Tomatoes in Containers

When it comes to garden gear, there is a clear divide among growers: Those who love tomato cages, and those who consider them an absolute useless eyesore. I’m controversially the latter. Aesthetics aside, there are a lot of questions I have about the invention of this particular metal torture device, and I have opinions about how it might not be the best way to grow your tomatoes. In fact, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with your crops due to cage structure—increased pests and lower fruit production to start! 

With all that in mind, I made my annual frantic call with some urgent tomato questions to today’s guest, Craig LeHoullier in North Carolina, the NC Tomato Man as he’s known on social media, author of the classic book, “Epic Tomatoes” (affiliate link). Craig knows more about these cherished fruits than almost anyone I’ve ever met. He even shares that in live sessions each week on his Instagram account where you can ask your questions and get solid answers. I asked Craig how he’s doing and what we should all be doing to bolster a bountiful harvest and also about which fruits to save next year’s seed from anyhow and other tomato questions. Read along a

Homegrown tomatoes taste heavenly when they are sweet with a hint of tart, acidic flavor. If you want to grow the same, there is a science behind it. Learn the Number One Technique to Produce Sweeter Tomatoes to enjoy a sweet summer harvest!

Up here in the Hudson Valley/Berkshires area, where the apples come in fast in fall, I make applesauce as fast as I can to freeze. A batch of mincemeat sounds about right, too, especially from a recipe minus the traditional beef suet. This one’s vegetarian.The recipe is from “Stocking Up II,” a Rodale cookbook of 1980s vintage that has since been reissued in athird version. The most-disfigured spread in my copy: the one with ‘Currant and Green Tomato Chutney,’ which uses loads of apples as well. If a waste-not, want-not mood seizes you in the not-too-distant future, here’s the recipe. (I fig

THAT OLD, DISCARDED ELECTRIC FAN that isn’t strong enough for the hot summers of global warming…hey, bring it on. It’s perfect for accomplishing one of the tricks to growing better tomato seedlings, which is (after all) the only thing you probably really care about on the run-up to another spring. To hell with winter.

If you’ve seen Amy’s previous books on melons and squash, which like the newest volume are collaborations with photographer Victor Schrager, you know they are somewhere between scholarly and scientific and sensuous (which means they cover a lot of ground).You can therefore go at reading “The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table” from any angle: Dip in, perhaps, to grab a recipe (Amy’s Cream of Tomato Soup is calling to me, as are Tomato Bread Pudding and her oven-dried Tomato Chips).At another sitting, learn to grow tomatoes as expertly as Amy does (she tested an astonishing 1,000 varieties and profiles 200 in the book), or how to save the seed for next year’s crop.Come to “The Heirloom Tomato” one day with a supply of envelopes and stamps (or logged into your computer) an

Easy does it: You don’t need a flat of cherry tomato plants; one or two is plenty for most households. Give the majority of space to paste tomatoes for making sauce, and others for eating fresh in salads and sliced.Hybrids or heirlooms? A mix is better, probably, as hybrids sometimes fare better under duress than heirlooms, which don’t have the benefit of bred-in disease resistance. (That’s‘Juliet,’ a delicious and prolific hybrid small plum, up top, for instance.)At planting-out time, rotate the crop to minimize the chance of soil-borne troubles. A th

THERE ARE OTHER people who can show you step-by-step how they start tomatoes from seed, but I have two little secrets: 1, APS System, and 2, control yourself. The former is a self-watering system of styrofoam cells that will last forever and I think of as an essential garden tool.

All of it will be grown organically, starting with organically farmed seed, like in her family farm and home garden (below).  “Our seed system is brittle,” says Theresa, who farms in Fullerton, North Dakota, on the cusp of Zone 3b and 4a. Not brittle in the way a perfectly dry seed must be to store well over the winter for next season–but brittle as in ecologically and politically fragile, and potentially broken.We’ve all heard: Years of industry consolidation by a few big corporations has reduced the d

Like all the seed farmers I’ve interviewed in this series (past links at bottom of page if you missed any), the Uprising Seeds team speaks of the mission, and meaning, behind what they do. It’s long, hard work—you have to believe to take it on.“Closest to our heart, and the main reason we do this work, is our celebration of the idea that access to open-pollinated seeds and the freedom to grow, reproduce, and share them is a basic human right that empowers community, tradition, and diversity,” says Uprising co-founder Crystine Goldberg (with Brian and their son in the photo up top). “And that the opportunity to select for those traits that are unique to individual climate and growing condition

The fruits above (which are ‘San Marzano 2’) got exposed to too much heat and sun while ripening, which caused the chlorophyll up toward the stem end to fail to break down and give way to other pigments. Again, apparently some varieties are more inclined to have this issue surface under such stress than others that are more resistant; I have read that heirlooms are more inclined to green shoulders than hybrids, but who knows if that is so? Sometimes the color shifts to yellow (called yellow shoulders, of course)–but even then, not to red.The good news is that assuming subsequent fruits don’t get roasted and toasted on the vine, they’ll be fine. These two were on the lower part of the plant where some foliage had dried and dropped off, leaving them out in the altogether during the recent heatwave. If the plants had lost foliage where other fruit are forming, leaving them vulnerable, too, I’d provide some shade with a knitted fabric, forming a loose tent to block maybe 30 percent

THE ANNUAL RITUAL BEGINS: At tax time in the Northeast, we start our tomato seeds indoors, though many of you may be putting your seedlings out in the garden already or otherwise way ahead of me.