeners perhaps you're going to be moving and you have to start over with a garden we have tips that you may never have considered also tips on how to reuse old potting soil. And then in three weeks, it'll be the fourth and final part of our 2022 greatest hits. It features Debbie flower and myself with tips for getting ready for your spring garden, which makes this episode different it was recorded in front of a live audience. 

I appreciate your continued support listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, and it continues to grow. We're approaching 1 million downloads. And a big thank you to longtime sponsors who happen to also be great people with great products that I continued to use myself. And that would be Smart Pots, as well as the fruit and nut varieties grown by Dave Wilson Nursery. Thanks again to them.

Farmer Fred 

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes.  And thank you so much for listening.