TOMATOES

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOMATO

Grow the right tomato plants for this area. Since our summers are so short and cool, we need tomatoes with short ripening periods. Our nursery carries many varieties specially suited to our climate. Tomatoes come in all colors, sizes, shapes and with varying harvest times. Plant a variety to get a good yield. Be sure to include a cherry tomato since they have the shortest ripening periods of any tomato.

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF TOMATOES WE RECOMMEND

Cherry Tomatoes: Sweet 100, Sweet Million, Gold Nugget, Yellow Pear

Paste Tomatoes: Roma, Mama Mia

Mediom, Early Tomatoes: Early Girl, Lemon Boy, Celebrity

Beefsteak Style Tomatoes: Pik Red, Better Boy, Super Fantastic

Container Size Tomatoes: Patio, Red Robin, Canary Yellow

CHOOSING THE RIGHT SPOT

Choose the hottest, sunniest place you can find, even if it means putting tomatoes in a whiskey barrel on the driveway or confiscating part of the lawn area. Tomatoes need at least 8 hours of sun a day. The more sun they get — the faster you’ll have tomatoes to harvest and the better they’ll taste.

Your soil should be lush and fertile. Building good soil is the most important thing you can do to have vigorous, healthy plants. Dig the bed deeply, adding lots of Whitney Farms Mushroom Compost. It’s important to practice crop rotation in order to avoid disease. If you plant tomatoes in one spot this year, try to rotate other vegetables through that area and not put tomatoes back there until a third year. If you use containers, make sure they’re at least 16” in diameter.

HOW TO PLANT

It’s important to wait until night temperatures are 50 degrees (which for us is the end of May) until you plant tomatoes out. Leave your starts on your window sill or in a greenhouse until it warms up. Make sure you harden off your tomatoes for a week before planting. Hardening off means you bring them out during the day and take them in at night. It gives the tomatoes a chance to get used to real sunlight and wind. One way to get a jump on things is to use a Wall-O-Water. You can plant out at least a month earlier in these “mini-greenhouses”. Tomatoes thrive in them.

After you’ve prepared the soil with compost dig a hole twice as deep as the plant sits in the pot. Space plants 20” apart. Space plants up to 4’ if you’re looking for giant tomatoes. Work Whitney Farms Vegetable Food into soil. Also mix some bone meal into the hole if you’ve had problems with blossom end rot. Pinch off the two lowest leaves, loosen the roots if the plant is pot bound and bury it in the hole an inch below the lowest leaves. Tomatoes are one of the few plants that can be planted deeper then they sit in the pot. They will grow more roots out the leaf nodes and the plant will be sturdier for planting this deeply. Water with Ortho Up-Start and set your trellis, stakes or caging system up.

CARE

Consistent watering is important for tomato quality and production. Soaker hoses are great. Mulching tomatoes with compost, bark, or straw is just as important as watering; it keeps the moisture level even at the roots. Feed with Whitney Farms Vegetable Food when you see flowers. Keep the suckers pinched off (those branches that begin to form between one leaf and the stem) and keep trying or staking the plant as it grows.

If your tomatoes haven’t begun flowering two weeks after planting apply some Alaska Morbloom. Shake the plants slightly every time you walk by because they can be wind pollinated. We also carry a hormone called Get Set for Tomatoes to spray on the blooms to stimulate fruit setting. Spray on the open blooms three to four times during the season.

SUPPLIES

• A variety of tomato plants
• Whitney Farms Mushroom Compost
• Whitney Farms Vegetable Food
• Ortho Up-Start
• Alaska Morbloom
• Stakes, trellises or cages
• Whitney Farms Bone Meal
• Wall-O-Water
• Get Set for Tomatoes
• A good shovel
• BOOK: Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon

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