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Tomato Frenzy; Caring for Your Crop

© Susan Ward

Besides teaching gardening courses, I also go to courses offered by other people. A funny thing happened at one of the courses I went to last spring.

In February, a gentleman in my class brought in some small tomato seedlings to share with the rest of us. He had originally bought the tomatoes in the supermarket, and thought they were the most delicious tomatoes he had had in a long time when he ate them. So he had taken their seeds and started more of them. Thinking how generous he was, I took some of the little seedlings home, and put them under my growlamps, where they grew and grew and grew, just like the fabled beanstalk.

It was fabulous to see the bright green fronds in March and to inhale the glorious tomato perfume whenever I walked into the growing room. But as fruit-bearers, these little seedlings were/are failures.

As I knew (but chose to ignore), tomato seeds should be started no more than 6 to 7 weeks before you're going to transplant them; otherwise, you end up with sad, spindly plants. And I should have guessed that those plump, succulent tomatoes that were so appealing in the supermarket were hybrids; their seed reverted to the parent types and the resulting fruit resembles hard red golf balls rather than the big, juicy tomatoes I like to slice for sandwiches and salads!

Hopefully, you were smarter than I was and chose the right tomatoes to seed and started them at the proper time. I should have started my tomatoes no earlier than mid-March, as they can't be transplanted out here until May. And I should have seeded the types of tomatoes I normally seed; known, highly-disease resistant cultivars. When you're browsing through those seed catalogues in the winter, dreaming of your coming vegetable patch and looking for the perfect tomato, always look for letters after the name. For instance, varieties that are resistant to fusarium and verticillium have VF after the cultivar name, varieties that are resistant to verticillium, fusarium and nematodes will be labelled VFN, and varieties that are resistant to all of these and tobacco mosaic are labelled VFNT.

My favorite tomato for home-growing is a hybrid named Hy-Beef 9904 VFT, produced and sold by Stokes Seeds, which produces a huge, tasty beefsteak-type fruit in 70 days. Oregon Spring is another tomato I often grow; they produce in only 60 days from transplant and are excellent for people who garden in places with cool, cloudy summers because of their ability to set abundant crops in cool weather. Luke Miller presents pictures and descriptions of 7 good hybrids, including Celebrity and Beefmaster, in Great Tomatoes: Heirloom vs. Hybrid.