GB 192 The Easiest Tomatoes To Grow

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GB 192 TRANSCRIPT THE EASIEST TOMATOES TO GROW

THE EASIEST TOMATOES TO GROW Part 1

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  0:32  

May is tomato planting month for most of the nation. Maybe you’ve had problems growing tomatoes in the past, or maybe you’re fairly new at planting, raising and harvesting America’s favorite backyard vegetable. Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California, a true tomato-head, has a list of the easiest tomatoes to grow, along with good advice to make sure that they prosper in your garden, even if you’re planning a long road trip or two this summer. Today, it the easiest tomatoes to grow, and how to make it easy on yourself, too.  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 we will do it all in just a little over 30 minutes. Let’s go! 

Farmer Fred  1:24  

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  2:08  

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  3:21  

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  3:55  

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  3:58  

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?

Don Shor  6:02  

 You're just getting started? 

Farmer Fred  6:05  

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

Don Shor  6:13  

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  6:55  

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  7:05  

It keeps on going.

Farmer Fred  7:06  

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  7:28  

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

Farmer Fred  7:32  

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  7:42  

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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Farmer Fred  9:13  

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THE EASIEST TOMATOES TO GROW PART 2

Farmer Fred  11:12  

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  11:45  

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  12:17  

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  12:34  

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  13:35  

 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  13:58  

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  15:13  

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

Don Shor  15:17  

Yeah, I call it blonde. A Blonde  tomato. 

Farmer Fred  15:20  

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

Don Shor  15:24  

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  15:31  

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  15:56  

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  16:07  

 I think we should.

Don Shor  16:09  

 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  18:20  

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  18:38  

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  19:11  

You mean the pepper cages you're talking about?

Don Shor  19:14  

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  20:06  

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  20:38  

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  21:44  

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  21:59  

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  24:24  

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  24:34  

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  25:15  

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  26:29  

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  26:53  

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  27:59  

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  28:41  

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  31:03  

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  31:59  

So for those who are listening and don't know why your teeth should be blue, you can alsojust 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  33:02  

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  33:23  

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

Farmer Fred  33:29  

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

Don Shor  33:35  

 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  34:18  

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  34:29  

Yep, balance your portfolio. 

Farmer Fred  34:30  

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  34:37  

Thanks very much.

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Farmer Fred  34:43  

The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast has a lot of information posted at each episode in the show notes. Maybe you’d rather read than listen? Not a problem, a complete transcript is posted, and you can find that link in the show notes or on our new homepage, gardenbasics.net, where you can find that link as well as all the previous episodes of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. There, you can leave a message or link up with our social media pages, including our You Tube video page. And at garden basics dot net. click on the tab at the top of the page to read the Garden Basics “Beyond Basics” newsletter, which usually has a bonus podcast attached to it. Plus, in the show notes, there are links to any products or books mentioned during the show, and other helpful links for even more information. Plus, you can listen to just the portions of the show that interest you, it’s been divided into easily accessible chapters.  Want to leave us a question? Again, check the links at garden basics.net. Also, when you click on any episode at garden basics.net, you’ll find a link to Speakpipe, where you can leave us an audio question without a making a phone call. Or, go to them directly: speak pipe dot com slash garden basics. You want to call us? We have that number posted at garden basics dot net. Spoiler alert: it’s 916-292-8964, 916-292-8964. Email? Sure! Send it, along with your pictures to fred@farmerfred.com. Or again, go to garden basics dot net and get that link. And if you send us a question, be sure to tell us where you’re gardening, because all gardening is local. Find it all at garden basics dot net. 

Farmer Fred  36:35  

Garden Basics With Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics dot net. That’s where you can find out about the free, Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you so much for listening.