A tomato planting primer

Ladies and gentlemen, start your tamatas

The arrival of Mother’s Day and the continuation of nights staying reliably in the 50s means that we have the rare pleasure of an early and safe tomato planting date. Let’s go over the basics so you don’t screw this up!

Two tamatas walk into a bar…

(… and the bartender goes, “What is this — some kind of joke?”)

Anyway, there are two kinds of tomatoes.

Determinate varieties — often described with phrases such as bush, patio or container — are bred to stay small and relatively upright (they are still vines at heart). They tend to top out at around four or five feet in height and generally produce their fruits fairly early in the season.

Determinate varieties are the best choices for container growing. They do well in medium-sized containers and only require medium-level support.

Indeterminate varieties, a category which includes most of the big beefsteak types and virtually all of the treasured heirloom varieties, are big, rangy vines that can often reach 10 feet or more in length over the course of a season. These types — whose fruits most reliably produce that treasured “true tomato” flavor — are the opposite of well-behaved. They should be grown in the garden inside a 2-foot-wide cage of welded wire fencing. (Details and instructions on making such cages to be found below.)

Oh — two notes:

If your plant tags do not display this important information (often noted in the form of the single letter D or I), look up the variety online for its designation.
Rene Descartes walks into a bar, has a drink. The bartender asks him if he wants another. He says, “I think not,” and disappears.

Do you know your tomatoes’ DTMs?

Are you tired of seeing nothing but big green tomatoes in your garden as July fades into August? Would you prefer a steady supply of tomatoes that starts before July and lasts until frost? The secret to this success can be found on a little thing called “days to maturity” or “DTM” on the plant tag. A very important number, but one that even many experienced gardeners don’t check.

“DTM” refers to the number of days it will take, on average, for a good sized transplant to produce its first ripe fruits after said transplant is gently tucked into warm soil. Plant a 50-day hybrid variety such as Burpee’s excellent Fourth of July on Mother’s Day, and you could well be enjoying the first ripe fruits a week before the fireworks begin.

But big, super-tasty heirloom tomatoes, such as the legendary Brandywine and Mortgage Lifter, take a full 85 to 90 days, which means you should not expect to see the first ripe fruits until well into August. (But there’s nothing wrong. That’s just how long it takes, and they’re worth waiting for!)

Choose tomatoes with a wide variety of DTMs (say a 50, a 60, a 70 and some 85-90s) and love apples will always be in season in your garden. (If your plant tag doesn’t display a DTM, look up the variety at a couple of online sites; the big catalog companies generally list it.)

Plant correctly now to prevent problems later

Pick a site that drains well and that gets morning sun. More than other plants, tomatoes need morning sun to dry off their leaves.
They also need six to eight hours of sun a day to produce good fruit.
Don’t plant tomatoes in the same spot as the last few years’ tomato crops. Soil-borne wilts will cause the plants’ leaves to turn yellow from the ground up. A few feet away from previous sites is safe.
When you find that perfect place, dig a deep hole, pull the leaves and branches off the bottom two-thirds of the plant and drop it in so that most of the stem is underground. Tomatoes (and only tomatoes!) develop auxiliary roots along that buried stem, giving them access to more water and nutrients.
Add calcium to the planting hole in the form of crushed eggshells, calcium carbonate pills or even Tums. Such added calcium will totally prevent blossom end rot, the heartbreak of late summer, which makes tomatoes turn black and rot out just as they ripen.
If your tomatoes are already planted without calcium, feed them with an organic tomato food that specifies that it contains added calcium. Cover any kind of granulated fertilizer with soil or compost to help ‘activate’ the nutrients. Chemical fertilizers will not help and will only dilute the flavor your rotten tomatoes would have had.
Fill in the hole with the soil you removed (do not improve the soil in the hole).
Then spread 2 inches of compost over the surface of the soil. Don’t till the compost in; layer it on the surface, where it will prevent weeds and disease and supply slow, gentle feedings all season long.
Be sure to support small- to medium-sized plants with regular tomato cages. Grow monster-sized heirlooms inside big cages made from welded wire fencing. Then stake the cage, not the plant — unless you happen to have 14-foot-high stakes and really long arms that will allow you to tie the continually growing vine to the stake.
We repeat: All tomatoes are vines; be sure to provide support to keep the plants upright and off the ground.
Don’t crowd your plants. You’ll get more tomatoes from two plants that have a foot of open space between them than from four plants jammed all together.
Always mulch tomatoes with two inches of premium compost — not composted manure (which will give you 20-foot-high plants with three tomatoes each on them) or any kind of wood, bark or root mulch. Wood mulches breed the diseases that prey on plants such as tomatoes and roses; compost mulch prevents those diseases from getting a foothold.
Always plant in the evening, not the first thing in the morning. (This gives the plants time to acclimate and get over their transplant shock before enduring full sun.)
Water your plants deeply right after planting by letting a hose drip at their base for a few hours. Water the same way, deeply and only at the base, once a week any week we don’t get an inch of rain.
Don’t wet the leaves of your tomatoes when you water.

Making cages

Buy a roll of either five- or six-foot-tall welded wire animal fencing. Rabbit wire, turkey wire, concrete reinforcing wire — anything but chicken wire, which is too flimsy.
Lay it out on your driveway and use wire cutters to cut six-foot linear lengths. As you cut, cut into the next section over on the roll at every other junction to create rows of natural twist-ties.
Form it into a cylinder, which will be less than two feet in diameter.
Use your wire cutters to create little spikes on the bottom rung. Center a cage over each heirloom and/or indeterminate variety in your garden, allowing a foot of open space on all sides for airflow.
Now take some rebar or stakes and drive them through the sides of the cages until the cages don’t wobble. Do not stake the actual plant. And don’t skimp on the support; a big beefsteak will be loaded with 30 to 40 pounds of fruit in August and you don’t want it to fall over.
The now-safely-confined tomato plant, being a vine, will grow upward toward the sun. But being a vine, not directly so, instead curling around the inside of the cage. Because you didn’t force it to stay upright, all 10 to 12 feet of vine will stay tucked inside that five- or six-foot-high cage. Pretty neat, eh?

Just one more:

Julia Roberts walks into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the long face?”

We’re here all week! Don’t forget to tip the traffic reporters! Try the Core Value specials!