TIME FOR TOMATOES!

Hey all,

We are so excited to welcome back the delightful Allison of @finchandfolly fame to help us talk tomatoes! (Give her instagram a follow, it has amazing pictures and so many great tips and tricks for an amazing garden. Seriously) She talks best tomato seed varieties, tomato seed germination tips, transplanting tomatoes, tomato pruning tips, determinate vs indeterminate, and more. Check out her list of favs and see if there are new varieties for you to add to this year's tomato options! 

Have you started your tomato seeds yet? If not, now is the time to get sowing!

Hi everyone! Happy Spring! This is Allison from over at Finch + Folly (@finchandfolly). If you’ve joined me over on my garden community on Instagram, you know that I love, love, love fresh garden tomatoes. Turns out, I’m not the only one…93% of us gardeners in America grow tomatoes. Given that there are over 10,000 varieties of this beloved garden gem, it’s easy to have your head spin at all the possible ones to grow.   

Having grown these beloveds for the past two decades, I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve developed favorites over the years. Juliet for example, is probably the one tomato I wax most poetically about. Years and years ago when I lost nearly my entire crop of tomatoes to Late Blight, Juliet was the one variety that hung in there. Prolific, delicious, tenacious…what more could you want from a tomato? As long as I have a garden, I’ll have Juliet in it. I grew Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye for the first time last summer and was instantly smitten. It was one of the first to ripen, and when it did, it was a complete stunner of rose pink striped with green streaks. Because I am always on the hunt for new varieties to try, I reached out last month to my garden friends on Instagram to share their favorite tomatoes to grow, and after hundreds of responses, this list here were the  top 10 favorites

1. Sun Golds
2. Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye
3. Brandywine
4. Juliet
5. Kellogg’s Breakfast
6. Aunt Ruby’s German Green
7. Indigo Pear Drops
8. Black Krim
9. Black Cherry
10. Cherokee Purple

When selecting which variety will work best for you, decide first what you’re looking for in a tomato. Tomato varieties fall into three main categories—Cherry, Slicing and Paste:

• Cherry tomatoes are little garden delights that can be round, pear or tear-dropped shaped. They tend to be the first tomatoes to ripen and usually are one of the last to go. Their sweet flavor is fabulous in salads, snacks and general noshing.
• Slicing tomatoes are those ones we all dream about over long winter’s days…the big, round, meaty tomatoes that are phenomenal not only as sandwich toppers, but just on their own with a sprinkling of salt and a splash of balsamic vinegar.
• Paste tomatoes are the ones I tend to grow most of because their thick, meaty flesh has a low water content that makes them ideal for sauces and canning. Many of these varieties tend to be determinate, which means that its fruits ripen at the same time, allowing you to plan for processing big harvests.

Another thing to take into consideration is whether your variety is Determinate or Indeterminate:

• Determinate tomatoes grow to a certain height, making them shorter and bushier. Their fruits also ripen together at a similar time, making it a great choice for folks who want to process their harvests in big batches. Because of their limited growth, determinate tomatoes tend not to need pruning.
• Indeterminate tomatoes grow vines and flowers all season long until frost. They also produce fruit along the way. Because these tomatoes grow and grow, they must be trellised to help maintain not only their manageability, but to help ward off disease as well. A quick fun fact, according to Guinness World Record, the tallest tomato ever grown clocked in at 65ft! Imagining trying to harvest from that plant. Because indeterminate varieties create a lot of foliage, it is smart to keep the suckers pruned to allow for better air circulation.

Alrighty…now that you’ve decided which tomatoes you want to grow, the next step is getting them started. Nothing kicks off the new growing season to me like sowing tomato seeds. With each one I sow, I imagine warm, sunny days in the garden where I can almost smell the ripe tomatoes before I even see them. So exciting!! Here are a few tips for starting your tomato babies off right:

• Start seeds indoors 6-8 weeks before last frost date
• Tomato seeds will germinate in 7-14 days. You can help your germination rates by keeping your newly sown seed tray on a heat mat, or do what I do and just put them on the top of your refrigerator where it’s nice and toasty too.
• Once germinated, move seedlings under lights in a room with a temperature of 70ºF. Keep seedlings under the lights for 14 hours a day. (If you have windows that get great full sun exposure, you can keep your seedlings on the sill.)
• When your seedlings develop their first set of true leaves, pot up into 3” pots

While our last frost date here in Zone 5 is May 2nd, I don’t dare think of setting out my precious tomato transplants into the garden until Memorial Day. It’s so tempting to get them in before that, but even without the chance of frost, the weather still won’t be anything that’ll promote your tomato’s growth. So best to wait until the soil and air have warmed up. If you’d like to take a clue from Nature as to when it’s ready for your tomatoes to go into the garden, accordingly to Phenology (the practice of following plant and animal cycles for sowing clues), transplant your tomatoes when the Lilacs are in full bloom.

Here are a few other tips for when it comes time to plant your tomatoes outside:

• Once the evening temperatures regularly stay above 50ºF, it’s time to transplant your tomato seedlings out into the garden. This often is around 2-3 weeks after last frost date.
• Prior to transplanting, make sure to harden off your seedlings. To do so, start by placing your tomato seedlings in a well protected spot and slowly expose seedlings to direct outside sunlight for a few hours each day. Over the course of a week or two, increase the amount of time outside.
• Tomatoes need a solid 8 full hours of sun a day
• Like well-drained soil with a pH between 6.0-7.0
• Dig a 12” deep hole to plant seedling. In the bottom of the hole, toss in a handful or two of well-aged compost, plus a sprinkling of bone meal. Both help promote healthy plants and early ripening.
• Tomato Fun Fact…Did you know that all those tiny hairs that grow along the tomato’s stem can actually turn into roots once planted in the ground? Because of this, you’re able to transplant your tomatoes fairly deeply into the ground. So anyone with leggy seedlings, this many give you a much needed reprieve.
• Tomatoes are 95% water, so they need good, consistent watering in order to provide happy bounties, so make sure to give each plant a good 1”-2” of water a week. Avoid fungal and bacterial disease by watering at base of plant, rather than from above. Water in the morning, as opposed to evening, makes for happy tomatoes. Adding a layer of mulch helps maintain the much-needed moisture as well. I tend to like using whatever mulching materials I have closest, so often that’s grass clippings, shredded leaves or straw.
• Companion Plant with Basil, Borage, Chives, Garlic, Mint, Nasturtium & Parsley. Keep plants away from Brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc…), Corn, Dill and Potatoes.

As your tomatoes grow on, you’ll have to face the eternal question of  “To prune? Or not to prune?”. The key to happy, healthy tomatoes is both good air flow and quality sun. Too many leaves on your plant, can sometimes hinder the ripening of the tomatoes, and clutter up air circulation.. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about pruning Determinate varieties...though I do strip off all their bottom leaves below their first set of fruit to aid in better air circulation (I do that with all my tomatoes). Indeterminates on the other hand can quickly become a jungle of unmanageable vines, so pruning helps control that a bit too. To prune, you’ll want to snip off the suckers. Suckers are those little shoots that sprout out where the branch meets the stem of the tomato plant. If left to grow, these suckers will form their own branch and fruit.

Oh, it is all so exciting to officially kick off the countdown to being back out in the garden. The snow is finally melting here. The birds are singing. The trees are laden with buds. And maple syrup season is wrapping up. Time to dig our hands deep into the soil again and sow the seeds to a wonderful new season ahead. Cheers!