Garden Basics with Farmer Fred

074 Tomato Variety Preview, Part 1. Tomato Terminology Explained. Trees vs. Storms.

February 05, 2021 Fred Hoffman Season 2 Episode 74
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred
074 Tomato Variety Preview, Part 1. Tomato Terminology Explained. Trees vs. Storms.
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

If you plant tomatoes in late April or early May, February is the month for you to be planning your tomato strategy and then start planting tomato seeds indoors. We talk strategy as well as good tomato varieties worth trying in 2021. 
Are you still attempting to decipher all that tomato terminology in the seed catalogs? We’ve got the help you need! 
Heavy winds and wild weather has buffeted most of the country the past few weeks. We talk with an arborist who has tips to help you to determine how well your trees will withstand the next windstorm.

It’s Episode 74 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, our tomato preview edition, Part 1.  And we will do it all in under 30 minutes. Let’s go!

Pictured:
Tomato plants. Too many!

Links:
All-American Tomato Selections Winners
Farmer Fred Rant: Trees vs. Storms
Farmer Fred Rant: Tips for Starting Tomato, Pepper Seeds
What is a "Schmoo"?
Tomato varieties mentioned in the Tomato Preview (Part 1):
Early Girl
Big Beef
Better Boy
Champion
the Chef’s Choice series
Gardener’s Delight
Orange Oxheart
Carmello

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GB 074 Tomato Preview,  Tomato Terminology, Trees vs Storms 

SPEAKERS

Debbie Flower, Don Shor, Jackie Cordes, Farmer Fred

Farmer Fred  00:03

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot. 


Farmer Fred  00:15

If you plant tomatoes in late April or early May, February is the month for you to be planning your tomato strategy and then start planting tomato seeds indoors. We talk strategy as well as good tomato varieties worth trying in 2021. Are you still attempting to decipher all that tomato terminology you might see in the seed catalogs? We've got the help you need. Heavy winds, wild weather. It's buffeted most of the country the past few weeks. We talk with an arborist who has tips to help you determine how well your trees will withstand the next wind storm. It's Episode 74 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. It's our tomato preview edition. And we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go. 


Farmer Fred  01:05

Welcome to the tomato preview edition of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. We like to get an early start on tomatoes. But actually, it's not that early. You should be planning your tomato strategy for 2021. And then, get to planting, especially if you plant your tomatoes in late April or early May. Generally speaking, if you're growing tomatoes from seeds, it takes about eight weeks to get them up to a transplantable size. So you can just count backwards from your normal planting date back to when you should be starting your tomato seeds, wherever you may live. Here in California, we're gonna get our tomato seeds started in February so we can plant them in April, maybe early May. We'll see if the weather cooperates. Don Shor is with us, from Redwood barn Nursery in Davis, California. He likes his tomatoes, I must like tomatoes too, because I've already made up my sticks for 2021 that I'm going to put in the ground with the tomato's name on them. So I have high hopes for at least eight varieties. 


Don Shor  02:05

Eight?


Farmer Fred  02:05

And you? Yes, eight. I'm limiting myself.


Don Shor  02:08

Well, you know, I have about 18 seed catalogs spread out across my dining table. And I've already ordered from most of them. And I realized that I had actually ordered; this is just for my own personal use. Remember, I do have a nursery, too, where I sell tomato plants. 39 varieties that I am intending to start from seed this year. And I thought maybe I should scale that back a little bit. I think it's too late. So I'm trying all kinds of new ones. But as you say, this is the time for planning kind of enunciate carefully, not planting, when we get people coming in on a nice sunny day in January as has already happened. And they say, "when are you going to get your tomato plants in?" We've gotten to the point where we almost say this in unison for best results: "We plant tomatoes in April, peppers and eggplants in May". And we say that over and over again. And they look a little disappointed. But it's okay right now to think about what varieties you're going to get. A look at the seed racks are interesting. There's always some unusual things there. Look at those seed catalogs that are piling up on your desk, do some ordering and like you say, start planting your seeds. February, March is fine. You know it's not too late to get them going to plant them out. Because young seedling tomatoes grow fast. And I often am concerned people are planting in you know, late December, early January, you're gonna have a pretty tall tomato plant to put out in the garden by the middle of April.


Farmer Fred  03:26

And I would imagine that as a nursery owner, Don, you've noticed that climate change has really affected things. Mainly in how early people are asking for tomato plants. Now, I bet you were asked about tomato plants if you have them yet in January. 


Don Shor  03:40

December 29. We write it down every year. Ordinarily, it's late January when we have a sunny spell. We expect it in February. You know it feels kind of like spring in February here. On December 29, a gentlemen walked in. It was a nice sunny day, and he wanted to know when we'd be getting in our tomato plants. So I think that's a record. I do think that's a clear sign of climate change right there. People are planning and planting earlier also should mention you know, topically the pandemic has a lot of people vegetable gardening who  have not done it before. And so they don't know what the seasons are and how long it takes, as you said eight weeks from seed to planting out in the garden, they kind of need that timeline. And the other thing they don't know is which varieties do well here in the Sacramento Valley where we have hot summers and you know 2020 was a very hot summer. And I think we can guess that there will be hot summers in our future. So looking for varieties that can tolerate that is the other end of the spectrum. Not just how early can you start, but how are they going to take the July and August conditions?


Farmer Fred  04:41

Exactly. And for people in other parts of the country a good resource for finding out what tomatoes might be doing well in your area is the All America Selections winners. We will have a link to their tomato winners of the past 70 or 80 years posted on the Garden Basics show notes page. So be looking for that if you're wondering about what we're talking about here, because we're probably going to talk about tomatoes that you may not be familiar with. But I hope you are. And I think many of them would be a good bet to try throughout most of the country. So Don, let's start with winners and losers from 2020.


Don Shor  05:18

It's a short list of winners and long list of losers because of the extreme heat that we had, interestingly, my top producer in the summer of 2020, wins seven heat waves in the Sacramento Valley. And of course, long periods of smoke. And lots of things went wrong weather wise, my top producer of all the varieties was Early Girl.


Farmer Fred  05:38

Yay.


Don Shor  05:40

Yeah. It's been around forever. And interestingly, I don't know where people are listening to this podcast, but they probably can grow Early Girl there, because it's a very widely adapted variety. They came around the 1970s. It was introduced in a big way. The Burpee company got the first rights to this, it's been around long enough that even though it's a hybrid, I've taken to calling it our California heirloom tomato, because it's it's been around long enough that we can say this does well, most years, even when it's surprisingly hot. And it's a good one for other parts of the country, people who got a slow start to their spring, and where it's cooler and rainier is one that is known to set and hold fruit at cooler temperatures. One of the things we've always liked about it is also sets and holds late in the season. So you're getting some set there in September, and you're harvesting those tomatoes into November, taking pictures of them and sending them to your friends on the East Coast and gloating.


Farmer Fred  06:29

Yes. You know, you brought up the smoke. And yes, the Central Valley of California, in fact, a lot of areas of California, were basically in a cloud of smoke. And that actually affected late season production because it kind of knocked off flower production when all that smoke started happening in August.


Don Shor  06:47

Sure seemed to. And we wouldn't know exactly what the cause was. But it sure seemed like yields in October, November were down. And that's usually my big month. I mean, by October, we're getting that late set that came on in August, we're harvesting like crazy. And it was definitely not the yields that we normally would expect in the Sacramento Valley. And also listeners in interior Southern California, they have a long growing season for tomatoes, you know, they start if you put them in the ground in April, they can be producing all the way into the middle of November without any problem, as opposed to people in say the Mid Atlantic or the upper Midwest where Labor Day is the end of their season. So we get a good six to eight extra weeks of set development and ripening right out on the vine. We don't have to worry about picking green tomatoes. We can leave them out there until we get the first couple of rains.


Farmer Fred  07:30

Well, you're absolutely right about a shortlist of winners from 2020. In my garden, it was actually a couple of heirlooms that took the prize for Best Production throughout the season. One was slightly bigger than a cherry tomato. It's called Gardeners Delight. It's an heirloom out of Germany. And it's a little bit bigger than a cherry tomato. But it produced early, it produced mid season, it produced late. And the other was kind of a surprise for me, in that I wasn't expecting much from it. It's an old heirloom called Orange Oxheart. And it was fabulous last year.


Don Shor  08:07

I think more people should consider the oxheart tomatoes. They're kind of new to California growers. And I've had customers particularly people from Italy, and the Mediterranean. They're their favorite varieties. And you know, we could learn a lot about gardening in California with tomatoes from gardeners from Italy, Greece and similar hot summer climates. So some of those old heirloom varieties from those regions might be more suitable here than the more familiar heirlooms that you'll see in stores. It really kind of irks me when I see Brandywine being sold heavily. That's an American heirloom from the Brandywine valley of Pennsylvania, is not really suited here in the valley. If you've grown it, you probably had the same experience I have where you get this great big, robust vine, and literally 2 or 3 or 4 pieces of fruit. I mean, they're great. They taste wonderful, but it hardly seems like a great use of your garden space. So be cautious about putting in a lot of heirloom varieties unless you've tested them or talk to someone who has grown them locally. Because our conditions are not similar to Ohio where Beefsteak is popular, Pennsylvania where Brandywine is popular. Those are not generally real good producers here in California with our higher summer temperatures and our drier conditions.


Farmer Fred  09:16

Yeah, your totals may vary wherever you may live, it's always a good idea to check with your local independent nursery to find out which are the best performing varieties year in and year out because your employees at your local independent nursery will have heard back from their customers about which ones have done well.


Don Shor  09:34

Yeah, or that old guy down at the community garden who reintroduced one of your listeners and one of our friends to Big Beef. You know, he was some guy from the Mediterranean Big Beef tomato, I haven't grown it in 25 years. It's the only variety that old guy grows that well. Alright, I'll try it; and indeed it generally has done well. But getting back to which ones are pretty consistent: Better Boy, Champion, two good hybrids that have been around for a long time. Really good. All purpose ones, too. I really tout this new series, The Chef's Choice. It has done very consistently well, particularly the Chef's Choice orange. Now there's like seven colors in that series. They're all winning the All America awards. They've really liked them in that program. And they've been good producers in the valley, apparently, I think because the breeder that introduced those is up in Maxwell, right here in the valley. So these are kind of a California specialty. Chef's Choice, orange, red, pink, yellow, how many colors are there now, the only three that I've grown are the yellow, excuse me, the orange, the pink and the red, they all produce very well. I like the firm texture and holding ability of the orange, but the others have been good yielders as well. So those are some kind of new ones to look for. And then if you kind of like European style tomatoes that might do well. Carmello has been consistently a good producer for me as well. Carmello is from France, I think somewhere over there, and has generally done very well here in the valley.


Farmer Fred  10:55

Don Shor, thanks so much for giving us a little tomato preview. 


Don Shor  11:00

There you go. 


Farmer Fred  11:01

Oh, but there's a lot more tomatoes we both like. Don Shor will return next time in the next episode of the Garden Basics podcast with Part two of our tomato preview. 


Farmer Fred  11:14

Oh, it's one of my favorite times of year it's looking at garden catalogs, looking at seed catalogs and all the wonderful vegetable and flower varieties that are available via seed. We are talking with Debbie Flower, our favorite retired college horticulture professor and Debbie, when people start looking at, especially tomato descriptions, I mean, they're all beautiful and red or yellow or whatever color and they're just gorgeous. But there is a lot of terminology used that might be a little confusing for people who are trying to ascertain, "What does it all mean?"


Debbie Flower  11:49

Yeah, that's so true.


Farmer Fred  11:51

Probably one of the first pieces of tomato terminology they may come across, when looking at just about any catalog that sells tomatoes, is they're gonna see the term hybrid, and they might see the term heirloom, what's the difference?


Jackie Cordes  12:03

A hybrid is something that has been a seed that was created from two different parents, a mom and a dad, to different plants. And there are certain hybrids called f1, which means first filial, which you don't really need to know that, what it means. And that is when  the seed seller, the person who created the seed, has a bunch of tomatoes of one type and a bunch of tomatoes from the other and they purposely move the pollen from one to the other and create seed that has a known set of genes. And so the offspring won't be like either parent, but it will be something very special and fine. And if you save the seeds from those F1's, which are hybrids, you will get offspring that are like the original parents of that f1. And you'll get a few that are like the f1 that you chose to grow the previous season. So they don't come true from seed 100%..


Farmer Fred  13:00

But they will in the in the packet you buy.


Jackie Cordes  13:02

Yes, I was just gonna clarify that what you buy, all those plants will come up and be what you bought. But then if you save seed from them (the tomatoes that grew from those seeds), they will not come up as true from seed,  you will have a mix of different types of tomato plants. So hybrids are the offspring of two different parents.


Farmer Fred  13:19

The reason there are hybrids is because they have been bred for size or development date or taste or any number of reasons.


Jackie Cordes  13:29

Right, right. If you were buying grocery store tomatoes, then they would have been bred for a good shelf life and sturdiness so that they can travel in trucks and show up at the supermarket without being a whole bunch of mush.


Farmer Fred  13:43

And then you have the heirlooms. And just as the name might imply, These are old time seeds.


Jackie Cordes  13:50

Right. Heirlooms have been passed down from generation to generation usually in seed form. And they are kept because people like the flavor. So heirlooms are known for being very flavorful. People like the flavor and they're typically easy to grow. Maybe they do have some disease resistance, or they do prefer some certain environments, certain soils, let's say. So they're passed down from generation to generation by humans who grow them. And when you save the seed, you get the same plant or very nearly the same plant the next year out of that seed.


Farmer Fred  14:25

Another term people will come across while producing the tomatoes and catalogs you'll see the terms in determinant and determinant. What's the difference?


Jackie Cordes  14:35

Yes, that shows up in just about every every description of every tomato. A determinant plant is one that grows to a predetermined size, and then it flowers and fruits and so it has most of its fruit at the same time. A good plant, a determinant, is really excellent for containers because they tend to be smaller plants. They tend to not need a cage or staking something to hold them up. They're not that big. And it's also good if you're growing to make ketchup or spaghetti sauce or something because you get all your tomatoes at once. If you keep them, when once you get your first flush of fruit, they will continue to produce, they're just not quite as prolific as an indeterminant. Over time, the amount of tomatoes you can get off a determinant in weight may be the same as an indeterminant. It's just that they come all at once. An indeterminant tomato will keep just keep growing until frost kills it. And it gets very tall, they can be to 10 feet tall. Or, typically, I grow them in a cage and they grow up the top and over the side and come down the bottom, and they produce tomatoes. Over time. The first growth gets the first flower and the first fruit and then it grows some more and gets another flower and another fruit. And so over time, you get tomato and tomato and tomato and tomato. So they do need to be caged. And they are not really good for containers.


Farmer Fred  15:56

And some may come across the term semi-determinant , like the popular Celebrity tomato, which is sometimes called a semi-determinant. I have no idea what that means.


Jackie Cordes  16:08

Really, I hadn't heard that term, I have no idea what that means as well. Either. It may be that that you get your first flush of fruit, and I'm just guessing here, folks, and then it continues producing pretty successfully after that. (Another definition of semi-determinate: a determinate tomato that produces larger fruit than a true determinate.)


Farmer Fred  16:23

That's about it, I think, yeah. The other term you're going to see attached with just about every tomato offered in a catalog, there's gonna be a number of days. It might say 70 days or 78 days or 50 to 55 days. What do the days refer to?


Jackie Cordes  16:41

The days are the amount of time between when you put the plant in the ground, or the plant emerges from seed in the ground. So it's not when the seed is planted, it's when the plant goes in the field until you get your first ripe tomato. There's another term one I like. It's a funny word to me. "Parthenocarpic" means that it doesn't need to pollinate to have fruit. So you will get potentially a seedless tomato. It's like a navel orange. It's like a false pregnancy in the in plant world. And those are created often by people who work in colder places. There was a professor at Oregon State University, I lived in Oregon for seven years, and there was a year where everybody I knew planted tomatoes but we never got to ripe one. The weather was such. Things have changed I think since that for me, but there are places that have a short  growing season or are too cold, so cold that the tomato will not successfully produce fruit it if it depends on pollination. But these parthenocarpic tomatoes will produce fruit without pollination. They're often in warmer climates, they're often used in greenhouse production, where because greenhouses typically do not have insect pollinators in them. And although tomatoes don't require insect pollinators, they do get better pollination with insect pollinators and with wind with shaking of the plant. So if those things aren't going on in a greenhouse, then a parthenocarpic tomato plant is one that will produce anyway.


Farmer Fred  18:19

Another term people will see right with the names of the tomatoes for the hybrids especially, I'm looking at a page here in the Tomato Growers Supply Company catalog, and the Better Boy VFN hybrid, or the Buffalo Steak VFNT hybrid, or the bHN 589 VFFT hybrid. And then there's one that says VFFNT Big Beef hybrid. V, F, N, T and A seem to be popular letters.


Jackie Cordes  18:51

Yeah, those refer to disease resistances or pest resistances. V is verticillium wilt which is soil borne. F is Fusarium, which is also soil borne,  and N is nematodes, which are soil borne. And so if you have any of those things in your soil, they're difficult to get rid of, almost impossible to get rid of. And so you grow things that are resistant to those problems that your soil provides.


Farmer Fred  19:16

And so I would imagine if the name has two F's in it, like this VFFT hybrid, the two F's would stand for two strains of Fusarium.


Jackie Cordes  19:26

Ah, that's a good point. Yes.


Farmer Fred  19:28

Now, what about the T and the A?


Jackie Cordes  19:29

T is tobacco mosaic virus, although that's often TMV. may be different catalogs use different abbreviations for tobacco mosaic virus, that is a virus that is it's called tobacco mosaic virus because it can be carried in tobacco and if a smoker is tending the garden, then it can be transmitted that way. And it  a virus that enters through the top of the plant and it causes a discoloration, meaning an irregular pattern of yellow on the leafs. So that would be tobacco mosaic virus resistance.


Farmer Fred  20:06

And you probably might see that letter A in a tomato description. What does the A stands for?


Jackie Cordes  20:12

"A" is another fungus disease called alternaria. And it needs water to travel to get onto the plant. And so it hangs out in the soil and wet soil. And if, let's say there's overhead irrigation, and it splashes up the soil onto the plant, then we'll end up with leaf spots on the plant. So it's another fungus that lives in the soil. It is difficult to get rid of. So plant something that is resistant to it.


Farmer Fred  20:40

Tomatoes can be very confusing, but we hope this little primer of tomato language helps people out. I would like to point out, too, that there are some adjectives used in vegetable descriptions and especially tomato descriptions and catalogs, you need to be wary of and one of those is "vigorous". Often you will see tomato described as a vigorous grower. That also means it could take over your garden but will house a large family of rodents by the end of summer or something like that.


Debbie Flower  21:11

Yeah.


Farmer Fred  21:12

It can grow wild. Crack-free is another term that you might see described as a tomato. And crack-free to me means you're gonna need a serrated knife to cut it.


Jackie Cordes  21:25

It has a very stiff outer outer shell of tissue.


Farmer Fred  21:29

Yes. And of course "high yields" means your neighbors will shut their blinds when they see you walking up their driveway with that shopping bag.


Jackie Cordes  21:37

Yes, there are types of tomatoes too. One that that I'm always wary of is the beefsteak type. And they're the really big ones that you slice. one slice covers the hamburger bun and maybe more where we live in the dry West. They do not produce Well, they do not I don't know if it's our heat that they don't like our lack of humidity. In other parts of the country, they do grow fine. So I'm always wary of them for my location here in California. But other people can grow them really well. Then there are the sizes, cherry tomatoes, they are the little ones. And sometimes currant. In the cherry tomato section, they'll say it's a currant type, which means they're really little. And they often grow in bunches like grapes. And then there's the paste tomato. Paste tomatoes will have a lot of skin and not much liquid and seeds in the center. And so,  they create a thicker tomato paste than a regular tomato would or take less cooking down than a regular tomato. There's plum tomato shape, it's oblong; there are pear shaped tomatoes. There's all kinds of tomatoes.


Farmer Fred  22:47

Grape tomatoes. Yes. And then you have early season, mid season, and late season tomatoes. And I think that's more of a suggestion than a rule as far as how long it takes for them to mature.


Jackie Cordes  23:00

Mm hmm. We talked about the days, xx days, it'll say after each tomato, and that's the number of days it takes to get your first crop. And some of them can be 50 and some of them can be 80 days and so that if you plant them all at the same time, you will get tomatoes over a longer period of time with with early season, mid season and late season tomatoes.


Farmer Fred  23:23

And probably a word of warning about late season tomatoes. Those might be the ones you want to plant first if you have a short summer.


Jackie Cordes  23:30

Yes. if you're very in a very cold place, then you need to know how long your growing season is. and tomatoes do need a warm temperature to ripen. So, it may be that you can't grow some of those long season tomatoes.


Farmer Fred  23:46

And when it comes to growing tomatoes if you're thinking of trying it for the first time this year if you want one of the easiest tomatoes to grow, I would stick with the cherry tomato varieties.


Jackie Cordes  23:55

Mm hmm. Yes, very prolific, produce a lot, produce early, produce late. They go like gangbusters.


Farmer Fred  24:05

We learned a lot about tomato terminology today with Debbie Flower, our favorite retired college horticultural Professor Debbie. Thank you.


Jackie Cordes  24:12

My pleasure, Fred. Thank you.


Farmer Fred  24:16

Here on the west coast, we have been hammered by heavy wind and rain, trees falling all over the place. But why is it some trees fail? Why is it some branches fail? We're talking with certified arborist Jackie Cordes, who works at Green Acres Nursery and Supply. Jackie, why is that? Why do you see some trees that are always in the news and others that aren't? For instance, the trees that I've seen in the news over the last few days here have been mostly redwoods and Eucalyptus.


Jackie Cordes  24:48

Yes, the redwoods are kind of a surprise. But the redwoods really are a coastal tree that we've kind of transplanted here, which is fine. But they are just  getting a little bit stressed. We've had drought the last, within 10 years, we've been in drought for almost six of the last 10 years. So the trees are a bit stressed, when the storm comes and hits a stressed tree, you will find that it will snap right in half. The Eucalyptus, they usually have not been pruned properly during their life. The first five years of a trees' life are really like children, the time that you can transform and provide the direction that you want your tree to go in. If you've not cared for a tree, if you've not pruned it for a while, that usually is the cause of limb failure. Maybe some rot or just the not caring for it throughout its life. So they will suck up a lot of water right now because they're sitting in soaking water, the limbs get heavy, and when those winds hit, you will get failure.


Farmer Fred  26:02

And of course, those trees that keep their leaves on throughout the year are most affected by that sail effect of a heavy wind, that can cause problems. But there's a lot of things I think people can look at their own trees and see if they're ripe for problems during a windstorm no matter where you live. And one of those things to look for is what's called codominant leaders.


Jackie Cordes  26:24

Yes, again, those codominant leaders are cared for in the first years when you plant them, you should have one single stem, nice and strong. Usually the one that's going very, very straight, you never want to cut or top that. And you allow that to go and then from that nice strong central leader, you want your branches to go around almost like a circular staircase. That's the way I imagine a well structured tree, those will stand very firm, they won't fail because of your pruning them in those first five years in particular, but also, take out any dead, dying or crossing limbs. Those could also cause some hazards.


Farmer Fred  27:10

The other picture of trees we've been seeing in the news lately, are entire trees that have tumbled over. Their entire root structure has been exposed. And that strikes me as, you better check that soil and make sure it hasn't moved. Because if you go out and look at your tree and the soil around it looks like it's been moving, that's the time to call in an arborist.


Jackie Cordes  27:31

Absolutely, yes, right at the base of your tree, you really should if you've got a big tree that may have some long, lanky limbs that you might think, you know has potential of dropping, do look at the soil, you will see bulges and if it's starting to lean at all, you'll see the bulge (of roots) coming up from that far side, the one that it's leaning away from. Yes, you want to move things that are underneath that, especially children, and get an arborist out. The chances that you need some pretty heavy pruning are great, but have an arborist come out to your house.


Farmer Fred  28:09

You made a very good point about leaning trees. Leaning trees are always at risk of falling. And one little trick any homeowner can do to determine if a tree is leaning, is take regular pictures of the main trunk of the tree, but in that frame of the picture, include something that is straight up and down, like a wall or fence, a side of a house, and take periodic pictures of it, every three or four months to notice if there is more of a lean to the tree. If you start seeing more of a lean, call in an arborist. 


Jackie Cordes  28:40

Absolutely. You've really nailed it there. And it's just observing. If we can all just observe those trees, especially the large ones that you want to keep, keep a good eye on those. 


Farmer Fred  28:51

In today's show notes, I'll have a link to more information about trees and storms and what you can do at the house to determine if the trees in your yard will survive the next windstorm. Jackie Cordes, certified arborist, thanks so much.


Jackie Cordes  29:04

Thank you very much.


Farmer Fred  29:31

Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday and it's available just about anywhere podcasts are handed out. And that includes Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, I Heart, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Tune-in… and hey, Alexa, play the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, would you please? Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.



Tomato Variety Preview, Part 1
Tomato Terminology
Trees vs. Windstorms