You Bet Your Garden Guide to Growing Great Tomatoes, Second Edition

How to Grow Great-Tasting Tomatoes in Any Backyard, Garden, or Container

Mike McGrath

• Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781607657781
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Horticulture
• Index: Biological Sciences

Whether you have a backyard or only a terrace, you bet you can grow beautiful heirloom tomatoes! From the host of PBS's You Bet Your Garden, Mike McGrath will teach you everything you need to know about choosing tomato varieties, germination, planting, maintenance, pest control, and so much more. Understand the benefits of growing your own tomatoes and learn expert tips and techniques to doing so!

Chapter 1

“Picking” Your Tomatoes

(Do all of these things have funny, rude, or mysterious names?)

There are no “wrong” tomatoes (other than those waxed-fruit varieties in the supermarket); you should grow what you like. So I’ll provide a few basic facts and helpful information—like how to start the seeds, how to support the plants, and how long you generally have to wait for ripe tomatoes—and you will fall in love with weird names and romantic illusions and grow as many different solanaceous flights of fancy as you can. Some will become your tomatoes forever, while others will end up being a dimly recalled one-season stand. That’s OK—you’re young and foolish, and we don’t judge. (Unless you dismiss the flavor of a first-rate tomato like big juicy Brandywine as “mealy” or something.)

Anyway, tomatoes are like wine—because all the good ones are red! (White wine is something you drink when you’re sick, like tea.) Actually, unlike wine, some of the best tomatoes aren’t red (but they aren’t white either, tea drinker!). Seriously, tomatoes really are like wine—because you often have the most fun when you break the rules.

Jet Star

Jet Star is a hybrid variety with a reputation for extremely high sugar content, massive production, and rampant vine growth—so give this candy factory lots of room. Said to do well even in cool climes, Jet Star is a real favorite of fresh eaters who have a Love Apple Sweet Tooth.

What’s Your Tomato Determination?

There are two main types of tomato plants, and the difference is important.

Determinate. Determinate plants pretty much stop growing around the time the bulk of their tomatoes form, producing almost all of their potential fruit in that one big flush. Then, they are mostly done for the season. Obviously such plants are great for large-scale farming, but they’re also good for gardeners (like moi) who cook down a lot of their crop to jar up as sauce and paste for the winter: You can pick enough tomatoes from one or two determinate plants in a couple of days to make a full pot of sauce, cook it up, and be done instead of making small batches all the time. That’s probably why most—but not all—paste tomatoes are determinate. Determinate plants also tend to be smaller and more compact, making them good choices for small-space and container gardens. And determinate varieties move in and out of your garden fast, allowing you to pull up those plants when they’re done producing and replace them with garlic, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and/ or other fall-planted crops....