160 Garden Basics Greatest Hits, 2021 - All About Tomatoes!

Welcome to the new year, and our latest Greatest Hits episode, featuring those segments that you spent the most time enjoying,  in record numbers in 2021. Among the top listened to segments last year included a lot about tomatoes. In fact, the top 5 listened-to segments on the garden basics podcast had to do with tomatoes. That makes this 2021 Greatest Hits episode of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast one that just might answer most of your tomato questions, from seed planting all the way to harvest. If you know anyone just starting out in gardening, who might be growing their very first tomato plant in 2022, have them listen to this, Episode 160 of Garden Basics: 2021’s Greatest Hits - All About Tomatoes. 

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery.

Pictured:
Homegrown Orange Oxheart tomato (1.5 pounds)

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Transcript

TRANSCRIPT Ep. 160 2021’s Greatest Hits - “All About Tomatoes”

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred. 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

Welcome to the new year, and our latest Greatest Hits episode, featuring those segments that you, the listeners, spent the most time enjoying, in record numbers in 2021. Among the top listened to segments last year included a lot about tomatoes. In fact, the top 5 listened-to segments on the garden basics podcast had to do with tomatoes. That makes this 2021 Greatest Hits episode of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast one that just might answer most of your tomato questions, from seed planting all the way to harvest. And that’s why this episode is going to go way over 30 minutes…probably way over an hour. So, If you know anyone just starting out in gardening, who might be growing their very first tomato plant in 2022, have them listen to this, Episode 160 of Garden Basics, 2021’s Greatest Hits - All About Tomatoes. 

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s get started!

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Segment 1 - Tomato Seed Starting; Reusing old potting soil.

Farmer Fred

One of the most listened to episodes of the Garden Basics podcast in 2021 was Episode 79, from last February 23. It had to do with starting tomato and pepper from seeds, including the best soil mix to use to get them off to a good start. Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms starts tomato seeds for a living. He has all sorts of tips and tricks for us. And if you plan on growing those tomatoes in containers, can you use the old potting soil that may already be in that container? Our favorite retired college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower says, “It depends”. But if you prepare it correctly, the answer is, “yes!”

Farmer Fred

If you're dreaming of a summer vegetable garden, February is a great time to put those dreams into action. How about starting your tomatoes and peppers and your zinnias and marigolds from seed? There are a lot more varieties available via seed then there are transplants at your local nursery. So, maybe you want a new adventure in gardening? Starting from seed is a wonderful adventure. You're going to get hooked on it. 

All you need is a sunny window and a propagation mat, also known as a heating pad. It provides bottom heat that keeps the soil warm, which speeds up germination of seeds and maybe some extra light if you don't have enough light coming through the window. And when you really get hooked on gardening, you'll want a greenhouse. Believe me, you'll want a greenhouse. 

So let's get some tomato and pepper seeds started. Now, peppers usually take 12 to 15 weeks to grow from a seed to a suitable transplant size. Tomatoes are ready to plant about eight weeks from seed. So again, you're going to be growing these indoors for the right amount of time till all danger of frost or when you typically plant these crops outdoors where you are. Now, there's a few secrets to getting those seeds off to a healthy start. 

You're starting them in small containers, they need plenty of light, bottom heat via a propagation mat, moving air once they're up, and the right soil. If you're tempted just to take those seeds and plop them into a pot along with soil from your garden, you're reducing your chances for seed success. Backyard soils just hold too much water to be a successful seed starting medium in a container. So a seed starting mix is a better option. It's more open. It actually has more uniform lightweight particle sizes. Backyard soil can be tight because the particle sizes are all of different sizes. Plus backyard soil tends to be heavier. It can have rocks in it, seeds, and who knows what sort of critters may have laid eggs in there? 

So why does it have to be a seed starting mix and not just a bag of regular potting soil? Well, consider the strength of that seed when it germinates. Those little plants aren't very strong and so the particle sizes need to be very lightweight, so that the little plant that comes out of the seed can push those particles out of the way. Other kinds of potting mixes that you might buy in a bag have particle sizes that are way too large. And those little baby plants can't push their way out. And you can find bags of seed starting mix wherever you get your garden supplies, but those bags are kind of small. So for those backyard gardeners who like to start a lot of seedlings and maybe share them with your friends (and you probably will) it is definitely more economical to blend your own seed starting mix. 

Usually there are three ingredients to a seed starting mix. There's peat moss or coir, which is coconut fiber. There's perlite, and there's vermiculite. That's one formula. Another formula would be one third peat moss, one third pumice, which is like vermiculite but a bit heavier. And one third well-screened, fine compost. So then you're going to mix those ingredients together, the three ingredients, whatever you settled upon. So let's say you're starting with peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite. Alright, get yourself one of those big buckets like you'd find at a home improvement store. Fill that bucket with the peat moss, put that bucket of peat moss into a wheelbarrow. Then fill that bucket with perlite. Put that into the wheelbarrow and then fill it with vermiculite and put that in the wheelbarrow. 

Now you have a lot of seed starting mix but you need to do something very, very important: and that's to moisten it thoroughly. Peat moss especially needs to be thoroughly hydrated before you start planting seeds in it. Water on dry peat moss tends to roll off. So in that wheelbarrow, put some water in it. Mix it up. You're gonna have fun, you're gonna be playing in the mud. So put enough water in it, maybe to cover the whole area, and then get in there with your hands or a shovel or some sort of implement and just mix it together until everything is well saturated, you may want to just let it sit in that wheelbarrow in that water for a few hours. 

Now obviously afterwards, you're going to have a pretty good muddy mess. So get yourself some large planting containers like a five gallon or a 15 gallon container, the ones that have holes in the bottom, and then take the wheel barrel contents and then fill up your pots with that soil. The holes in the bottom will allow the water to drain off and then an hour or so later, you're ready to go, until the seeds come up. 

You don't need to add fertilizer. That little seed has enough energy in it to get it out of the ground and produce the first set of leaves. As soon as it starts putting out more sets of leaves though, then you want to use a low dosage fertilizer. What is low dosage? Low dosage would be something with single digits, especially organic fertilizers that have less than 10% nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. That's what those three numbers refer to on a bag or a box of fertilizer. So I like to use fish emulsion or some sort of organic liquid fertilizer that you can mix with water and I would apply it at half dose strength and again this is after the true leaves are up. True leaves are those leaves that appear after the first set of leaves which are called cotyledons. Cotyledons are just there to really allow the plant to start photosynthesis to produce those true leaves. 

How deeply do you plant the seeds? It depends on what it says on the label of the seed packet you bought. Usually it's a quarter inch, so all you need to do really is place the seeds on top of that soil mix in the small containers and then top it with a bit more of that seed starting mix, not very much. 

If you're growing it indoors in a sunny window then you'll want to rotate it at least a quarter turn every day so the plants don't get too bent, leaning towards the window. And remember I talked about moving air. Yeah, set up a fan after the plants start growing and run the fan for about 10 minutes a day, maybe an oscillating fan nearby. That will allow those little plants to gain a lot of strength and girth along their stems. You'll be amazed at the results you're going to have as well as plenty of plants to share with friends. 

Enjoy seed starting, it's fun. Of course if you talk to a dozen gardeners you might get 12 different opinions on how to start your seeds. So let's get some advice from a professional seed grower. Brad Gates who runs Wild Boar Farms, famous for their fine line of tomato seeds.

Farmer Fred  

If you're in tomato planting mode, maybe you're starting seeds, maybe you're transplanting tomato plants into the garden, how deep should you plant them and is there a substitute for a very expensive seed starting mix. Brad Gates and Wild Boar Farms has some suggestions.

Farmer Fred  

Frankly, for the home gardener who's transplanting little tomato plants into slightly bigger containers, you could just use a good quality potting mix from your favorite nursery. 

Brad Gates  

Yeah, I always use that's when I'd use regular potting mix. That's what I would do. Uou can top off the trays and if anything is bigger than say your pinky fingernail, pick it off the top. You can also run them through like a quarter inch screen just regular high quality potting mix, just screen it at a quarter inch and it makes perfect seed starting mix.

Farmer Fred  

Excellent tip. And of course as the tomatoes grow in that three and a half inch pot, they can get kind of lanky, too, but if you give them full sun like what you have here in this greenhouse, they will tend to be fairly upright but do you find you have to prune them?

Brad Gates  

No. If you give them plenty of light and that's why I like the cool nighttime and then not too hot during the day and that will make them a little bit stockier. Sometimes when you mass plant like you're saying, put even up to 10 seeds or more in a small cup and plant them they can fight for the light a little bit so they can get lanky. The good things with tomato plants is you can always bury the plant and a bunch of the stem and it will readjust itself so to speak.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, just like if you bought a tomato plant at a nursery if somebody bought one of yours at a nursery and decided to transplant it into the yard like they should, they would want to plant it deeper than where it was planted in the pot at the nursery.

Brad Gates  

Yeah, my general rule of thumb is plant about 20 to 30% of the plant, no matter how big it is, if it was a little seedling when I transplant, I'll plant them about 20 or 30% of the stem underneath the soil. Once I get a nice transplant that's ready for the garden. Same thing I'll trim off any leaves or suckers that are below where I'm going to plant and then I'll bury about 20 or 30% of the stem that keeps the potting mix it's planted in from drying out that keeps when the wind in the spring is blowing your plants around. It makes it little further down in the soil so it can handle the wind and it will also regenerate roots on the stem where it comes in contact with the moist soil.

Farmer Fred  

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast and we bring in the big guns to answer these questions. That would be our favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower, Debbie, even though it's only February, you know, people do have questions pertaining to what's going to be happening in just a few months. For instance, Josh writes in, he says, "I'm wondering about reusing soil from container plants. I know if a plant gets diseased, you should throw away that soil. However, for the rest of the containers, what is the best way to reuse the soil, bags of potting soil can get quite expensive, and it seems like a waste to put brand new soil in a pot every year. I'm mainly referring to growing annual vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and greens. Thank you for your insight."

Farmer Fred  

Well, Debbie, thrift versus science.

Debbie Flower  

Well, I'm always on the side of Thrift. You know, reduce, reuse, recycle. Those are important things in our world, at least in my world. And I always shouldn't say always, I do reuse my potting soil. That when if you were to look up the big guns in horticulture, the  land grant universities that have, you know, PhD horticulture programs, you would get a mix of answers of about half of whom I would tell you yes, go ahead. And the other half would say no, the only reason I found that was listed for those who said no, was because of that disease issue. And Josh just seems aware of that. So if the plant died from disease, if its roots were rotted, or if the soil smells bad, like low tide or bad, bad fish, then I would not reuse that soil, because it probably contains some kind of a fungus or bacteria that can harm the plant. If it had a whole lot of weeds in it. If it was an untended pot, and a lot of weeds were allowed to flower and go to seed again, I probably would not reuse that soil. And commercially, it's not reused. But it can be even commercially. In that situation, they would use a steam sterilizer. But at home, I just reuse the soil, I keep containers of it, I have some in a garbage can, that I Well, I'll empty the containers that I'm done with and put the soil in there when it was just a healthy plant, a plant I decided didn't look good anymore, or it was an annual that had reached the end of its lifespan for me, then I would put the soil in that and let it build up when I go to reuse it. There are two things I'm concerned about. One is the texture of the soil, which is the size of the granules. And container soil, which is what we're buying in bags is mostly organic matter. And over the course of a season or a year or longer that organic matter breaks down, it actually gets smaller in size, and then it nestles closer to the other pieces of soil that are in the pot and the soil becomes more compact and it's less able to hold oxygen and water and that's not good for the plant. So when I go to reuse it, I will mix it with something that will open up that soil depending on what I'm planting that could be more organic matter or it could be added perlite or pumice or sand that could open up that soil. The other thing that no one mentioned, none of the academics mentioned, but that I experienced when I did reuse soil with students was a need to check the pH on the soil. If you fertilize quite a bit in that container maybe more than the plant needs, or you have time-release fertilizer in there and the plant didn't use up all the time release fertilizer. There may be a buildup of salts. Fertilizers we use for plants are salts or they are converted into the salt form so the plant can absorb them. If you've had a ceramic pot with that white crusty stuff on the outside, that's excess salts. And it can be washed out of the soil just with with a good flushing of that soil with clean water or you can modify the pH so the way to check for salts is with pH. If you have a pH meter, and the salt level is too high, your pH will read above seven, it'll be alkaline, above seven, and so I might do a little adjusting to the pH and that would take sulfur and it takes a little bit of time for the sulfur to act. But it will lower the pH over time. So those are the only two things I worry about. Well, three. The disease, don't use it, don't keep it if it's got disease or other pests like weeds in them. I've even done potted a plant that we were, I think it was with students and I think we were going to move it up into a larger pot, and there were slug eggs in there. Tremendous amount of slug eggs, like a full cup of slug eggs. Obviously, that's not something you want in your usable soil. So if there's any indication of a pest being present, I would not reuse the soil. When I do reuse the soil, I want to open it up with something with a bigger particle size, which would be organic matter, perlite, pumice or sand. And I would want to check the pH if I knew I had been fertilizing a lot, then I would want to check the pH and maybe have to lower it with a little bit of sulfur. 

Farmer Fred  

Alright,I have a series of questions based on what you just said.

Debbie Flower  

Okay,

Farmer Fred  

I'm glad you mentioned snail eggs because I was racking my brain thinking of all the insect issues that could affect the success of a plant, insects that might just overwinter in the top few inches of the soil?

Debbie Flower

Mm hmm.

Farmer Fred 

And that could be what aphids, whiteflies.

Debbie Flower 

Well, then there are the larva of things like tomato hornworms. Mm hmm.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, that too. Yeah. So that that would be if you did have a problem, like you mentioned with an insect or a mollusk, if you will, a snail or a slug. Maybe it would be best to do something else with that soil.

Debbie Flower  

right away.

Farmer Fred 

what are the options for doing something else with that soil? Can I throw it on the ground?

Debbie Flower 

You can throw it on the ground, it's not necessarily the prettiest thing, it doesn't necessarily match the rest of your landscape. Ideally, what I would do to it is put it in my compost pile, mix it in, let it sit for a while and let those problems be attacked by the life in the existing compost pile.

Farmer Fred  

Now I have a question about fertilizer. If it's a case of somebody over-fertilizing the soil and you were concerned about the pH, is there the possibility that the fertilizer they may have been using might contain too much sulfur and might have actually lowered the pH to a point where it wouldn't be compatible with most vegetables?

Debbie Flower  

That's a possibility. And ammonium sulfate is sometimes used in places where natural pH of soil or the water being used to irrigate that soil is above good ranges for growing which is about right about seven. A pH of seven is a good range, a good target for pH in soil you're going to grow vegetables and annuals in and if you use ammonium sulfate regularly, the ammonium is used up as nitrogen in the plant and the sulfate remains in the soil and eventually the pH goes down. Knowing what fertilizer you've used, whether you've used one with sulfur in it, would be helpful to give you a clue. But checking the pH with a pH meter or with one of those color strips would be helpful in solving that.

Farmer Fred  

What's nice, though, is that many of the vegetables that Josh mentioned about growing tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, especially, they don't mind a slightly acidic soil even down to what, 6.2, or thereabouts.

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, I was taught 5.5 to 6.5 being a good range. But I was on the East Coast when I learned that and the soils and waters on the East Coast tend to be acidic. Whereas now we're on the west coast and those numbers are skewed a little bit differently because of our natural conditions.

Farmer Fred  

But if that soil mix that was  used in the original container, if it contained a goodly percentage of peat moss, and they had let that pot just sit there with nothing in it for a while and then thought about reusing the soil, would there be a chance that that peat in that soil may have dried out and will need to be resaturated?

Debbie Flower  

Oh, absolutely, peat moss is tough. That way when peat moss dries out, it's difficult to get it to get wet again. And so mixing, I always wet my soil before I put it in the container. It's something I was taught and it's something I have taught others and it's something I practice. Because if especially if it's a big container, if you're growing a tomato in a container, you're looking at at least a number five size container. And that's what 15 inches deep, I'd say. And if you put dry soil whether it's out of a bag, dry media, I should say it's it's soilless mix, dry media out of a bag, or something that you've left over and it's dried out in your yard in your garbage can as I keep mine, when you add water to the top it will not wet all the way to the bottom water takes the path of least resistance will be which would be from the center of wherever you pour it out to the edges of the container and it'll go right down the container sites. So I always wet the media even if I'm not using a big container, in a bin with my hands with water and make Everything's gotten just damp, not not drippy, but just damp, like wrung out sponge kind of damp, and then put it in the container. And that will rewet the peat moss and anything else that you're using, maybe you're using coir, maybe you're using compost, whatever else you're using will get wet. And that will help the water then continue to permeate the entire container, not just go around the outside,

Farmer Fred  

We gardeners never grew up, we still like to play in the mud.

Debbie Flower  

You got it.

Farmer Fred  

Now, would there be a nutritional deficiency in that old potting mix, and the first thing that pops in my head is there's probably less nitrogen and probably some sort of nitrogen should be added?

Debbie Flower  

Absolutely. Nitrogen is a nutrient. The number one nutrient that humans apply to plants. And it's as a chemical in the form that the plant can use it, it moves with water, it moves as soil, maybe washes out of the pot, and it can become a gas and it can volatilize and plants use a lot of it. So yes, we we will definitely need to add fertilizer, you can mix it into the container, but that tends to be more wasteful. Part of it depends on your source of nitrogen, there are quick release versions of nitrogen, which are chemicals, there are slow release versions of nitrogen. And in those there are chemicals basically pelleted quick release versions, or organic types, which are things that will break down and become usable nitrogen for the plant, like worm castings, or bat guano or chicken manure, the the latters I would probably say the worm castings, the chicken manure etc, I would probably mix in to my media. But the other forms of fertilizer, I would just put on the top. It's called top dressing. It's done commercially in production. And it's critical to the health of the plants, they are started in containers with media mixed in fertilizer mixed into the media and that helps the roots get going. But then when that's all the plant has gone through maybe three months, six months, depends what fertilizers been used, it runs out and so then you top dress so you take the little bit of fertilizer and sprinkle it on top of the soil and water it in. I would think to that with nitrogen you would probably want to add that closer to planting time since nitrogen is so volatile if you took that steer manure chicken manure and mix it in that pot of soil now thinking this is what I'll put my tomatoes in in a couple of months, that nitrogen may be gone in a couple of months. Yes, nitrogen moves around a lot. And that is a problem. So yes, the nitrogen I would put in when I'm ready to plant and you don't want too much that they're usually recommendations on the container you purchase it from. Or if you're getting it bulk, somehow you'll need to look up maybe online. Some recommendations, you don't want to use too much because that will kill a plant almost faster than no nitrogen.

Farmer Fred  

You mentioned that one of the ingredients you might add to have a greater pore space besides perlite might be pumice, and you mentioned sand, but you're talking about a special sand, aren't you?

Debbie Flower  

Yes, sand. Sand and other soil types are defined by the particle size. And sand has the largest particles when we're checking out the texture of our field soil. But it has the biggest range of sizes. I can't quote you that range right now. But it's several zeros in the range of sizes so you can get sand that's very small and you can get sand that's very big. If you put all types in, you're just creating more of a cement than anything else. And so you want sized sand, sand that has been put through sifters basically, screens and only certain sizes come through. You can buy horticultural sand, or you can go to your big box store and buy builders sand. Builders sand has been sized. And in both cases it has also been washed because sand occurs primarily in places by saltwater and we don't want that salt in in our containers. So the sand needs to be washed and it needs to be sized. Either horticultural sand or builders sand. 

Farmer Fred  

And then finally, I have a question about something you mentioned about flushing the soil. So I've been wracking my brain for the last 10 minutes trying to think of what sort of device could you use to screed that soil, to clean it if you will. And I'm thinking about maybe an old window screen fastened securely to the end of a bucket and then tipping the bucket over and letting it drain.

Debbie Flower  

The simplest is to take the container It's already in and start the water on it. And here we go. Getting our hands dirty again. Stick your hands in that mix, that soil, and move it around. You've got drainage holes in that pot, though, to allow drainage. Now, they may allow too much drainage. And if that's the case, for sure, a window screen would be an excellent choice.

Farmer Fred  

As my solution is I keep much like you I keep two big buckets full of potting soil beneath my workbench outside, which when it rains, it's kind of leaky. And sure enough, they've got a lot of water in them now, but you know, they needed to get wet anyway for the peat moss in there. There you go.

Debbie Flower 

Yeah. And it's time to start some seeds for later in the season. So you got moist media for that.

Farmer Fred  

I'm gonna get my hands real dirty.

Debbie Flower  

Mmm, hmm.

Farmer Fred  

I think we've solved that one. Debbie Flower. Thanks for your help on answering Josh's question about reusing soil from container plants.

Debbie Flower  

My pleasure, Fred, thank you.

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Farmer Fred

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Segment 2 Tomato Transplanting

Farmer Fred

OK, you’ve raised that tomato from a seedling indoors or in a greenhouse, or you just returned from the nursery, tomato plants in hand. How do you plant tomatoes? Where should you plant that tomato? What needs to be done to the soil in the garden beforehand? And, what’s the best way to plant a tomato to give it its best start in its new home? Debbie Flower, once again, has the information you need to know. Originally aired last April 13 in Episode 93, it’s Tomato Transplanting, and it’s part of Episode 160,  2021’s Garden Basics Greatest Hits, All About Tomatoes.

Farmer Fred  

Here on the Garden Basics podcast we like to answer your garden questions. There's a lot of ways you can contact us. You can give us a call at 916-292-8964 that's 916-292-8964. Don't want to call? You can text us at that number, maybe send a picture or two as well. You can also contact us via Speakpipe. You just leave an audio question with your computer, at speakpipe.com slash gardenbasics. it's easy. give it a try. Emails are fine, too. Send it to Fred at FarmerFred.com or you can leave a message at the Get Growing with Farmer Fred Facebook page, or the Farmer Fred Twitter page or on Instagram to Farmer Fred Hoffman. Debbie Flower is with us, our favorite retired college horticultural professor, to help us answer these questions. And we have a question that was phoned in about tomatoes. Debbie, you want to give a listen to this?

Debbie Flower

Sure thing.

Phone question  

Hi, my name is Jennifer. I live in Woodland (CA). I started tomatoes in my greenhouse, it's a non-heated greenhouse, in late January, I think, or February. Anyways, the tomatoes and tomatillos that I have in there, they've both outgrown the four-inch pots that they're in right now. The plants are more like about two times as tall as the pot. They're starting to get, but they're  not root bound yet, but they're starting to get there. I've been wanting to wait until the end of April to plant them in the garden like you recommend. But I'm a little concerned that the plants are going to start suffering if I leave them in those four inch pots any longer. We have prepared garden beds, their raised beds that we built. The soil in the bed is a mixture of the native clay that we have, subsoil, it's a brand new development we live in, and it's mixed with about honestly about 80% compost that we got from a local landscaping company. We have got the drip irrigation already installed and ready. I just didn't want to plant the tomatoes and the tomatillos until the end of April but I'm not really sure what to do. I don't have enough one gallon pots to pot them up into a larger size. So I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and plant them and just cover them with a cloth at night. I don't have frost protection stuff, but I guess I could get some anyway, if you could let me know what I should do in this circumstance. I'd really appreciate some advice. Thank you so much.

Farmer Fred  

Debbie, it sounds like Jennifer's a new gardener.

Debbie Flower  

It does and she's really going after it with the greenhouse and baby plants from seed. Good for her.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, exactly. To bring people who don't live in the Sacramento area up to speed here. For years I have advocated on local radio, that official tomato planting day is April 28. That's just a cheap ploy for me to get birthday card greetings basically, But April 28 around here in these parts is actually a good time for planting tomatoes outdoors because overnight temperatures are above 50. Soil temperatures are creeping into the mid 60s by late April. And so late April is a good time, but people can't wait and people around here have been planting since March. I don't know how they did during the hailstorm in March, but we won't go into that. But good, good for you, Jennifer. Holding out for April 28, but it sounds like your plants may need some surgery, or transplanting.

Debbie Flower  

Right transplanting, I can commiserate with her about having started tomatoes early and having big ones. And I did move mine into gallons, and now they're taller than the gallon pot is tall.

Farmer Fred  

When did you plant seeds?

Debbie Flower  

Late January, right about the time she did. And actually some came up right away.  I have only have two types, I have Ace 55, which is a bush tomato, and that's the one that came up fast and is big and the stems are fat, and they're looking really fine. I pulled them out to harden off, which is something she should do. Get them out of the greenhouse and harden them off. But I also planted Early Girls, and the seed was old, and it took much longer to germinate. And they're just in four inch pots and about the height of the four inch pot. So  the Early Girls can definitely wait until your birthday to be planted in the garden. But I'm considering putting the Ace 55 in the ground already. I was out yesterday measuring the temperature at about four inch depth in both my raised bed and the area around it, which are the places that I plant my vegetables. And in both places, it was about 45 degrees, I'm sorry, it was about 55 degrees. And that's not perfect for tomatoes, but it's certainly not going to harm them. So what I will watch, so I will plant my tomatoes out, which Jennifer can do. And I will watch the night temperatures and if we're going to get below 40 for sure, maybe even below 45, I will go out with a sheet. I don't have floating row cover available for the places that tomatoes are going to go. So I'll just go out with a bed sheet and cover them to keep them warm overnight, they may turn a little bit red, red in the stems a little bit red in the leaves if the soil gets too cold, and that's okay, they'll outgrow that. There is no evidence yet but that I've seen that soil temperatures at the 55 degree point will harm the tomatoes. They just may sit there and do nothing until temperatures warm up a little bit more. One thing I'm a little concerned about but we have not had rain and I would like to see that bed moist before she plants into it.

Farmer Fred  

Good idea, to moisten the bed thoroughly before you plant it. I think at this time we should reiterate your secret recipe for planting tomatoes and peppers.

Debbie Flower 

Well, I can't say it's so secret, but it's planting them in a trench, As I said the ACE 55 which is a bush tomato, a determinant tomato, terms we've talked about other times, but it is the tall one. And the first thing you want out of a plant you put in the garden is roots, and tomatoes are able to make roots out of their stems as are peppers and so you can plant them deeply. That brings to mind a very big hole, very deep hole. Rather than going straight down in the bed. It's better to make a trench or a gutter and lay the plant in sideways. The root ball obviously, a little bit lower than the stem but the stem part of that. Bury part of the stem, leaves and all, it may need a stake to have the whatever sticks out of the ground, stand up straight you may need to attach it to a stake and then cover it up and what the plant will do is create roots out of that buried stem along with the existing root system and that will make the stronger plant in the long run.

Farmer Fred 

Now with peppers you don't have to bury them in a trench because most usually they aren't that big. They may be six or eight inches tall you could bury most of it couldn't you?

Debbie Flower  

Correct. you can go straight down if I were doing the four inch Early Girl that I have in four inch pots. They've got maybe three inches of root ball on them and I might bury them another three inches but with that I could go straight down. Yes.

Farmer Fred  

So Jennifer, basically, Yeah, if those tomato plants are getting too big for their britches, yes, save them before they get to rootbound. Now if Jennifer takes those tomatoes out of their four inch pot and she sees roots circling the plant, Should she untangled them?

Debbie Flower 

She should do something about that. It's it's not as critical with an herbaceous plant like a tomato as it would be with a woody plant like an oak tree. But circling roots are not going to change direction once you put them in the ground and what we want is the roots to spread out. And so the best thing to do is use a sharp tool and cut the roots. I know it sounds horrible and brutal. But cut the roots I try to do for a cut on each side four. So four cuts down the side from the top of the soil to the bottom and then an X across the bottom and that will set the plant back. If you've done root damage, you'll always do root damage when transplanting, whether you cut the roots or not. And so I actually then might make a teepee out of a piece of newspaper and put it over the plant and anchor it with a stake or so for about three days to allow those cut roots to close off the wounds and make new root tips. The root tips are where all the water nutrients are absorbed. And it takes about on average two to three days for new root tips to form. And once that's happened, then the plant will take off and have roots going in all directions and be able to absorb more water and nutrients really well. If you don't cut them, you're gonna have these circling roots and the plant may never really establish a wide, fibrous thick root system and may suffer down the road. 

Farmer Fred  

And for those who don't know, a newspaper is this thing they used to throw on your driveway. So maybe you could make that tent out of any sort of paper product you can use. Could you use an Amazon box?

Debbie Flower  

 I was just gonna say you could you could use an Amazon box. You don't want it to sit on the plant you might have to put in stakes and sort of hold it up on the on the stakes. This was first taught to me when I was attending University of Nevada - Reno. And when I started my graduate school,  it was a very wise, older woman who had been into native plants and she always suggested just putting like a piece of cardboard on a stake on the sunny side of the plant. Just make it tall so that it provided more shade than the plant will get in the future. That's just something to shade the plants a little bit.

Farmer Fred  

All right. So Jennifer, have fun with your tomato plants. I get It's okay. I'll live. You don't have to plant on my birthday April 28.

Debbie Flower  

Send Fred a birthday card. Call him up with birthday greetings on the phone.

Farmer Fred  

The Garden Basics hot line. Yes, yes.

Debbie Flower  

Thank you

Farmer Fred  

916-292-8964 Thank you so much, Debbie Flower. I love solving problems with you. Thank you.

Debbie Flower 

Thank you.

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Farmer Fred

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Segment 3 Tomatillo Pollination

Farmer Fred

A close relative of the tomato is the tomatillo. But unlike the tomato, the tomatillo needs some help to make the fruit. And, of course, Debbie Flower has the answers. A lot of you must like tomatillos, because this segment was among our most listened to segments from July 30, 2021, making it part of this episode, Garden Basics Greatest Hits, 2021 - All About Tomatoes.

Farmer Fred  

Our favorite retired college horticultural Professor Debbie Flower is here. We like to answer your garden questions, like this one from Susan in Idaho.

Susan in Idaho  

My name is Susan. And I live in Eagle, Idaho, which is zone 7-a. We are really very close to Boise. Just a little bit up in the hills, just a little bit more, but basically the same. First of all, thank you for your podcast. I just ran across you recently, as I'm using podcasts more in the recent years as I've tried to develop my gardening skills. But one thing that I did not realize. I have a great question. This year I grew a purple tomatillo from seed and it was beautiful. But I grew a single one. And I didn't realize that you need to have two. If somebody in the neighborhood had a green tomatillo, is it possible that they would cross pollinate? Next year, I will definitely plant maybe two or three. They start grow large, so I'm not really sure. But I thought I would just ask about what you thought. I wanted to ask to find out as well as I'm hoping to win that garden container because that sounds so super, because all my garden beds are completely full. And I still want to plant a few more things. Well, thank you very much. I hope you have a great day and thank you for your program. Bye bye.

Farmer Fred  

I can tell she's from Idaho, truly because she said Boise. Oh, okay. That's how you say Boise in Idaho? Boise? I think she answered your own question there Susan about the tomatillo.

Debbie Flower 

Alright, Susan, I was up in in Boise. Early in July. And I have to say you have a great Botanic Garden there. I don't know if you visited it. It's deceptive. If you just drive through the parking lot and look through the fencing. It looks like it's very small. But once you get into it, there's all kinds of wonderfully themed gardens, they're edible, drought tolerant, different. One's a meditation garden, so many different themes. They have event space, I saw when it was just beginning. And that was about 1995. And it was nothing and they have made great strides. It's a wonderful place to go. So I urge you to maybe join you can get to know other gardeners, your daughters can join, that would be really wonderful. But the day I was there it was 106. So I didn't spend a lot of time in the garden, but I loved every minute of it. But about tomatillos, you're absolutely right, they just need to be two different plants. You can start the second one with seeds out of the same packet. They can be the same cultivar or they can be different cultivars. Yes, the green one, which would be a different cultivars can pollinate your purple one. And if you know someone in the neighborhood who has that green one, if you can run over there with a Q-tip, generally, that's a morning job, with a Q tip, and get some pollen from their flowers or maybe they'll just give you a flower and touch that pollen onto the flowers on your plan,t then you will get fruit. It's called self incompatible. Some plants do that in nature, nature prefers cross pollination, nature prefers variation and differences because that sets the plants up to be able to handle different things that happened in the environment. And so hopefully somebody will live through whatever the next cataclysmic event is. And so nature's plants will do things that prevent them from self pollinating. And tomatillos are one of the things that have done that. They can be caged like a tomato, they are often grown like a tomato And their care is like a tomato. They are pollinated by a flying, typically a bee, a flying pollinator. So I don't know what your bee situation is. Planting, once you do have two planting things around them, that attract bees to come and get pollen and then they'll find your plant that will help you ultimately get fruit as well. And if they are naturally the two plants yours and the other one in the neighborhood, at least less than 800 feet apart, you're likely the bees will find both of yours. If you go further than that, then the chances of the bee finding both and carrying the pollen from one to the other is diminishes. So yes, you're right you need two. 

Farmer Fred  

The Idaho Botanical Garden, by the way is in Boise at 2355 North Old Penitentiary Road. Until 1973, the site served as the old Idaho State Penitentiary farm and nursery. Did you know you were in a prison?

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, that's right there. The building is right next door. It's not I don't believe it's used as a prison anymore. There are other government buildings around. I didn't delve into that. I think you can actually tour the old penitentiary as well, which is not something I did.

Farmer Fred  

And it's 50 acres, it says.

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, it's deceptive when you you drive in the parking lot. But it's really got lots of interesting stuff going on there.

Farmer Fred  

All right. Good to know. And yes, Susan, you are a winner of a Smart Pot because we used your audio question during the month of July. You got in by the hair on your teeth, the hair on your chin, whatever.  Today is July 30, as this episode's coming out, so yes, you will be getting the six foot raised bed Smart Pot to have even more room to grow plants. Susan. So thank you for doing that. 

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Farmer Fred

Have you taken a look at the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter yet? There’s one that accompanies each episode of the Garden Basics podcast. It’s a deeper dive into what was discussed on the podcast, along with more great gardening information.

And with the newsletter, you can listen, as well as read, about more great tomato information. The newsletter includes more tomato talk with myself and Redwood Barn Nursery Owner, Don Shor. It’s a special podcast, talking about the winners and losers in our tomato garden last year, the new 2022 tomato varieties that you might want to try, and our ideas about the best, easiest to grow tomato varieties for the new tomato gardener to try. The newsletter and the special podcast are available now.

You can find a link to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter in the podcast show notes; or, at Farmer Fred dot com; or, by going to substack dot com slash garden basics.

Think of it as your garden resource that goes beyond the basics. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter. And it’s free. Please subscribe and share it with your gardening friends and family. The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter. And thank you for listening.

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Segment 4  Should You Remove the First Tomato?

Farmer Fred

Another dubious garden idea that made the rounds on social media last year: if you prune out the first tomato you see on your plant,  you’ll get more tomatoes as a result. Fact or Myth? We explored that with retired college horticulture professor Debbie Flower, in Episode 106, back on May 28. It’s yet another tomato-centric entry for the most-listened to segments on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast in 2021.

Farmer Fred  

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. To help us out, Debbie Flower, retired college horticultural Professor, joins us. And Debbie, we get a question from another Debbie. Debbie M, we'll call her, and she writes in: "Is it true or is it a myth that you should pick off the first tomato you see growing on your tomato bush? Not sure where I got this information from, but I was always under the assumption that if you didn't, it would stunt the production of more fruit. Inquiring minds need to know. Thank you so much for your always excellent advice." Well, Debbie M., don't you like tomatoes? Why would you pluck  the first tomato?

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, if the plants been in the ground, the plants been able to establish the root system. And tomatoes do that very quickly. They're pretty fast growers, there's no reason to take that first fruit off. If the plant is just put in the ground and it has a tomato on it, I might be inclined to remove it, just to allow that plant to establish a bigger root system. But if it's big enough to have a fruit on it, the plant I mean, then it's probably got a big enough root system to support that fruit.

Farmer Fred  

We've talked in the past about doing some other juvenile tomato pruning, yay or nay. One we talked about recently was, and you can fill me in on the correct botanical names, pruning out the "armpit hairs" of little tomato plants in order to, I guess, spur more flower production.

Debbie Flower  

The axillary bud. 

Farmer Fred  

Thank you. 

Debbie Flower  

So yes, that's the armpit hairs you're referring to. But  they arise actually above where the point where a branch meets the stem. And it becomes another stem that has the ability to grow leaves and flowers and fruit on its own. And plants. Depending on how you're pruning your tomato they can get very bushy. If you have it in a cage and you allow all of these axillary buds to form they can get very bushy. When I was a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and that was a long time ago. So Rutgers' advice may have changed, I haven't checked, but we were taught to remove all of those axillary stems, and we trained our tomatoes to a single stick. And the evidence suggested that we got earlier fruit production. However, we did not get more fruit production because we've removed a lot of fruiting wood and a lot of green stuff that makes the food that fills the fruit. So it was for early production. And we had a much shorter growing season in New Jersey, especially all those years ago than they do today, or we do in other parts of the country. And so the goal was to get tomatoes fast. But other than trying to get your very first tomato very fast, which we we did by staking it to a single, pruning it to a single stem, and staking it to a stake or thinning out what's inside your tomato cage. Those are the  only two reasons I would remove the axillary buds.

Farmer Fred  

All right. Then another very popular tomato removing idea is to prune out the flowers that first appear on a tomato plant. I get those questions every year. Along the lines of, "Should I prune off or snip off or pinch out the first tomato flowers that appear in order to get more tomatoes later?" The thing is, those early flowers, because of fluctuating weather, usually fall off by themselves. You don't need to help.

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, and if the plant is is big enough and healthy enough to produce flowers, I wouldn't remove them. There. I am not aware of any scientific evidence that says removing early flowers, or early fruit leads to more fruit or flower production later in the season.

Farmer Fred  

Cornell University, Dr. Philip Mingus of Cornell says "tomato yields per plant may be lowered by pruning, removing the leaves or shoots does not conserve food for the crop, it tends to reduce the total food supply, use training methods that require little pruning." So basically, what he's saying is what you don't like tomatoes,

Debbie Flower  

it's not worth doing.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, I attempted to try to track down where this myth of pruning tomato flowers came from. And you know how it is when it's like the seven blind guys trying to identify an elephant, or the grade school game of "pass it on" where somebody starts a story. And that person's supposed to tell another person and then you compare story A with story Q or however far down the line it gets, and they're usually radically different stories.

Debbie Flower  

Right? We called that "telephone" when I was a kid. 

Farmer Fred  

Okay, that's good. Yeah, that's right, you had telephones as a child. But Texas a&m University had a paper on greenhouse hydroponic tomato culture in the winter, and pointed out that the growing point is allowed to grow for at least five to seven leaves above the last fruit truss to help prevent sunburned fruit, remove the flower buds above the last fruit truss, to ensure no additional fruit set. So I can easily see some gardener reading that and then trying to recall that story, maybe to the next gardener he meets. And, he talks about that one sentence: "remove flower buds above the last fruit trust to ensure no additional fruit set," but leaves out the fact that it was a greenhouse tomato grown hydroponically in the wintertime. 

Debbie Flower  

That's a very specific situation and probably a very specific type of tomato that's being grown in that situation.

Farmer Fred  

Gardener B then tells Gardener C, Hey, I just heard pruning tomato flower buds is recommended by Texas a&m. And  then gardener C goes online and writes something along the line of, "remove flower buds on tomato plants to increase the number of tomatoes" or something like that.

Debbie Flower  

If you take the flowers off, you're not increasing the number of flowers or fruit. You're decreasing the number of fruit by removing flowers. Exactly.

Farmer Fred  

Language is a virus, as I'm fond of saying. To get back to Debbie M's question, no, Debbie, you don't have to take off that first luscious tomato. You've worked so hard to earn that first tomato. Keep it, let it grow. There will be more. Yes, I can think of no reason to prune tomatoes unless they're, as we mentioned earlier, running outside of the cage that they're in or their boundaries and are threatening to strangle your toy poodle,

Debbie Flower  

right? They can get big

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, that they can. Well, I hope that helps, Debbie. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

Debbie Flower  

Oh, you're welcome, Fred. Thank you.

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Segment 5 Tomato Troubleshooting, Part 2

Farmer Fred

Rounding out our most listened-to segments of the Garden Basics podcast in 2021 was Tomato Troubleshooting, Part 2, from Episode 110 back on June 11. Part 1, by the way, aired on Episode 109 from June 8, if you want to listen to that discussion with Don Shor, owner of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California. In part 1, We talked about dealing with blossom end rot, sunburn issues and problematic watering, which can cause your tomatoes to suffer. But listeners flocked to Part 2, with Don, as we delve into the scary world of tomato hornworms and fruit worms, beautiful but deadly diseases such as late blight and wilts. And, even more troublesome tomato critters, such as the leaf-footed stink bug.

Farmer Fred  

The tomato hornworm or tobacco hornworm, depending upon the number of stripes on its back, I think it's what it is, is a very common occurrence. And it's it's not something to be fearful of. 

Don Shor  

And well, people are. It's interesting how people react when they see a four inch caterpillar with a horn on the back. Some of them kind of jump up and scream. They eat an amazing amount of foliage in a very short period of time. So it can do a lot of leaf damage. And  it might even eat some fruit and wander off onto a nearby pepper eggplant by accident, but mostly, just eats foliage. And usually there's only one or two on the vine when you're dealing with them. So it's just a matter of first, finding the droppings. Look straight up on the vine from where the droppings are. You'll find this thing looking at you and you can then dispatch it by whatever method you prefer. Personally, I like to just kind of throw it about 20 feet and figure that takes care of the problem. Others like to snip them in half with their pruners, which is pretty gross. But it works. It turns into an amazing, beautiful, fascinating moth. So if there's a kid in the household and you've got something to put it in and you've got enough tomato foliage, at least once, you should probably put this thing in a giant jar, feed it a bunch of leaves every day until it finally pupates and then let it turn into the amazing Sphinx moth that it becomes. But really all they're doing is eating foliage. They're not a huge problem on the plant except for the amount of foliage any caterpillar has to eat in a given day. So you can generally find them. If you don't want to pick it by hand, you can go get a Bt spray, Bacillus thuringiensis organic spray, very specific for caterpillars. It doesn't harm beneficials or anything like that. And go ahead and spray the plant the caterpillar feeds on. It will be killed by that. So there is a spray option but you're spraying a whole vine for one or two Caterpillars. It's probably easier just to get some sharp-eyed helper to go out there and find the caterpillars and dispatch them directly.

Farmer Fred  

 I'll take your leaf eating tomato hornworms for my fruit eating tomato hornworms.

Don Shor  

While they do that, there's also the tomato fruitworm, which is much more annoying because it burrows right into the fruit. And obviously that fruit is no longer useful. They're also harder to control. So there, you unfortunately, you find the hole tunneled into the side of the green fruit. Just pick it off and dispose of it and keep an eye out. That's a case where the BT spray could be very helpful if you're having an ongoing problem with tomato fruit worm, it's a different insect, a different caterpillar, you might want to spray for that. And again, this is an organic, very safe spray.

Farmer Fred  

And don't forget Mother Nature's trying to help you out here. The social wasps, paper wasps and others (yellowjackets) will bite chunks out of the tomato hornworm and take it back to their nest. And also if you attract birds to your yard. They'll go after those critters as well.

Don Shor  

Yeah, mocking birds, and Blue Jays can be big helpers in the garden. They eat all kinds of bugs and they'll go after a caterpillar,  go after leaf footed bugs and stink bugs and they can actually give a surprising level of control on all those problems.

Farmer Fred  

I've noticed too, that I think there is some sort of Darwinian change going around in the bird world. Because the robins that are hanging out here around my blueberry bushes, don't fly away when I come out. Now they just stand their ground and give me the stink eye.

Don Shor 

Yeah, those are their blueberries, not yours, blueberries. you're sharing your space with them. It's not really your property.

Farmer Fred  

All right. Now there are ongoing issues with tomatoes that can be weather related, like late blight, black mold, bacterial speck. Not much you can do about the weather.

Don Shor  

Well, those are all diseases and then they're on the plant. I hate to say this, but  probably it was there when you got it. That's the simple thing. As simple a preventive on this is to inspect plants at the time you either buy them or accept them from your friend or get them at the you know from that guy down the street who's selling them for 50 cents. Look at the leaves, look for spots on the leaves. I'm not real deeply concerned in our arid climate about early blight or bacterial speck, you can simply pick those leaves off and dispose of them. As we get into periods of 10-20% humidity which is pretty much every day here in the summer. Those will go away. Late blight can be problematic especially for listeners in rainy summer climates, it can be horrific, it can really spread rapidly. So carefully inspect the plants when you buy them. Look for those spots on the leaves. I strongly suggest you go online and look for illustrations of late blight versus early blight and bacterial speck. Cornell and Rutgers Universitys have some great illustrations you can find online. They can spread rapidly into the vein of the leaf, into the petiole of the leaf, and all the way into the main stem. And it causes a die back that is reminiscent of Fireblight on apples. I mean, you get a sudden die-back of leaves or even whole shoots on the plant. In our climate, it rarely progresses much past a few leaves and maybe a side branch. I highly recommend you prune it out at that point put that pruning into a bag, dispose of it. Generally the problem goes away because it doesn't rain here in the summer. If we had overhead watering or rain, and very high humidity, it could spread very rapidly. And this has happened in the Mid Atlantic and upper Midwest parts of the country where they've had years where late blight is a problem in the supply chain. He says subtly. And people took home plants that had late blight on them and then they had a rainy June or even into July and it spreads very rapidly down the whole bed of plants. In that situation, you're gonna need a fungicide, you're gonna probably need to go talk to your local garden center, they may recommend you rotate a couple of different fungicides because these can be very problematic. In our area if you prune it out, and here's the other key thing, spreas your plants far enough apart. Three, four or five feet apart. My tomatoes are six feet apart, so that there's good air movement, good sunlight on them. Prune out the affected portion. That's usually the end of it for us and that will probably help a lot in those areas where late blight can be very problematic. Air movement and sunlight are the enemies of disease.

Farmer Fred  

But let's blame the gardener for letting their sprinklers hit the tomatoes, as well.

Don Shor  

Well, that can be a factor. You shouldn't be sprinkler irrigating tomatoes in general. Yeah, I mean I wash off tomato plants for other reasons. But I do it on a day that I know the humidity is going to drop down, as it does here, to let's say 10 to 20% in the middle of the afternoon. So if you're in an area that's muggy, you don't want to be overhead watering at all, right. And rinsing plants off can make it splash from plant to plant very rapidly. Space them out. Get your plants more spaced out.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, and if you are hand watering your tomato plants, you may want to do it lower to the ground instead of spraying over the top of their heads. Although if you live in a non humid area you might be able to get away with that if you water early in the day to allow the plant to dry off. But if you water late, you're gonna have things like late blight, black mold, bacterial speck. At FarmerFred.com as well as at the Farmer Fred Rant blog page, you can find a whole list of these tomato troubleshooters that we are talking about, along with the symptoms that you will see, like on the leaves we've been talking about ,as far as with the blights, or bacterial speck. With bacterial speck, the leaf spots are near the edge of the leaf. They're dark brown with a yellow ring with a halo effect, right? The late blight, the beautiful purple brown area on the leaves. I mean, it's just a beautiful shade of purple, but that's a sign of late blight.

Don Shor  

And it can move very rapidly. That's the other thing about that one. It can move rapidly and cause a lot of die back. I know that commercially, they frequently spray with copper as a preventative early in the season. There are organic versions of copper spray that you can find, if that's your preference. That's been preventative and if you've had a problem with it in the past, it might be worth considering. But in arid climates, it's not generally an issue. 

Farmer Fred  

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Farmer Fred  

Let's get back to our conversation with Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California. We're doing tomato troubleshooting. This is the second of two parts. And there is one thing every tomato gardener can do to lessen the threat of spreading diseases year after year after year among your tomatoes. 

Farmer Fred  

You used the word a few minutes ago that we should re-emphasize. You used the word rotate. And I think it's very important not to plant your tomato plants in the same spot year after year, especially if you've had problems with root knot nematodes, or fusarium wilt or verticillium wilt.

Don Shor  

You have the big three right there. There's soilborne problems. Nematodes are not, you know, a disease. The other two are diseases and the general recommendations, not just tomatoes to rotate, but anything that's related to tomatoes. So that includes potatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, Molly's groundcherry, all those things that are in the Nightshade family should be rotated out of the bed. Now this is challenging for a lot of people, you don't have a lot of space in your backyard. If you're at the stage of planning a yard, I would suggest having three beds for vegetables, that makes it easy. So one of them is for the Nightshade family members. And then you just rotate to the next one to the next one. It is standard in farming to rotate tomatoes with beans and corn, things like that. Just putting in something that's not a host for those diseases and those pests. And the reason for that is because those problems, when you get them, are very difficult to manage. Managing a problem in the soil that has built up to the numbers that are doing injury, like the root knot nematode. Very, very challenging. Yes, there's a product on the market. It's called nematode control. It's a drench, it's not cheap. So probably better to prevent the problem if you can, possibly. Do it just by how you rotate your crops.

Farmer Fred  

Exactly. Not all nematodes are bad, you can find beneficial nematodes that can control the root knot nematodes. Yeah.

Don Shor  

And there's a soil drench that's derived from a saponin base material. It's an organic material, but read the label, it's actually got a warning label. So it'd be better if you can just prevent the problem from the start by where you plant, and how you know, as I say, most people's backyards, they have one garden bed for the vegetables and it's not the easiest thing to remember. So look for that the V-F-N label on the hybrid tomato varieties. And you know, the heirlooms don't have this. The V-F-N stands for verticillium, Fusarium and nematode resistance. And that's something that's been bred into many of the hybrid tomatoes. I should also mention, we're talking about leaf blight, there are new varieties that are resistant to late blight. So if you're in an area where leaf blight is a problem as you're looking through the seed catalog, that's a common comment. Now that's a complicated subject, to put it mildly, but it would be another tool in your tool chest in terms of dealing with these problems in a region where that can be an issue.

Farmer Fred  

Another great reason to plant hybrid tomatoes. Look for those letters, V, F and/or N.  And let's not forget T and A. That would be tobacco mosaic virus and Alternaria. There are other problems that might be attacking your tomatoes this summer that you may see on your other plants, too. Like whiteflies, aphids, powdery mildew. And you know a lot of this has to do with people loving their tomato plants and other plants to death with too much nitrogen fertilizer. That stresses the plant. It puts out weak growth that's very attractive to those pests I just mentioned.

Don Shor  

Yeah, lush growth certainly encourages white flies. I will tell you though, white flies are pretty easy to manage. For me. I found that wider spacing (helps), so I don't get this big overgrown mass of tomato foliage. That has made a big difference. This is an interesting one: dragonflies love to eat white flies. They're entomophagous. That's today's vocabulary word: entomophagous. They eat other insects, and they can do a very good job of keeping white flies under control. In my own garden center, white flies are managed by a very vigorous rinsing of the plants early in the day, three to five days in a row, stressing the undersides of the leaves where the larvae need to be blasted off the leaf and we find that we get very good control that way. We do it early in the day. So the plants have a chance to dry off by the end of the day. And if we had a problem that was continuing beyond that, we would probably move up to neem oil very carefully, not using it on a hot day, or even a light summer oil. But we've generally not had to do that as long as we monitored carefully. We monitor plants, not just the tomato plants, but plants nearby that are nesting sites and resting sites for white flies. And we vigorously rinse those as well. You will find over time if you garden in the same place and you keep planting flowering things amongst your tomatoes and herb plants nearby and you have some ornamental grasses over there on the other side of the garden, and you have some shrubs that have flowers at different times, beneficial insect populations will increase steadily and consistently. And over time, you'll get to the point where you see aphids, you see white flies, and these kind of magically go away. And that's because you've encouraged the beneficial insects that feed on them. But in order to do that, your garden has to be something more than a desert for them. It has to have places for them to hide and multiply and increase and you have to reduce your use of insecticides. And it's also rather important in the case of some, like the dragon flies, to have a water source nearby. All these diversity in your garden is fundamental to getting the populations of beneficials. Not just the insects that come in and help control but birds you know, mockingbirds, Blue Jays, things that come in and eat the bigger bugs. Generally speaking, once you have a really active garden, that way, your pest problems will diminish, they'll probably take care of themselves. Whenever I see someone bringing a sample of aphids to my garden center. I'll take them out, I'll show them: look, some of these are already parasitized. You can tell they're they're bloated, they're tan they're not moving. So your problem is solving itself rather than buying a pesticide. Now let's let nature run its course.

Farmer Fred  

Many farmers here in California are now lining their crops with alyssum, because that attracts a whole host of beneficial insects that do just exactly what you're describing. We'll have a link on today's show notes about plants that attract beneficial insects because those can take your insecticide spray bills down to nothing. 

Don Shor  

Personally, I've actually never sprayed a tomato plant with a pesticide here.

Farmer Fred  

Never?

Don Shor  

 Never.

Don Shor  

There are people listening who cannot get through a season, in rainier  climates in particular, without spraying because their crops would be ruined. So we're in an area where if we can get to the point where it's not necessary at all, I've never had to spray a tomato plant for it with a pesticide. in Sacramento Valley.

Farmer Fred  

He said, bravely.

Don Shor  

I was lucky, honestly. All right.

Farmer Fred  

Now there is one other thing that may cause people worrying when they start  seeing oily brown leaves, especially near the base of the tomato plant. That's usually a sign of tomato russet mites.

Don Shor  

Yeah, every summer, it seems like I get one or two customers that have that. I had it happen on my vines one time, way back when I first was gardening here, and they sort of dry up from the ground up, it's really hard to tell because it takes a 40 power hand lens to see this particular type of mite. And they're tough to control, by the way. It happened to my crop one year and it's never happened since, and this is, you know, it's that's the way it seems to work. It is a mite. it's very tiny one, and it comes from the ground level and it moves up the plant gradually increasing and by about the first of August your plant can be about half dead from this. It's a tough one to control. Vigorous rinsing with water probably helps to some degree. Mites, in general, are very challenging to control, you generally look for a suffocating agent, like a thin oil or something like that. But I've got to always mention when I say anything about oil, high temperatures can cause leaf burn when you spray oil. So, if you've got a period of cooler weather, that might be a fine time to go out and spray. But in our normal summer, the average summer temperature of 93 degrees here in July and August. That's our average high temperature in this area. That will burn plants. So you've got to spray when we're in our cooler spells of that average. And it can be a challenging one. One main thing on the russet mite is at the end of the season, everything needs to go away. All of the foliage, all of the plant, all that needs to be taken away, not to your compost pile in this particular instance, I would send it out to the landfill.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, exactly. Clean it up at the end of every season and also during the season too. When you see fallen fruit, fallen leaves, rake them up, put them in the greenwaste. Don't try composting them. There are a couple of other cosmetic tomato problems such as cat facing or maybe the concentric circles you see near the stem, I wouldn't worry about those.

Don Shor  

Those are usually watering-related. The plant was just inadequately watered, then there was a period of increasing temperature. Again, if you can get to the point where you're deep irrigating and your soil retains moisture, those of you with raised planters need to work to get the soil to retain moisture. There's a bunch of things you can do. But when you do water, water deep enough. A tomato plant needs several gallons of water when you irrigate it. And you'll find that if your soil holds moisture pretty well, you tend to have less of a problem with that. But again, those are things that can just be cut out and the rest of the fruit is usable.

Farmer Fred  

Is there anything we left out?

Don Shor  

Stink bugs.

Farmer Fred  

Okay.

Don Shor  

And leaf footed bugs. Those guys show up and  they're scary looking, particularly the leaf footed bug, which is an increasing pest in many parts of California. I don't know how widespread it is in other parts of the country. And it's pokes its little probiscus into the fruit and makes a little spot that you would only notice if you're looking for it, so in general they don't do a lot of damage to fruit. They do this to peaches as well, any kind of soft fruit. They are a general feeder. Usually people find some here, some. There's not a huge problem. Sometimes they go out they'll find 50 on one fruit, which is really gross. And in that case you have an opportunity to go get a bucket, put some soapy water in it, shake them into the bucket. Problem solved.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, leaf footed bugs, it turns out, are rather popular throughout the Sunbelt. There is even a Florida leaf footed bug.

Don Shor  

Charming.

Farmer Fred  

Yes, they have their own name. 

Don Shor  

And we have three or four species in California. And they're very recognizable, but the only issue is that we find them in all different stages. We find the nymphs, we find the adults. The nymphs look rather different from the adults, and they do like all other stinkbugs two aspects. One they stink when you squish them, too. They are a congregating type of insect which means you tend to find them in groups, particularly on your pomegranate tree. They really like pomegranates. So if you're looking for the the source of them on your tomatoes, look at your nearby pomegranate, the developing fruit. You may find 30 or 40 on a single fruit. And they don't really do much damage to the pomegranate. They do a little bit. You can go after them with a handheld vacuum cleaner. Or just tap them off into a bucket full of soapy water. 

Farmer Fred  

There you go. I was just looking here about how widespread the leaf footed bug is. It really does love the Sun Belt and even slightly cooler places. The leaf-footed bug has been reported as far north as Long Island, New York, and ranges south to Florida, west to Iowa and Kansas, southwest through Texas to California, including lower California and into Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

Don Shor  

It is definitely an increasing pests in many parts of California. And I think that may be related to the cropping patterns in ag in our area. It's a pest of almonds. You know, we've have 10s of 1000s of acres of almond trees planted over the last 30 years here in the Sacramento Valley. Guess what? I have to identify leaf footed bugs several times a week, whereas 20 years ago, it might be three or four times during the course of the whole summer. They are a stink bug and there are other stink bugs that are problematic in other areas and one that's new to our area. And generally speaking those poke their probiscus into things and cause a little discolored area on the fruit. From a home garden standpoint, they're not a huge problem. Typically, obviously, farmers can't have those kinds of cosmetic problems on their fruit.

Farmer Fred  

Now what is it Mother Nature used to say? Oh yeah, "Mother Nature abhors a monoculture."

Don Shor  

I think that nature abhors a vacuum is the phrase you're looking for. But a vacuum can be very handy.

Farmer Fred  

Yes. Yes, yes. Now remember, if you're using a vacuum to pick up stinkbugs, that vacuum is going to stink. So leave it outside.

Don Shor  

Put it in a plastic bag when you're done with it to make sure they don't just crawl right back out of the vacuum, too.

Farmer Fred  

Don Shor, Redwood, Barn Nursery Davis, California. Thanks for troubleshooting our tomatoes for us.

Don Shor  

Great to be here. Thanks Fred.

Farmer Fred

Don mentioned earlier (last episode, Ep109) about his list of his favorite tomato varieties to grow. You can find that list at his website, RedwoodBarn.com. That's RedwoodBarn.com. You can also find out about his radio show and podcast at RedwoodBarn.com as well.

Farmer Fred 

Don’t forget, in the latest Garden Basics Newsletter, on Substack, Don and I continue our conversation about tomatoes. It’s a special podcast, talking about the winners and losers in our tomato gardens last year, along with new, exciting varieties to try in 2022. Plus, we talk about the best tomato varieties for the beginning tomato gardener to try. It’s a special podcast, in the latest Garden Basics newsletter on Substack. You can find a link to the newsletter in today’s show notes, at FarmerFred.com, or go directly to gardenbasics dot substack dot com. And, it’s free! Please subscribe.

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Farmer Fred

The Garden Basics Podcast will be on its winter schedule from November through January. Which means there will only be one episode per week during this three month period. It’ll come out on Fridays. Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, and we thank them for their support. Garden Basics is available for free wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.