299 Pt.2 2023's Greatest Garden Hits: The Top 5

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GB 299 TRANSCRIPT Part 2 2023’s Greatest Garden Basics Hits: The Top 5

Farmer Fred

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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

In the last episode as well as this one, we are looking back and checking out which topics and episodes of the Garden Basics podcast really hit home with our listeners in 2023. What were the episodes, and what were the parts in those episodes that attracted the most downloads and listeners?

Last week, we talked about some of the most popular homegrown vegetables, including squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce and peas. And, of course, tomatoes. We had tips for Garden Success, advice for efficiently watering your garden, and how to start a fall and winter garden. Those were some of the most listened to topics of 2023. Go back and listen to the whole episode, #298, 2023’s Greatest Garden Hits, part 1.

But wait, there’s more, he said, channeling his inner Ron Popeil. This week we present, if you will, the cream of the crop. The Top 5 most downloaded episodes and their most listened to segments. They included more about America’s favorite backyard vegetable, the tomato, including the easiest varieties to grow, as well as the best soil mix to use for starting tomato and vegetable seeds. Also, we have advice on starting a container garden, and arranging an array of different plants in a single pot. We’ll save the best for last, the absolute number one downloaded episode, not only for 2023, but for the entire run of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, now entering its fifth year.

So I’d like to share those with you now. They just might be topics that you missed the first time around or you want to refresh your memory on a certain garden topic that got a lot of attention.  And as I mentioned last week, it’s amazing what you can learn with a repeat listen. I always learn something new each time I listen to an episode.

Coming up, the Top 5 most listened to segments of 2023. It’s part 2 of the Garden Basics Greatest Hits of last year.

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!

#5 AMERICA’S TOP VEGETABLES: TOMATOES (originally aired in Ep. 263)

Farmer Fred

First up, we talk with Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour about America’s most popular homegrown veggies.

Farmer Fred

Have you ever wondered what are the top 10 garden vegetables that people grow in their backyards? The National Gardening Association took a survey, and so did the Rapid City, South Dakota Journal newspaper. And together they came up with this list of the 10 most popular homegrown garden vegetables. Gail Pothour is with us. Gail is a Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert extraordinaire. Gail, it's no one's surprise that on the National Garden Association's list of the most popular garden vegetables, tomatoes is number one, with something like 86% of gardeners saying, “we plant tomatoes”.

Gail Pothour

It's number one on every list I've ever seen or in any book on tomatoes I've ever read. So yes. That's probably the reason why a lot of people got into vegetable gardening, was to start growing tomatoes. So yeah, I agree. Number one.

Farmer Fred

And especially with salsa overtaking ketchup as America's favorite condiment, I'm not surprised either that tomatoes are right up there at number one, because frankly, salsa is a lot easier to make than ketchup.

Gail Pothour

However, you can't grow your cilantro in the summer when we have tomatoes.

Farmer Fred

I will tell you a way on how to do it.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yeah, I would like to know. Mine suffer.

Farmer Fred

Remind me to tell you,  don't let me forget. All right. Let's start with the beginning gardener. If you're growing your first garden and you want tomatoes, America's most popular homegrown vegetable, start with something with training wheels, something that might be easy, and usually, the most seasoned gardeners will advise to start with a hybrid variety. Don't start with an heirloom; start with something easy to grow, start with something that is going to produce a lot of fruit, like a cherry tomato, and go with the tried and true varieties for your area.

Gail Pothour

Right. Especially a cherry tomato, I think they pretty much can be grown by anyone anywhere, as long as they have some sun. Cherry tomatoes can take a little bit of shade. That’s unlike full size tomatoes or indeterminate tomatoes that need to have full sun, at least six to eight hours. Cherry tomatoes are can handle a little bit of shade. And I find they don't stop producing in the middle of summer, like a lot of tomatoes will if we get into temperatures over 90 degrees. The cherry tomatoes will continue to produce. They're easy, they're small, they're great for kids to grow.

Farmer Fred

I think the biggest mistake that beginning gardeners make, when planting tomatoes, is they put in too many plants and they space them too close together.

Gail Pothour

You need some air circulation to  avoid some of the fungal diseases. Tomatoes are a vine. There are different classifications of tomatoes and the types of fruit and the vines. There's indeterminate, determinate, and dwarf. Typically, indeterminates are long vines. If you don't provide some kind of support, they're going to trail all over the ground. And that's when you can run into a lot of trouble with the fruit, and then the foliage On the ground, you can get diseases and insects and that sort of thing. So indeterminate tomatoes need to be caged or staked some way.

Farmer Fred

Exactly. A very good idea is to train those tomato plants. Use stakes or a cage. And you can make the cages out of sheets of concrete reinforcement wire; you can buy cages,  too. But I gotta tell you, if you're gonna buy tomato cages, make sure they're a good size. They should be at least four feet or five feet tall, with a diameter at the top of probably two to three feet, that would be ideal. And that goes back to how far apart you should plant your tomatoes as well, which would be to plant them at least three feet apart, if not four feet apart.

Gail Pothour

Right. I have 12 foot-long beds, and I will get four in there, maybe three or four. So my cages are at least three feet apart, or at least the plants are three feet apart. And when you do it in a cage, you're able to keep all that foliage inside, so it doesn't sprawl all over everywhere, so I get good air circulation. Um, I have found that the four or five foot tall tomato cages generally aren't tall enough for some of the indeterminate varieties. So I have to put an extra piece on top to make it about six feet tall, because they can get six, seven feet tall.

Farmer Fred

What are some of your favorite tomato varieties to grow?

Gail Pothour

It's like asking, who is your favorite child? Well, I'm  in the heirloom camp. So I do a lot of open pollinated or heirloom varieties, mostly for the flavor. I may not get real high yields, but some of my favorite ones that I'm growing this year include “Brad's Atomic Grape”, which is an open pollinated, variety, one that Brad Gates has developed for his Wild Boar Farms. And it's a kind of a grape tomato, which is a cherry tomato but it's elongated, kind of egg shaped,  and it's multicolored. I think it's kind of psychedelic looking. It's got purples and greens and red stripes and streaks all through it. It's very tasty. It's got a good hang time. That means you don't have to pick it right when it becomes ripe. It'll hang on the plant. I've been growing this variety the last several years and it's become one of my favorites.

Farmer Fred

I have so many favorites. I really am hesitant to mention just one or two. I'm going to defer to the vegetable experts at UC Davis at their Vegetable Research and Information Center. Who, when recommending cherry tomatoes, mentioned the “Cherry Grande”, “Sweet Cherry”, the “Sweet 100”, and the “Red Cherry”. For suitable container varieties as far as cherry tomatoes go, they name “Patio”, “Toyboy”, “Better Bush” and “Small Fry.”

Gail Pothour

If you're going to grow tomatoes in a container, you don't want to do an indeterminate one, because you'd have to have a huge container. Anything smaller and it would fall over, because it would become top heavy. So look for varieties that have “patio”  in their name, such as “patio boy” or it has the word “dwarf” in its name, indicating a dwarf variety. That way, you don't have to grow it in such a large container and they'll do just fine. Some of those will need to still have some kind of cage. And I find on those really short container type tomatoes, you can use the tomato cages that you find at the garden center that are cone shaped. I use those for really small tomatoes, peppers and eggplant as well.

Farmer Fred

Yes, indeed. I call them pepper cages.

Gail Pothour

That's mostly what I use them for. But when you asked about my favorite one that I grew last year, I've been growing it a number of years and actually saving seed  it's an heirloom. It's called “Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta” and it's this most amazing terracotta color, It’s kind of orangey or honey brown in color, and it's it's amazing. The flavor is great, had pretty good yields on it. I like “Green Doctor”. that's actually my favorite cherry tomato. It is a green cherry that's prolific and indeterminate, so it's a big plant. And it produces all season. I haven't had any cracking on it. And when it's ripe, and some green tomatoes are hard to tell when they're ready to pick, it kind of turns yellow. So, wait awhile until it  it has a yellow cast to it. One of the hybrids that I've been growing in the last over years is “Purple Boy” hybrid. And I've had really good luck with that. It's kind of a medium sized black-colored, which in the tomato world is kind of a dusky rose with purpley overtones and green shoulders. It's really good and a good producer. And then my favorite one to cook with is “Goldman's Italian American”. It's an heirloom from Italy and it is large. It’s kind of squat, pear shaped red fruit with pleats in it. Accordion looking pleats. It's really interesting looking. The flesh is blood red when it's ripe and really meaty. Not very many seeds which is great for cooking.

Farmer Fred

I take it these aren't tomatoes you found at Lowe's or Home Depot.

Gail Pothour

No, and that's one of the reasons I start all my tomatoes ahead of time from seed, usually early February for transplanting out on your birthday, Fred, on April 28.  And I buy seeds. So you have a whole world of different varieties to grow if you have seeds as compared to what's available as plants at a Garden Center.

Farmer Fred

if you're going to be heading out to the nursery to buy tomato plants to be planting during the month of May or even into June, there's a lot of good hybrids that are tried and true across the country that work really well, that are commonly available, such as  Ace, Better Boy, Early Girl, Champion. Those are just a few of the ones that are, shall we say, normal size tomatoes. And if you want a good sized beefsteak tomato, Whopper is a popular one that you're going to find that gets to a good size. One of my favorite big ones, too, is Big Beef. I'm just hesitant to talk about heirlooms because all gardening is local. And if I mentioned my favorite beef steak heirloom tomato, such as Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, I know that somebody's going to try it and not have good luck with it.

Gail Pothour

That is right. I've tried Brandywine, which is  probably the gold standard for heirloom tomatoes. And I can't get Brandywine to grow. I've grown a couple of other heirlooms, such as Paul Robeson and Black Krim, that are supposed to be fabulous. And I got one fruit on it. So yeah, I stick with the heirlooms that I have success with.

Farmer Fred

That was Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour with the fifth most popular podcast segment of 2023, from episode 263, back in April, talking about America’s most popular backyard vegetable, the tomato. But of course, me being a bona fide tomato head, I like to get lots of advice and different opinions about choosing, planting and growing tomatoes. Coming up: nursery owner Don Shor talks about the easiest tomatoes to grow, a perfect topic for not just beginning gardeners, but for any gardener looking to save time and money in the garden, and yet have a bountiful harvest of tomatoes. it’s coming up, as we count down the Top 5 Garden segments of 2023.

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#4 THE EASIEST TOMATOES TO GROW (Originally aired in Ep. 248)

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.

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 y