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

How to Grow Great-Tasting Tomatoes in Any Backyard, Garden, or Container
2. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-60765-778-1
Verlag: Fox Chapel Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 120 Seiten

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, staking, caging, food, water, maintenance, pest control and diseases, and harvesting. You Bet Your Garden: Guide to Growing Great Tomatoes is filled with expert insight, fascinating tomato lore, and Mike's signature witty and conversational tone, making this essential guide to tomato gardening even more fun to read. Understand all the benefits of growing your own tomatoes and learn tips and techniques to doing so from the leading authority in the field!

Mike McGrath is editor-at-large for Organic Gardening and is the former editor-in-chief. He writes a monthly column, 'Mike McGrath's Tall Tales,' and answers questions on the magazine's website. McGrath's 'You Bet Your Garden' airs weekly on National Public Radio. He has made frequent guest appearances on NBC's Weekend Today and NPR's 'All Things Considered'.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mcgrath, Mike

Leseproben

Chapter 2

The Joy of Germination

(Or, Killing Your Own Tomatoes from Seed)

Now that you’ve selected the tomato varieties you intend to grow over the next several months, it’s time to turn some tiny little seeds into gigantic plants bursting with luscious ripe fruit.

Starting tomatoes isn’t difficult, like growing eggplant or watermelons, but it isn’t easy like growing zucchini either. Although seed starting a very different endeavor than actual gardening, it really just requires that you don’t screw up the important things. Think of it as a corollary to life itself—or your driving test. And yes, that means you might get it right the first time.

Actually, if you are a rookie gardener, you have complete permission to buy your plants already started the first year and practice killing nice big grown plants before you move on to little bitty ones.

Anyway, first, do the math. To figure out when to start your seeds, you need to have some idea of when you hope to put actual living plants out into the garden. Put those plants out too early, and the poor little babies will freeze to death. Do it too late, and you won’t get as many tomatoes as you could have, unless you live in Syracuse, and then you won’t get any.

So, find out what the average last frost date is for your area. Call your local Cooperative Extension office (type “Cooperative Extension” and the name of your state into an Internet search engine and it should lead you to a list of your state’s local offices) and ask them what your average last frost date is. They for this kind of stuff. Or just type “average last frost date” into the same search engine, and I’m sure you’ll be interactively informed.

Pineapple

Pineapple is a very large, classic bicolor (yellow streaked with red) heirloom tomato type that can be found under a dozen different names. Pineapple is one of the largest—and the cleanest. At least in my garden it resists cracking and splitting, even in wet seasons, and ripens up smoother and more perfectly formed than most of my other bicolors. It’s a nice love apple to show off—or maybe even enter at the county fair.

The term “Average Frost Date” has killed more tomatoes than summer hailstorms. When you get to your “AFD,” check the 10-day forecast. If any nights are predicted to drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, do not plant. Look at this forlorn frozen thing; even if it survives (and it won’t), it will be weak and sullen the rest of the season. Daytime temps don’t matter—it’s the nighttime lows (and Mother’s Day snows) that will getcha.

But, for many of us, the date we use is simply the average: If you live above the Carolinas, but not so far north that your snow shovel is still handy in June, you can typically put your plants out safely between May 15 (warmer climes) and June 1 (cool climes) and pretty much count on success. If you live in an area where it frosts, well, it doesn’t really much matter when you put out, now does it? plants aren’t going to , are they?

Anyway, you want to allow your seeds a week or so (call it ten days to be safe) to germinate, and a six weeks to grow big and strong before you consider putting them out into the cold, cruel world—which you should do only “after all chance of frost is gone.”

You know what that last part means, don’t you? Right— will now have the power to cause the latest frost in the history of your region! It’s easy! Just call up your local TV weather guesser and say, “I’m going to make it freeze on Thursday!”

“How are you going to do ? It’s predicted to be mild—fifties at night and sixties during the day.”

“I’m putting my tomatoes out on Wednesday.”

“Wait a minute—hold on…Sorry—what did you say? I got distracted by the radar; looks like there’s a huge cold front heading down out of Canada.”

Now, where I live in Pennsylvania, the average last frost date May 15. But many people have been confused into thinking this means it won’t ever frost on May 16 here. Uh-uh. “” it won’t. And you can imagine how much your poor plants will care about odds and averages when they’re looking for scrap wood to burn in little barrels as they rapidly lose the feeling in their tiny branches, and stuff that looks suspiciously like snow begins to mulch them.

So my advice for you is to plan to put your sweet, trusting little plants in the garden about two weeks your average last frost date. Freezing isn’t the only factor here; tomatoes are tropical plants that have no sense of humor about temperatures in the forties, much less thirties; and unless you go to lots of trouble to keep them warm and protected, they’ll just sit out there sulking until the nights are reliably in the fifties. Rush the season and you’ll be starting with weakened—and possibly psychotically resentful—plants.

Now, some books would provide a big ol’ hairy chart here that reveals last frost dates for the entire nation. But the truth is that even the finest, most excellently configured of such charts usually looks like somebody used the book to swat a fly and caught it right about where your state or region should be.

TIMING YOUR TOMATOES

OK, now let’s say you’re like me and you plan to plant on June 1, a date that has always served me well. Here’s the math:

10 days for germination

10

6 weeks to grow

+45 (my weeks are longer than yours)

1 week to harden-off

+10 (Rounded up to be safe and easy to add. And yes, we’ll explain what “hardening-off” means later.)

Total

= 65 days

So round off all the extras I added, and let’s call it two months. That means you could safely start your seeds anywhere between mid-March and April 1.

Why as early as mid-March?

It won’t hurt a bit if the plants are a little older (and ) when they go out, and they can certainly go out on May 15 if the ten-day forecast shows nights staying reliably in the fifties. And, what if you screw up and your first run of starts all die? Honor dictates you try again at least once before you go out and buy the strange-looking overfed Big Boys at Wal-Mart! Besides, there are a of seeds in those packets.

But you fail, and they die!

Tomato-Starting Stuff

One of the great things about seed starting is that you can go out and buy lots of stuff and actually claim you’re going to save money by doing so. It’s probably going to turn out to be a damned lie, but hey—the shopping is still fun. Here’s what you need to get your tomato babies growing:

Tomato seeds (duh!)

The plastic six-packs that last year’s tomato (or pepper or marigold or petunia or…) plants came in. (Don’t have any among your “I may be able to use this someday” stuff? You can almost certainly get as many as you need from any long-time gardener—I’ve got !) Don’t use folklore equipment like old yogurt cups or egg cartons. You need something made of plastic that drains well and is about the depth of, well, of nursery plant six-packs! Oh, and don’t use peat pots or peat pellets or similar things; peat wicks moisture into the air and makes it nearly impossible to keep the plants evenly watered.

These are four-packs, which are just as good as six-packs. But there are too many freaking tomatoes in these things! You’re sowing tomato seed, not a lawn. Take this as an example to follow.

Always use a light, loose seed-starting mix (bottom) to start your seedlings, garden soil! Top off with some nice worm poop—uh, I mean “castings” (top)—when your seedlings are three to four weeks old to feed them naturally.

Do you have everything on that Tomato-Starting Stuff Checklist assembled? Good. Now, mix all the ingredients together, cover with aluminum foil, and bake in a preheated 350ºF (177ºC) oven for forty minutes, then…

Oh, no, wait a minute—that’s the recipe for tonight’s chicken casserole. Never mind.

Seed-starting mix. your lousy garden soil! No, no, no. Listen to me now and this becomes the first time I save the life of your tomatoes-to-be. Your tender charges be dead if you ignore this warning! You want soil-free mix, and one of the soil-free mixes that has chemical fertilizers added. You may have to shop around a bit to find a clean bag of the right stuff, but it is . More on this in a bit.

Something to sit the six-packs in that will hold them and water, like an old baking dish or one of those big aluminum trays that the caterer left behind (check for pinholes in the bottom first!), or even—call me crazy—one of those plastic flats (the sans-hole kind) that actual plant professionals use for holding plastic six-packs of seedlings.

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