Growing Perfect Tomatoes

By: Lynn Ocone (Page 2 of 8)

Rob Cardillo

"There's only two things money can't buy. That's true love and homegrown tomatoes," wrote singer-songwriter Guy Clark. Those of you who have tasted a lip-smackingly ripe tomato fresh from the vine will agree with Clark.

Rob Cardillo

Tomato sizes range from grape and cherry to truly giant. Literally hundreds of varieties are available through seed catalogs and nurseries

Walter Chandoha

'Early Cascade' bears ripe fruit just 55 days after transplanting. Here, a single stake supports the tall vine, which is attached loosely with twine.

Walter Chandoha

There are many types of tomato supports, including homemade bamboo tepees (above), stakes with string guides (below left) and space-saving tomato spirals (below right), which cost about $4.50 each

Neil Soderstrom

Healthy homegrown seedlings with deep roots, bushy tops and no flowers or fruit are ready to plant. Plant tomato seedlings deep with soil up to the first set of leaves, as indicated here by the cultivator.

Rob Cardillo

BLOSSOM-END ROT results from wide fluctuations in soil moisture and calcium deficiency in the plant.

Rob Cardillo

Minimize growth cracks by planting resistant varieties, and keep soil moisture uniform as fruits develop.

Walter Chandoha

A doomed tomato hornworm carries white cocoons of braconid wasps that will parasitize and ultimately kill it.

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Indeterminate plants grow, blossom and fruit all through the season, but they have fewer mature tomatoes at any one time. Plants reach 3 to 6 ft. or more and need staking so they don't sprawl on the ground.

There's a subgroup called semideterminate. Among them, varieties such as 'Bush Big Boy' and 'Husky Gold' are more compact than indeterminate plants, but they will produce full-size tomatoes until frost. Choose indeterminate and semideterminate varieties if you want a long, continuous harvest.

Days to maturity. Seed catalogs and plant labels usually list the approximate days to maturity from the time of transplanting. You can use this number as a guide for choosing early, midseason and late varieties. If you live where summers are short, growing early-maturing varieties (52 to 65 days) gives you the best shot at an abundant harvest before frost kills the plants. If you have a long, sunny growing season, you can probably grow most any variety, including the beefsteak types that yield huge tomatoes. They typically require 80 days or more to ripen. In general, late-maturing varieties give larger, more flavorful fruit than short- season varieties.

Disease resistance. The initials V, F, N, T and A after a variety name indicate the variety is resistant to certain diseases or tolerates a common tomato problem: verticillium wilt (V), fusarium wilt (F), nematodes (N), tobacco mosaic virus (T) and alternaria (A). 'Celebrity' (VFNTA) is an example of a variety with outstanding disease resistance. Grow at least a few plants with built-in disease resistance to be on the safe side.

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Q: Fruit or vegetable?
A: Botanically speaking, tomatoes are a fruit, the ripened ovary of a seed plant. But in 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes are a vegetable, not a fruit.