288 Tomato Review 2023

Show Transcript

GB  288 TRANSCRIPT Tomato Review 2023 

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.

Farmer Fred

Today, we compare notes with Davis, California nursery owner Don Shor, an avid tomato grower, about our 2023 tomato successes and failures. And, we check with the tomato trials done this past summer at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It’s a wide ranging conversation not only about hybrid and heirloom tomato varieties that were notable for size, flavor, production, vigor..or lack therof… it also includes some great tips for growing and caring for your 2024 tomato garden, no matter which varieties you choose. 

This interview recently aired in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, but the response was so big, you should hear it as well, if you’re not a subscriber to the newsletter. Plus, we want to know your own tomato winners and losers of the summer of 2023. And We’ll air your tomato thoughts in a future episode. Today, We’re talking tomatoes!

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!

2023 TOMATO REVIEW, Pt 1

Farmer Fred

Early Fall is an active time in our garden. We're busy removing declining summer vegetables and flowers. We’re cleaning up debris from the garden beds, maybe adding compost and mulch, and then planting either a cover crop or a cool season vegetable. 

But let's reminisce a bit. How was your 2023 garden? Specifically, how was your backyard tomato crop? Which varieties were successful, which tomatoes were a bust? Did you get hit by jalapeno gate with your tomatoes? It's a possibility, we'll find out. We're talking with Don Shor, he owns Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California, an avid tomato grower as well. 

The tomatoes we're going to talk about were our successes and failures along with Don's customers’ successes and failures. But again, all gardening is local, so your results may vary. And Don, one way we may have varied from the rest of the country: unlike the rest of the country that had a lot of hot spells, we had a fairly mild summer.

Don Shor  2:49  

Yeah, I went back and crunched the data, which you can gather from the automated weather stations at the CIMIS website. And we had, in Davis, 13 days that hit 100 degrees or above. That's pretty average actually. And then we had 30 or 40 that were in the mid to upper 90s, which means not pollination weather, but still not a problem for tomato plants. They wouldn't be setting during those times. We had a lot of pollination weather this year. I know people always think we had a terribly hot summer but honestly, it was a pretty balmy pleasant summer here in the Sacramento Valley. And that means that at least half of our days between mid-May and mid-September, we had suitable weather for not just pollination, but fruit development. So it should have been a pretty good year for tomatoes. In fact, it should have been a really good year for tomatoes around the Sacramento Valley. And talking with customers, many people said things like, “Oh my best year ever for tomatoes, but…”. 

And then they would mention some one variety that didn't do well. Or “that wasn't what it was supposed to be”.  We can come back to that topic for sure. But in general, good yields across the board for most varieties, and even some heirlooms stood out as having good yields, which we don't really promise to people. So yeah, reflecting back, and this is one of the things I do like to do in October, is sit down with my database and the list of the tomatoes that I planted while I still can remember or even better, still walk out there and see how they're doing. And make notes about how things did because come next winter, we're buying seeds and getting going on planting things and your subjective memories aren't as good especially as you get older. So it's a good idea to make notes about these things.

Farmer Fred  4:26  

Yes, indeed. I always put in the date in my little garden diary here of the dates I plant the tomato plants and the days when I removed the tomato plants. And I think it was the earliest removal on record for my Sweet Million which is my favorite cherry tomato. I have planted that one, year after year after year, and it's always been very productive. Not this year. It got pulled out on September 10. And production was minimal. But Again, looking at the Sweet Million plant and the way it was producing tomatoes, it just looked odd to me. It didn’t  look right. “This doesn't look like a typical Sweet Million cherry tomato.” So we may, and this is another topic to come back to later on, we all may have been bamboozled a little bit.

Don Shor  5:19  

There's a couple more I know of, it wasn't what I planted. And we all know there were some seed mix ups. So some of my favorites, like the Chef's Choice series, especially Chef Choice Orange having become over the last several years, one of my all time favorite tomatoes. Well, it was a small red tomato this year. So clearly that wasn't Chef's Choice Orange, whatever the label may have said on the pot. There were some seed mix ups. Yes. So that one, unfortunately, did not rank highly, because it isn't what it was supposed to be. A little surprised that your Sweet Million was mismarked, but that is certainly possible as well. And I do have to say that chatting with Master Gardeners who come in and compare notes with me, plus they staff the Q&A table down at the farmers market in Davis, and we compare notes about what kind of questions they're getting. This year, if people came up to us or them and said I didn't have a real good year with my tomatoes, we start with two questions. One, are you using a drip irrigation system? Two: Do you have raised planters, because those were the common factors in plants that didn't do well, not because of drip irrigation per se, not because of raised planters per se. But because of the issues with those two things, such as not running drip systems long enough, so they weren't watering enough. And raised planters have the advantage of soil heating up for earlier planting. But the disadvantage is simply not retaining moisture, and not retaining nutrients. So those are two factors that I think were a problem for a lot of people this year. Most summers, we can just blame it on the weather for not getting a good yield, it was too hot. But this year, the weather was very cooperative, except for a very cool start that a lot of people did comment on, you know, if you planted on Fred Hoffman’s birthday this year (Apr. 28), it was a little chilly back then. And the soil really wasn't warm enough. So things got off to a slower start. But they did catch up and do well in general, but not if you weren't watering deeply. And not if you didn't have enough nutrients and moisture retention in your soil, which is a common problem with raised planters. 

Farmer Fred  7:04  

Actually, I did a little Don Shor-inspired tip on my tomatoes this year. Because if you're in the habit of starting your tomatoes from seed, you might be doing that in January and February. And  usually I time it to go in around April 28. But usually, and this isn't a surprise, that those tomatoes need to get in the ground way before April 28. Because they're getting a little cramped in small containers. You offered this suggestion, and I think it's a very good suggestion for people, especially if you go to the nursery and buy a six pack of plants and you don't plan on planting them for a while. Pot them up. Move them up to one gallon containers. And they will be a stronger, sturdier plant that will adapt to the situation a lot easier than those little, cramped, plants with squeezed roots.

Don Shor  7:55  

Yeah, keep them moving up. I mean, that's really important for any vegetables that you're buying. It's true. Now in the cool season, as you're buying some of the cole crops and things to go in the ground. Those little cell packs don't have much root zone. And so getting them into whatever is the appropriate bigger container with tomatoes, they're so vigorous and you can put them into a black one gallon nursery pot, put that out in a sunny location in middle of March or April, and it'll warm up and the plants will grow quite vigorously and you'll have an 18 to 24 inch plant when it goes in the ground. It'll be grown along just great. And my experience is that with soil at the right temperature, and proper management of irrigation, it doesn't miss a beat, they go right in and they just take right off from that much bigger pot than trying to hold them in little four inch pots on your porch until that perfect planting date. They get increasingly root bound. So I'm glad you adopted this practice and I highly recommended keep them moving up, to keep the roots growing, keep the top growing. And don't worry if they're getting tall. That's okay, you're gonna drop them down deep. I like to joke that I want to drop them down below the “gopher zone”, which is about the top 12 inches. That's where gophers are really active. So hey, if I can drop it below that I'm that much ahead of them too.

Farmer Fred  9:03  

I did that “move-up” test a little bit more in depth this year. Back beginning on April 7, I planted tomato plants twice. I planted two of them straight from the four inch container into the ground. And that was on April 7. And I took another one of those same plants, but put it in a one gallon container on April 7. But I waited to plant those on April 28, my birthday. So which produced tomatoes first? The ones planted on April 7? Or the ones planted on April 28? Turns out the first tomatoes that appeared, came on the ones that were from the transplants from the bigger containers, that were planted three weeks later on April 28.

Don Shor  9:43  

The more mature plants, right? Well, that's good. That's a nice little test right there. And I am concerned about that April 7 date. This year, the soil was still quite cold and it was it was very cool through spring for the most part, which a lot of people kind of forgot about. We like to give these rules of thumb about a particular date. But soil temperature is really, arguably, the most important part of it. And it was still kind of chilly back there in early April. I've got a customer who always plants on March 15. He's an older guy, I'm not going to argue with him. It's worked for him for years. He covers them up with little hot caps if it gets cold. And he complained to me that they just didn't take off this year. Well, I'm not surprised. March 15 is too early, in my opinion to begin with, and then add on a very cool month of April and even into May. They would have been better off sitting in containers, the right size containers, a bit longer for sure.

Farmer Fred  10:35  

Well, because I have raised beds, I wasn't too worried about soil temperature. When I planted those on April 7, the soil temperature in the raised beds was 50 degrees, which is the minimal temperature necessary. Bare minimum. And by April 28, In the raised beds, the soil temperature had risen up to around 60 degrees.

Don Shor  10:55  

You should probably bring people up to date on how you fertilize them because one of the biggest issues we encounter with raised beds is that they simply don't hold nutrients well so when you put them in the ground in that raised planter do you add something for them?

Farmer Fred  11:09  

This is what I do in the fall. After I've taken out the former plants and cleaned a bed, which I'm in the process of it right now, I will mix in, in a four by eight bed, I will mix in probably six cubic feet of worm castings and just work that into the soil. Then, I will get some organic compost and put that on top of the soil. And then on top of that compost, I have shredded leaves that go on. I've kept shredded leaves since last year in a Smart Pot compost bag, which is a 100 gallon bag. So I have a ready-made supply of decomposing leaf mold ready to go on those beds. And that improves the soil. It improves the moisture retention and of course it's building up the soil biology as well.

Don Shor  12:00  

So you're just putting this on the surface and then not planting anything onto that? Or do you plant a cover crop on top of that.

Farmer Fred  12:06  

No,  I usually don't do that to a great extent. Although I do some cover crops, but not much. I find it's a lot easier and I don't mind staring at shredded leaves on a raised bed all winter.

Don Shor  12:15  

Yeah, you're adding nitrogen actually, with worm castings. They're not cheap, but they're really really good for cation exchange capacity. They retain the nutrients and they help retain moisture. They're a lot denser than most of the organic things that people add. So you've got the best of everything there. You've got organic material, you've got nitrogen, and you've got things that will help the soil retain those things for the next season. So that pretty well covers your nitrogen needs, I would imagine, for the following summer.

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2023 TOMATO REVIEW, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation with nurseryman Don Shor about the best tomatoes and the not-so-best tomatoes of 2023. A lot of it has to do with soil preparation. That includes wintertime cover crop planting in order to have a more nutritious soil for 2024.

Don Shor  15:08  

I've done cover crops obviously, I like to just stick in fava beans and things like that and it started raining. And of course, as we recall, we had what 13 Atmospheric Rivers last winter. That's something when I had had not gotten cover crops in where the tomatoes were. So I had a bag of fava bean seed, and it's January, and the soil is so saturated, I should not even have been walking on it. But I went out there in my boots and I slogged my way down and I shoved a couple of fava bean seeds into the mud where each tomato plant had been, I just cut them off, I don't pull them out, I just cut them off, let the roots disintegrate there. And every one of those fava bean seeds came up in spite of 100% soil saturation and very cold temperatures and 40 days of rain in the next 80 days. They did great, they just filled in that spot. As far as I'm concerned, they're cultivating it for me, putting nitrogen right there. But what you're doing sounds pretty gourmet, I imagine your tomatoes were very appreciative.

Farmer Fred  16:00  

Feed the soil first. That's my goal. And it works. Now another thing, too. And because we've talked about this for years, and you finally drilled it into my head, my raised beds needed more parallel drip irrigation lines. So now in a four foot wide bed, I have five lines running the length of the bed. And I'm getting better penetration and spread of the water.

Don Shor  16:25  

This is the patented Fred Hoffman drip irrigation technique that I describe to people regularly because I'll tell them you have four foot wide beds and five drip lines in there. And they sort of look startled and say well  that way you get the distribution you need. If you brought in this really fancy soil you paid great money for, from your local rock yard, and then amended it with a bunch of nice stuff, the water tends to just run straight down. And so people tend not to water enough. And you really have to to water differently than I do, I can give tomato plants a week's worth of water all at once, I can give them 10 or 12 gallons at once. And it'll still be there because I'm just doing out in the garden soil basically. In your case, you're growing them almost in a container. So you probably have to water, I'm guessing, two to three times a week, I'm not giving 10 to 12 gallons all at once. We're giving each plant at least a couple gallons. And when I say that people's eyes get wide. A couple of gallons, you don't really realize how much water it takes to grow food. So overall, a good rule of thumb is: indeterminate tomatoes should get 10 to 12 gallons of water total per week. Whether you do it all at once, if you can do that, or split  it into a couple of irrigations. That’s for indeterminate types.  I've had this conversation with people who want to conserve water. I suggest they just grow determinate tomatoes. Grow them to get one good crop, you'd give them maybe five or six gallons of water per week. And when they're done, they're done. You can pull them out in August. I’m assuming that you're going to process them, can them, dry them, freeze them, whatever. Because you've basically grown your crop the way local Yolo and Solano County farmers grow tomatoes, a whole crop all at once. Then bury for the winter and for the following spring.  And you can use less water in that case, but the common problem we're hearing is people trying to cut way back on the watering and then the poor plants barely grow and they barely yield. So you do have to give them a lot of water if you want to. If you want to conserve water, grow one really good tomato plant  instead of 10 poorly watered tomato plants, I think you'll be happier with the results.

Farmer Fred  18:18  

Or move to someplace where it rains in the summer.

Don Shor  18:22  

Well then you have disease problems.  We get to live in a pretty good place for growing tomatoes here.

Farmer Fred  18:27  

But I think we're here to talk about tomato varieties that succeeded or failed.

Don Shor  18:32  

Yes, yes. And I will say my number one producer, and I love to tout this one for gardeners who were kind of casual out there and just want a whole lot of something and maybe they're I call it the empty nester tomato, you know, they used to grow 10 or 12. But they just want one. They want to travel, they don't want to have to worry about it. Juliet came through once again, I just went out and took a picture of my Juliet hybrid tomato and the plant filled the cage very quickly, five feet tall, cascading back down to the ground with long branches and trusses of fruit by my eyeball estimate there are about 400 Fruits still on that plant. And these are these little meaty, their sauce, tomatoes, but really, you can use them for anything. I mean, they're like cherry tomatoes just more elongated, extremely productive, extremely disease resistant. All America selection from I think 1999 or something like that. And it's really taken off because it grows well everywhere. Very disease resistant, very productive. So Juliette wins the volume award this year.

Farmer Fred  19:29  

Did you have much cracking issues with Juliette?

Don Shor  19:32  

It does if you don't water it carefully. There's so much fruit that even if a quarter of them split, it's not a big deal. But yes, that can be an issue when they're in their fruit expansion phase. If there's any drought stress, then they will continue to try and expand and burst and so you do have some of them split. It's so such a high yield that that's not a huge issue, but it is a watering related phenomenon. And it's just you know, anyone can grow it anywhere. It's what it seems it's one of those ones where if someone comes in and they're a new gardener, and they want to know what's a really good tomato and I'm Thinking this person doesn't actually even know how to water or anything. Let's  make sure they get at least one main season tomato, one cherry tomato and at least one Juliette and at least one good hybrid and then they can have fun with all the other varieties that are out there but if they get a couple of those they're sure to have a good yield.

Farmer Fred  20:14  

The hybrids that you have recommended over the past few years I have planted now for  three or four years in a row: New Girl and Valley Girl which I guess I related to Early Girl.

Don Shor  20:25  

Yep, valley girl is an attempt at replacing early girl with I think, open pollinated New Girl, I can't remember now off the top of my head whether it's open pollinated or hybrid. I can check real quickly here is from Johnny's Seeds and mine have outperformed Early Girl. So that's a tough mantle to try and steal. Early Girl is very reliable everywhere, especially in California, New Girl does outperform it. very similar fruit . It’s another four or five ounce red round tomato. Really good flavor. I'll say this one thing, it's got a tougher skin. And in some ways that's an advantage. I mean, some people don't like a tough skin tomato because they're trying to make sauces and they don't want all the skin in there. But you know something about tougher skin tomatoes. They can take direct sun better, they can take rainy weather better. We hit the dew point several mornings a couple of weeks ago and some of the other tomatoes started spoiling out in the garden. New Girl was just fine. We got some rain the other day over here on our side of the valley. No problem there either. Because we get late in the season some of your tomatoes will be spoiling as they're ripening. Now the tougher skin ones, a New Girl is in that category as is Champion and Better Boy is another one that will be hanging on there in November so they're good ones to have just for that alone. And here's the other point: really good flavor and very good productivity on New Girl How was your Valley Girl this year?

Farmer Fred  21:42  

Valley Girl was so so. it had good early production and then decided to stop for the season. So I gave it a  B-minus just because it was very prolific early on in the harvest season during July and August. But then it stopped. New girls still in the ground, still producing. I agree with your ascertainment of the New Girls tougher skin is a good comment. Because obviously, if at this point in the tomato season, in mid October, if they're still in the ground, they're winners.

Don Shor  22:13  

Yeah. Oh yeah. If they're still out there and not rotting as they ripen. And this is something I've taken to recommending to people if you have a variety and you've been having problems with it softening or you go out there and they seem like they're spoiling as they ripen, pick them a little earlier. Once we started getting into late August and September it happened this year earlier than usual. Normally it's later in September, we hit the dew point which by the way for people listening in other parts of the country, we don't see dew here between  mid May and almost October. You go out in the morning, you might see a little sparkle. But that's it at best. We don't have a thing where the plants are moist all the way till 10 or 11 in the morning. Once we hit the dew point and we have plants with moisture on the leaves and especially on the fruit if they're beginning to ripen any little bit of spoilage organism any little bit of injury to the skin, whether it's a bird or a bug or just when bumping it against the big tomato cage, they'll start to spoil very rapidly. And most of us have had the unpleasant experience of reaching in to pick what looks like a great tomato and having it disintegrate in our hand as we pull on it. If that's a problem with a variety that has a thinner skin or is a really big fruited one, pick them before they're fully ripe. Pick them when they're turning color if rain threatens or if extreme heat threatens. If we have a lot of morning dew or if you're  in a foggy zone where you have fog into the morning, pick them when their midpoint on color and you can let them ripen on your kitchen counter. I have them sitting right now I've got about 20 tomatoes on a dish towel on my counter that I picked over the last few days. They were not fully ripe, but they're ripening inside and I can monitor that. That way I don't go out there and find this was the day the ground squirrels discovered that tomatoes are edible, the temperature is gonna be 49 degrees in a couple of mornings. You know that's the coldest we've been so far. That can be cold enough to cause some spoilage organisms to get in. So you can ripen them on your counter under more even conditions. And if a heatwave threatens, I really suggest this if you got a lot of fruit and it's facing to the west and you hear we're going to be over 100 degrees for a couple of days. Pick the ones that have some color already and you'll be a lot happier because they will ripe and continue to ripen indoors. They are climacteric fruit that will continue the ripening process indoors. The flavor will be just as good.

Farmer Fred  24:21  

That's good advice for July ,August and September. Right now…Well…enjoy the spoils.

Don Shor  24:26  

Now you go out and find out what's hanging on there and doing well. 

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Farmer Fred  24:34  

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2023 TOMATO REVIEW Pt. 3

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation with nurseryman Don Shor about the 2023 Tomato trials in our own yards. And Don certainly had a few winners.

Don Shor  26:03  

But I did have a couple of surprises this year one was Pineapple. Have you ever grown it? The plant iis an heirloom, it's an old heirloom, it has been around forever. Pineapple gives you a one pound fruit. And I always tell people you know it's really rich, tangy flavor. That's where the name comes from. And it's one of the yellow orange ones. It's got red  suffused in both the skin and the flesh. So it's a beautiful fruit. And you get five or six typically, but they're big and it's cool. And you've got some other tomato that's your major workhorse. This is just for fun. I got more than 20. I actually totaled 24. And most of them were over a pound. And the ones that weren't were very close to a pound and I was watching those every morning, terrified that it was gonna be the night that something came in and discovered that my Pineapple tomatoes were at the perfect stage of ripening, but I let them go fully ripe on the vine. It was astonishing this year thanks to the combination of weather and luck and serendipity to throw all those  things together along with good deep watering. It gave me very good yields and I would take them into work and people would look at this one and a quarter pound orange red, orange yellow fruit with red streaking on it and just be amazed by it. They would say, “What's that one I gotta grow it next year!”. And I will say yeah, but growing next year, that's fine, but plant some reliable hybrids as well. 

Farmer Fred  27:15  

One variety that you've recommended over the years, I've grown it now for two years , is Bodacious, which gets very big, but