Tomatoes 101

 What one vegetable plant gets the most discussion every spring. It’s everyone’s favorite! The Tomato!  This week on “In The Garden with UC Master Gardeners”, we bring you a show we’ll call “Tomatoes 101” featuring our foremost tomato expert Master Gardener Brian Hale! Brian will let you know the secrets of starting tomatoes from seed as well as growing tips. If summer is coming and your soil is above 55 degrees F or 13 degrees C, it’s time to plant.  Whether or not you’re a novice tomato grower or an expert, we'll cover everything from planting, fertilizing, watering, growth patterns, storing, and harvesting.  Tomatoes are botanically a fruit, but in the United States they’re legally a vegetable.  You’ll find out why.  The topic is vast! Listen for a jam-packed show. Oooh! Tomato Jam! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

The views and opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily represent those of KUCI, its management, or the UC Board of Regents. For more information on this or other KUCI programmes, visit KUCI.org or KUCI Talk.org.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

You're listening to KUCI 88.9 FM, Irvine's only radio station.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Tomato tomato, it doesn't matter how you say it. We're talking about tomatoes on in the garden with UC Master Gardeners. I'm Bill Brooks, your Master Gardener host for the hour, and we're fortunate to have Master Gardener and Tomato expert Brian Hale with us today here at KUCI 88.9 FM Irvine. Well, welcome, Brian. It's great to talk to you today again about the subject that everybody loves so much. So tell us your story about your interest in growing tomatoes.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Well, first of all, thank you. I'm glad to be here. My interest in tomatoes really is kind of related to my whole life. Since I was a little boy, I've uh been fascinated by seeds, even at my elderly age now. I still uh you know the old I'll tell you a quick story. When we first moved to California 50 years ago, uh we really didn't know avocados or like avocados, but I'd seen one grown before. So one of the first days here, we went to the store, bought an avocado, threw the meat away, and grew the seeds. So uh that my interest is not just tomatoes, but in general all all fruits and vegetables.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

And things that grow from seed and things that you can eat. So anywhere from 33 to 47 percent of U.S. households grow tomatoes during the summer months. It's one of the most popular foods to grow at home along with cucumbers and peppers. But let's start with store purchase tomatoes. Why don't they taste like tomatoes?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, first of all, we were talking earlier in the lobby, traveling the world, I've seen that the entire world wants a tomato on every single day.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

And also, conversely, if you have a super vine ripe, delicious tomato, it'd be impossible to ship or to even get to the store down the street safely. So store-bought tomatoes are picked when they're just starting to turn red, call the breaker, and that way you can put a truckload and travel with them and nothing gets hurt, and then they're stored in a vacuum, airtight container, uh until the demand for more tomatoes, then that uh pressure is released and they're exposed to ethanol gas like a rotting apple or banana, and that turns them red. It doesn't ripe ripen in them, it just turns them red. So a lot of times that's why they're not uh extremely tasty.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

So you don't have all the flavor components that develop from the sun and ripening naturally on the vine, and that's why they don't taste good. So you can plant tomato plants that you can pick up at the home center, or you can grow from seed. And Brian, I know you've grown so long that you grow from seed, and let's start there, and then we'll get into the home center plants later on. So, first of all, where do you get your seeds?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Oh well, as I've been buying tomato seeds for a long time, I've got you know the obligatory six or seven catalogs, all from good tomato growers. And uh then I pick pick from there. So, and there's thousands and thousands of varieties. Also, let me mention while we're talking about seeds that the uh whether it's a big box store or the greatest nursery in the world, there's a limited amount of tomatoes. So the thousands available, I know I see at least four or five hundred varieties over spread over these catalogs. So it gives you a chance to have tomatoes, you'd never have a chance to grow unless you start them from seed.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

And really get into some interesting things and just experiment with it, which is that is the fun thing that draws so many people to gardening. Now I know when I buy seeds, I notice when I read the package that they're called F1 seeds. What does that F1 mean?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

F1 is they've been uh hybred once, like they're doing with uh heirloom tomatoes now. So they've just been bred one time. A hybrid is and I'm not a scientist, I know a little about it, but there's several processes of pollination to get a hybrid seed. F1 has only been cross-bred once.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

And does F1 does it can I save my tomatoes and clean them up and my seeds and sprout them the next year, or does that work?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Well, it's technically a hybrid. So when you save a hybrid seed, since it's in the case of just one time, they're only crossing two tomatoes, and they're probably favorable and delicious as opposed to properties of the several crossbred uh that might have one plant may uh be extremely disease resistant uh and and healthy, but a poor tomato production. And the other one, obviously the opposite, strong, healthy, vigorous, heavy tomato growth, but not a lot of uh and even disease resistance, if I didn't mention that. So when you cross those two, you start to put two favorable components together as one, but that's more than just a single cross breeding of the F1. However, that's still hypothetically a a hybrid, but as I just mentioned, that will probably be okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Probably, but I might not get that when I if I grew the seeds from that plant.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Well, yeah, I'm kind of a believer, why risk it?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah, I I gotcha. And I know to me a package of seeds is not that expensive. Although some of the the more uh newer hybrids and things uh are. And we're gonna talk about storing seeds too, so you can be really economical in that way as well. But I also noticed, too, on both the grown plants you get at the home center as well as on seeds, tomato plants are also called determinant and indeterminate. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Determinant is a a um limited growth, usually about three or four feet tall, uh, and its tomatoes and flowers come directly off the main stem opposed to uh indeterminate, which continues to grow like a vine, and uh its tomatoes come off a secondary branch. Determinants are out there for the reason of, like say, ketchup makers. You because they're short, they don't need staking, they tend to be all ripe at about the same time and can be harvested and which destroys the plant but gets all the tomatoes off. So here in Southern California we know the the five freeway and all the Central Valley fruits and vegetables. So if you've ever seen a truckload of tomatoes going to to wherever they're going, whether to be stored for future use as I described, but generally because they've all been picked at once, uh they're gonna uh go probably to be made ketchup or kind some kind of sauce, but you'll notice that some are green, some are red, and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

So if I'm b if I'm living in a small space, say I have a an apartment deck I'm going to grow my tomatoes on, I may want to go with a determinate because I don't have to worry about the staking. How tall will an indeterminate plant get?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Well, they can easily in the right conditions uh grow eight feet generally. That's about the time uh the weather's changing, whatever you live. It's had its three or four months in the ground and the weather starts to change and that sinks down. But they are perennials. So that means they will continue to grow as a we grow them as annuals here in the zone nine in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah, and I think just about anywhere in the world people grow their tomatoes as annuals because the ground gets cold and and and things, and you were talking about a flavor component too that doesn't develop in the coolness uh when we were outside uh talking about the show. So if you get your seeds, do you put them in the ground or do you start them ahead of time? What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Ideally, you want to start them ahead of time in uh indoors or in a greenhouse or whatever you happen to have, and there's thousands of variations out there. So you start a seed, again, here in zone nine, on or about Valentine's, and you put them in the ground on or about tax day. So that's February 14th, April 15th, about two months. And this year, here in Southern California, it was very unique. It was very, very warm, and it would be cold and rain for a couple days, and then very, very unseasonally warm. So as we saw on those tomatoes, our friend grew. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

So regardless of where you live in the world, the key is that you want to have cool temperatures done, even at night. And we were talking that there's some exceptions that if you're growing against a wall that retains heat, you know, that that's an exception. But you want to wait until that kind of season. So that's going to be at different times of year. And when you start them in your greenhouse, you're still you're starting them early and you're keeping them indoors. If you don't have a greenhouse, have you used uh I know people use heating mats and they use uh little little trays to get them going, and they get them going just inside, say on the kitchen counter.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Well, on the kitchen counter you really don't I mean you could use a heating mat, but generally your house is 72 to 74, so that's that'll sprout them. The secret is, as we've all seen when we tried that, is uh that leggy you know, that seedlings about three or four inches long with them two little baby cotyledons, that's the first uh leaves that come off a plant. So they need to have direct sunlight to some degree, meaning if you're a real nut, and before I had a greenhouse, this is how I did it. Start 'em indoors, and then once they started to uh to get little leaves on them and started to grow, I'd take them outdoors every morning and uh put a cover on them and then bring them home. Bring them inside every night. Which sounds complicated, but it's not. They grow pretty fast, but you know, it's pretty uh Yeah, you want that sunshine.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Did you ever use grow lights? I know some people.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

I have stuff in the in my greenhouse which isn't temperature controlled under grow lights and on a heating mat. But of course it's easy to temperature control because you only need a little bottom warmth at night, and then it's plenty warm during the day.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

So for end uh for people sprouting in their home, you want a win in front of a window that's got a big light source, you want to consider taking them outdoors during the uh during the baby period. You get you b you've got to baby them, that is certainly uh true. Yep. And make make sure that they grow that way. Now hardening them off, when you grow seeds indoors, if you're bringing them out every day, you probably don't need to worry about hardening them off. But if you don't, then you've got to bring them outside for a period of time to let them get used to the climate outdoors before you put them in the ground.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Correct. Hardening them off is basically getting them used to sunshine. So, you know, we have our big plant exchange thing coming up, so I've been babysitting some of them. So I'm putting them in the sunlight initially for three or four hours, and then I just have a couple areas like everybody should to some degree where you can measure the shade and you know that the sun's not gonna hit them until the afternoon, or it's not gonna hit 'em, it's gonna hit them in the morning and be done at noon, that kind of a place. Mm-hmm. Because we all got a job.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

So Yeah, no, I you're right. You gotta you gotta you can't be home and dragging them around all day. So when you open a seed packet, you get anywhere from I don't know, ninety to a hundred and ten seeds, I guess. You can't plant that many, you can't deal with a hundred tomato plants. So what do you do with your extra seeds?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

How do you store them? I carefully put them in a Ziploc bag and you can use rice. But you know, I don't know how the whole world operates, but here in America, anything you get, vitamins, uh, you know, a set of binoculars, whatever happens to come, has got those little desiccant soil uh moisture absorbers in them and I save those. Um and then I use them in a long well now I don't need to put the rice in, I just put those The desiccants, yeah. Yeah, I I seal the the uh seed bag or package the best I can, put it in a ziploc that contains the desiccant packages. And then you store them in a cool dark place? I just store them in the garage, yeah. Which can be cold in California at some time, but generally it's and how long will those seeds uh last? Oh easily three years. So let's get back to buying a plant, which is getting extremely expensive for a little four inch plant compared to these seeds that are and there's usually twenty or thirty in a pack, and it's let's just say they're three bucks. So you've got these seeds or these plants you can't buy normally and you keeping track, I have a scorecard, and I keep track of what ones I want to grow again, and uh it's really uh it's it's a great variety for yourself and a great cost savings.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, it is, and if you get that long lasting, so the important thing though too is you never want your seeds to freeze. So if you're living in a cold part of the world, you want to bring your tomato seeds indoors during freezing temperatures unless your garage or basement or wherever they are is heated. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. That's true. So planting your seeds, so your little seedlings, how long how tall are the seedlings do you let them get before you put them in the ground?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Well, starting with the planting, you plant them about a quarter inch deep, which the packages will say, and then you let them sprout four to six days, depending on how warm your house is. And then you let them sit in the window for just two or three days, because it won't take long before they start stretching out and getting leggy. Then you start taking them out, as I said earlier, but I want to in f because we're talking about hardening off a bigger plant, we don't want to expose those to direct sunlight, we just want them warm and some light. So you you need to put up like a the there's package uh you know seed growing things that have the uh the tray and the cover. So you want to put that cover on there until they start to get bigger, and at some point you need to start having the cover access to air airflow, what whatever you need to do on uh that put it off to the side a little bit or put a wedge in there or something.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah, and that's an important point if you're using those covered uh seed uh sprout things. If you don't do that, you're gonna get your mold your plants will get moldy. Yeah. Uh tomatoes are very susceptible to disease. They sure are.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

And mold, yeah. Oh, viruses, uh everything.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, and so when you plant them, how at what depth are you uh planting them at?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

That's a great question. You know, everybody's seen a tomato plant, and if you notice and you look closely, you'll see little hairs up and down the stem. Each one of those is capable of producing a root. So I like to plant mine deep, much deeper. Other things like strawberries, for example, you have to plant them right at ground depth. But tomatoes, because they have that ability to grow more roots, you want to plant them deep. But there's more than just planting them deep, and I'm gonna elaborate right now while I have the chance. Go ahead. Is you need to not let any of the leaves touch the ground. There are so many pathogens in the soil you want to avoid the contact with the ground. So that means you have to cut some of the bottom leaves off. We talked earlier how our friend grew them on the eight-week schedule, but because of the weird winter we've had, they're exceptionally tall. So as we had our little side master gardener exchange last week, everybody was trying to avoid them until I they were asking me about them. I said, Oh, you want those. Because you have a whole bunch of stem once you cut those branches off to put in the ground. Furthermore, uh you or one tip on that before we go farther is you once you cut them branches off, you've got a fresh cut. So instead of planting them the same day, plant on it. Like I know I'm gonna plant mine this weekend, so I've cut those branches off three or four days ago. It gives them a chance to heal. Let them call. Callus over before you put them straight in the ground. Then to go, as they get to be bigger, I keep, and it's about 14 inches, there's no rule here, but eight. I'm trying to, it's more than a foot. You want a good, clean, nothing but bare branches. Bare stem. Totally bare for air circulation. And depending on how you water your tomatoes, you're always gonna splash soil if you're watering with a blast of water or your sprinkler's too powerful or whatever. And that's gonna start putting the soil up on the leaves and the and that's where the pathogens live, and that's so to reduce diseases, you need to do the best you can. So as a plant begins to get a foot tall, two foot tall, you start cutting them lower branches, leaving the head on there to give as much energy to the plant as you can. And then once they get to be really big, you can then establish your 14 inches. It's amazing, you know, they can double in size every eight days. Wow. So when I go out there to do that maintenance of keeping the stem clean, I'm always amazed that well, they're only two foot tall, and I fill in a complete bucket with tomato branches. And it's like, wow, there's a lot, a lot of growth there. You don't really of course I've got 20 plants generally. Yeah. So uh that's very important that you keep that clean. So now your plants four foot tall to finish this subject, and a big, beautiful major branch has grown, and now it's grown down into your safe zone, if you will. So you don't have to cut that whole branch off, just reach up in there four or five inches and cut that off.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

And tip it. Yeah, I and I see that. So if I buy tomatoes from the home center, I remember as a kid, they've sold beefsteak tomatoes, I think, since the 50s, already sprouted. What are the tips in selecting those plants and in planting them? Well, if you're familiar, like you've grown beefsteaks forever because you like the taste. I I mean I did that as a kid. I haven't grown them because I actually found a tomato I like better. I like a tomato called Heatmaster. They're hard to find, but boy, they really produce.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

You'll find those because as part of the propagation team I'm on, I'm the seed selector of tomato. So we have Heatmaster for you. Yeah, I love Heatmaster. And I live in a warmer area, I don't live near the coast, and so there's an influence, very much so here in Southern California. I'm sure in many coastal cities. I was in um Peru, and when you're on the coast, it's a whole different weather. You go in just not too horribly far, 10, 15 miles, and it's a whole different uh weather. San Francisco is the exact same way.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Yeah, and that's a point. When you're shopping for your seeds, you and it'll tell you in the catalog where they live best. And if you're living, say, in a warmer area of the world, you want to get something like a heat master that can h handle hundred degree days. Right. Uh if you're if you're uh in a coastal area or cooler area, you there's different uh cultivars and hybrids that you can buy.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

And the name's usually a giveaway. Heat master, Mexico. Uh-huh. Those are I I both of those are in my garden all the time. When you live on the coast, there's something like sub sub Siberian, uh Black Russian, you know, high temperatures are colder. So you still need to look it up, but there's a little bit of giveaway just walking through the cat clue.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

So so you've bought your uh tips for getting them at the home center. What kind of plant am I looking at? What looks good, what doesn't?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Well, you know, I'm always looking at them, of course. And they sometimes they don't seem to get watered right. You could they just not you're just looking for a healthy plant that has been taken care of properly. Some some of those places that tomatoes get dropped off and the um employee forgets to water them one day and you can tell. Yeah, they got more group. They and they just they get brown it leaves. You need a beautiful green, good-looking plant. It's that simple. You know anything that looks off a little bit's probably been stressed already.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah, and that's a good idea. You want to start with a good plant. And again, as you said, I want to pinch off my bottom leaves, and when I plant it, I want to plant it deep, and I want it to be stem that's uh that's showing. And so that's a good technique to use, and that's especially true. Sometimes you'll find, as you said, in the home center a leggy tomato because wherever you're in the world, we've got inconsistent temperature days in the spring. It'll get hot, get cool, and the tomatoes follow the uh follow the weather. So you like the leggy ones.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

I was at a talk one time and uh an older gentleman had grown some at home and knew it was a tomato talk, so he proudly brought in four or five plants to share. One of them was leggy. And of course, everybody avoided that. And I told him I said, I'll take that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Okay, you want you're looking for that because you you planted deep. And then also too, whether your seeds or whether you are in uh little nursery pots, some tomatoes are heirloom and some tomatoes are hybrid. What's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Well, I was speaking earlier on uh what a hybrid is, you know, all that cross-pollinated and so forth. An heirloom has been open pollinated and never hybridized at all. Uh brandywine comes to mind. I know there's several more. So, and those are the seeds that you can save and replant. Okay. They will grow, true, because they have not no other cross-breeding in them. The F1, we talked about that earlier, is actually now they're taking two heirlooms and cross-breeding them. And I'm thinking, can you crawl that an heirloom?

SPEAKER_01 21:50

I don't I no, that would be a hybrid to me. Me too. Yeah. By definition. By definition, you're right. Uh so in the case of hybrid tomatoes. Varieties are frequently bred for resistance to several key viruses. Um, how are these indicated on the plant? And does a novice homegrower really even need to worry about this?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Well, it helps. Celebrity comes to mind, and back in uh and I hate to call it the old old days, but I haven't seen it for at least ten years. Because although I'm not buying them anywhere, I'm growing them, I am checking them out. But they used to have the description of the tomato on the front of the tag, and on the back they had a bunch of letters. T for tobacco mosaic, foodicerium, uh fusilium, uh several others, uh tobacco mosaic, if I didn't mention that already. Uh and so it kind of gave you a clue like, hey, this has been bred to be resistant to those particular uh viruses. So uh it wouldn't hurt if you could find it. If not, you need to you know, I become a YouTube junkie. Okay. I you know, I just watch it seems that's all I watch anymore, is uh is YouTube and a lot on because I'm still very interested in planting and stuff, so I watch a lot of YouTube and you can learn a lot on those. And but you've got to take that with a grain of salt because it's one person's opinion. So if you watch enough on planting tomatoes and you watch four or five, you're gonna get a general feel of their consistency with a little bit of variations depending on the uh the narrator.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

That works and uh you know, all over the United States, every state in the union has a uh agricultural and natural resources department, and so you can go to your local agriculture and resource department website, and they all have information on growing tomatoes in your area. Here in California, it's UCANR that we go to. So speaking of planting, do you plant in the ground in containers or in raised beds? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Well, there's not a lot of in-ground planting, it doesn't seem. Most of my gardener friends are raised bed. Or as I spoke yesterday uh to a group of people, and as I always find out, uh when talking on almost I talk about on vegetables and warm season, cool season, that kind of stuff, or fruits. And uh the container is very, very popular. A lot of people live in apartments. So the the rule is the same, the soil, either either container or raised bed, because raised bed is kind of like a big container, although it's subject or uh uh the ground is below it as opposed to contained. Right. So a little more watering, a little more fertilizer in containers, but generally the rules are the same.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

The rules are the same, and uh again, you've got to know your soil, and a lot of the world has got heavy soil, it's got a lot of clay in it. And tomatoes don't like to have their feet wet. They like a lot of water, but they do begin to rot if they get their feet wet. So a heavy clay soil is not gonna produce a good plant. So that's why you want to use a raised bed or you want to use some kind of a container. And so if you plant tomatoes directly in the ground, the soil must be fast draining. What kind of soil do tomatoes need if they go directly into the ground?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Well, topsoil is generally the best thing for ground. Um so you i in in our case, you know, some some re regions I know I have family in Tennessee, that soil's not too bad right off the bat. It just needs to be amended to some degree. And I hate to you use the word amendment because I'm not a big amendment fan. I'm just basically um fertilizer and compost.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah, well, and comp compost is a way of amending too. So uh that's a good thing. So you gotta know your soil. And like I said, the most everybody is going to need a raised bed or they're going to need a container.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Now I'll tell you a story about a container. All right. When again, I moved from a cold climate to California and we moved to an apartment. It had a decent sized porch on it. So I had it covered in plants. But when I grew tomatoes, where the tomatoes would sit on one side of the porch, it only got four hours of sunlight a day. So that's where I'd leave it in the morning. And then when I come home from work, the other side had the sun, so I put them on wheels.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

And I'd roll it to the other side of the So can you tell Brian's obsessed with tomatoes? That's why we brought him in today to talk to us. Well, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

The neighbors had to say what is with that guy.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

Yeah, so some uh some people due to space limitations, they have to plant their tomatoes in the same location each season. Tomatoes are heavy feeders taking in nutrients out of the soil. In addition, uh soil can be a place where pests and diseases build up. If you have to plant a tomato in the same location year after year, if it's a pot or raised bed, what should you do?

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Well the real issue with rotation for the most part is soil-borne nematodes, and they can overwinter. So if they you had them one year, you're gonna have them the next year. So if it really gets bad, like I had them one time in a corner, I I just rotate, I have three beds and I grow two of them with tomatoes, so I have that third one that is every other year. But generally I haven't had a problem except for one and then the next year, so I just kind of avoided that section of the garden for a year and grew near there. It worked for the most part, but generally uh uh soil borne uh problems and rotation, I don't my own personal, I don't want to make the you know what the world thinks change, but personally I don't think it's that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Okay. But you you again, if you're planting a tomato in the same area, you want to fertilize, you want to bring the soil back up.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Fertilization is very important every two or three weeks. Um I like to use a liquid. You know, I was doing a talk one time and I said anything in the five five five range, nitrogen, uh phosphorus and potassium. So I had a guy I was doing another talk, he happened to be there three or four months later and he came to say, Oh, by the way, I've been looking for five five five and uh he can't find it. I said, No, that was a a generalization.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

So well, and they're ratios. So a ten ten ten would work, fifteen fifteen fifteen would work too.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Although it's stronger. Yeah, it wouldn't work for tomatoes. That's too much nitrogen. And to well, those three numbers. You want something that's why I say five five five. A four six three, a two four one. Okay. But don't get up any into the ten. So we were talking about fertilizer, so give me your fertilizer tips. Well keep the numbers low, as I said, and I'm gonna tell you quick I have I've got a million stories, so ahead. A master gardener came up to me a couple of years ago and she goes, Oh my god, I got the biggest, healthiest tomato plants, but I don't have any tomatoes. So first thing I asked her, I said, Did you uh use manure in when you're doing your soil? Oh yeah, I got all kinds of stuff in there. That's when manure, which is about 1300 on the as far as the nitrogen. And nitrogen is responsible for leaf and stem growth. And then phosphorus, the second number, is for uh flowering. And as you see on uh fertilizers designed strictly for flowering, that middle number is pretty big. Anyway. So I said, Well, yeah, that was your problem. So you've got the big healthy plant and no tomatoes. So it's important when you had mentioned those big numbers that we calm that back down and make sure everybody understands if you go in your garage and you got some 10, 10, 10, that's not for tomatoes. It has to be these smaller numbers. And although it doesn't sound like a lot, that goes a long way.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

It does go a long way. And you can also, too, when you're in the store, you can look for tomato and vegetable fertilizer, and that's usually adjusted accordingly. Yeah, it's the right, it's the right blend. So when I plant them, how what how do I want to space them? How far apart do I want to space my plants?

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Well, I saw something the other day that said three to four feet, and I'm thinking, well, that's a little carried away. I give them uh you know, let's just use other plants and vegetables for for carrots, for example. You know, they're such little tiny plants, and you need to thin them, and when you look at it, you think, oh, that's about an inch apart. That looks like a pretty good. You really have to stop and think, what size is a mature carrot? And then the center of those carrot to center or carrot is what you need. So that carrot turns out to be more like one and a half to two inches. Uh-huh. Same with tomatoes. You know what a tomato plant looks like and how big it can get, so you need to kind of be sensible. Mine are about two and a half feet apart. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

And speaking of that, too, is when you're going with seeds and you put put seeds, are you doing two or three seeds in a hole?

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Well, I'm I'm going I'm not putting any tomato seeds directly in the ground. No, but I mean in your container. I put well, we just uh matter of fact, I'm going there today to the to the uh scrack the research center and we're labeling more plants. And we do in a six pack, we'll put four or five or six or seven seeds in each little In each little area, and then you thin accordingly. And I tell you, they're bulletproof. Once you they're little tiny just green, just a couple cotyledons on them, again the the first leaf. Yeah. And I I I kid everybody, I said, Well, we should finish planting them before we go to lunch, they'll be fine. No, we don't do that, but I'm just trying to stress they're they're pretty bulletproof. So you just have some four inch containers ready, take the six pack apart, feather the uh little tomato plants away, and stick them, you know, a little we we use uh chopsticks quite a bit for make your hole and and and move them. Just moving the soil around to make sure it's high in. And uh so you usually those little plants can have three or four inch roots amazingly. So you just stick a thing, put the little plant in there, and squeeze it and squeeze it back, and now you have a single plant and uh ready to explode.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

So here in Southern California, it's possible to have tomato plant overwinter, especially if we have them a mild winter. And in other areas of the world with mild climates, I imagine that's true. Have you done that before and is it a good idea?

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Personally, um here in Southern California, it can get cold. Um I know the part of the world might be listening to this at some point. And when we tell them, you know, it's like a cold, right? It's a cold day at 40 degrees low of 40, uh, that's pretty pretty funny. But um You know, it can get down to 35, and it we've had some cold spells, just like we've had hot spells. So uh because it gets cold and because tomatoes have this flavor component called Z3 hexanol, and the Z isn't spelt with a Z, but that's how they write it. Um there's some spelling, but it is a flavor component to tomatoes, and that can be completely negated at fifty and below, which is why you never store a beautiful vine ripe, fully cell emaciated, beautiful ripe tomato in the refrigerator, because that will negate Z3X and all and it's never coming back. So store always store a tomato on the countertop. And since we're talking about that, I like to store mine upside down. There's all this stuff we can't see in the air, yeast and bacteria and so forth. Uh and because that's such a smooth surface as opposed to the stem surface, it's it you could get two or three more days' life out of your tomato if you do it that way.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

If you store them upside down, and you completely take off the stem. Well, the green part is gone. It's storing upside down. Do you wash them when you bring them in? Uh no. I don't want I just wash them before we use them. Wash them before you use them in that way. With points less less planting, and that's a way to store them. So watering tomatoes, tomatoes like a lot of water, as high as two inches per week in the heat of the summer. So how do you gauge and water your tomatoes? You like to use sprinklers, hose, watering can? What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 33:52

I have that quarter inch small drip system sprinkler. It's you know, you know, it throws water about five or six inches in a little circle. And that's another reason for that 14 inches of clean. So no water. I'm not I don't have any blasting water under there. I'm not going through in the summertime with a hose with a nozzle on the, you know, I'm just when I'm watering in the summertime and there's dry, there's always a dry corner or something. As I'll just turn the hose on medium and just drag it along. So there's no splashing, no nothing, I'm just soaking.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Yeah, so the hose is on the ground level actually.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Right. Yeah. So when it comes time to uh to water them, uh here in and I know there's other names for it around the world, but here in Santa in uh California they call them Santa Anna's. They're very hot, dry winds. And uh this applies on every talk I do, whether it's warm season, cool season, or tomatoes. And so often you can go out there and be fooled because it's like, wow, that surface of that is really bone dry. So what you need to do is we should know your soil anyway, is just take a spade away from the root zone and just go straight down and pull back and take a look. And you might find, since you watered a couple of days ago in this example, that there's only the top half inches really dry. So it's like, well, they don't really need water, and yet the soil looks like it does. So and after a while, you just get to know this by by habit. So if you're a beginner, that's a great practice, so you know how much to water. So they do need a lot of water. Stick your finger in there. More or less. Stick your finger in there.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Okay.

unknown 35:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Oh, and get a look. I mean, I you can get soil probes too, and that'll take you down twelve inches and you can look if you're the moisture meter. And the moisture meter. And those moisture meters, too, if you have one, they last what about a year and then I've never had one. Well, I I've heard that they do fail. So just make sure that your moisture meter is indeed uh a good one so you don't get off. Now, containers are gonna need a little more water.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Correct. Um, obviously, since there is no ground below the container as there is in a raised bed garden, um it's going to drain through the holes, which we all know, and it's gonna go through more water. So you really got to watch those. Uh they need to be watered and fertilized on a little more regular basis than uh raised bed.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

So to kind of recap, you do not want to use overhead sprinklers. No. You do not want to use uh the overhead nozzle on your hose. Correct. So you want to get the water directly to the soil, and you can use uh drip irrigation, or you can use uh just irrigation with a hose. Uh you might even consider uh burying a soaker hose in your raised bed. That would work because then you're gonna more controlled. You can do a circle around each plant and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

And no water going underneath there. Uh exposed water.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

Exposed water, and you're gonna you're gonna keep the streams off of them.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

My preference is the quarter-inch sprinkler heads controlled low. And then I on the main one inch pipe going down the middle of the tomato bed, I'll just add enough. You know, you just poke a hole and add another sprinkler head, so there's enough because you know you can turn them up and they can they can throw water a couple times. Yeah, they can. Yeah. So you just keep them under control.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Yeah, and if you have high it's another little tip. If you have a high mineral content in your water, you want to check those little heads. If you see any white, crusty stuff, you want to clean that off with vinegar.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

I I do one better than that, and they are inline filters. Oh. And you cannot believe when you take that cap off what you get.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

And without those, I'm thinking all of those would be plugged up on a regular basis, and that's why a lot of people say these things are a pain in the butt. But if you've got that inline filter that starts right at the water source, you will be amazed a year or two later how much grit's in there. And so you're gonna you're gonna take care of your water before it gets. Every one of my gardens bed is has its individual water with a hose bib on it. So um if I think it's getting too wet without affecting any of the other garden, I can t turn that particular sprinkler system to low, or sometimes to off if it's just I just don't want that to get wet for a while for there are some reasons, but generally you can turn that down low.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

And any little tips if you go on a summer vacation?

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Well, all my neighbors love me going on a summer vacation. Every one of them.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Because they get to water, but they get tomatoes helping. Tell yourself the tomatoes. I gotcha. While you're there. That works. So getting the most from tomatoes, I know tomatoes are lousy pollinators. So do you have any techniques to help with pollination? Yeah, I am a fanatic. I am so. I know you are.

SPEAKER_00 38:32

That's why we're asking. I apologize in advance for this one. Okay. So a child a child's toothbrush, right? Uses a battery, you don't need a covert. Vibrates. Battery ones. Right. So I walk around the garden and not per flower head, but on the entire stem of the group of flowers, I lay that of the back of the toothbrush on that branch, and it vibrates at a high frequency, especially in the in the heat of the summer, and you can see the yellow pollen raining down. And I haven't measured it or have this official statement, but I'm saying ten, maybe twenty percent more production by that. So your technique is the little kid's electric toothbrush. Yeah, but it's best in the middle of the day. I'd prefer to do it night so no one can see me. Another one when my neighbor's looking. They're they uh they gotta be shaking their head like, what in the world is he doing?

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Okay, that works. All right. So in in fact, speaking of uh fertilizing, again, because we're getting the most out of our tomatoes, liquid granulated or compost, does it matter?

SPEAKER_00 39:38

My tomato beds are laying fallow right now. The lettuce is done, and so it's I threw a little cover crop in there, and that's all out, so these beds are ready to go. So I've thrown dry fertilizer on them. Again, five, five, five more or less. And because, you know, we're talking about the size of an atom to a plant being able to absorb that piece of nitrogen. Right. So they have to break down and they have time to break down. Then all the things I grow, once they're they're up and growing, I use a liquid fertilizer. And we talk about not getting the leaf wet. Matter of fact, I had a question in that yesterday. She goes, Well, you said don't get the leaves wet, but now you're saying get the leaves wet. Well, a lot of this um well, this liquid fertilizer, uh, plants can absorb nutrition through their leaves. So in the morning, I'll go out there and as things really all I'm I'm doing this with everything. I'm I'm watering the top of the plants. Now remember, I'm not splashing soil. I'm watering the top of the plants. And then I'm watering low. And then about a half hour later, you know, before the sun's even thinking about the heat of the day, uh, I'll go back and rinse that off just because it's you know it's organic and it stinks and it uh might leave a brown stain on a tomato or something, or whatever the other vegetable may be. So I like to water them from the top, from the bottom, and then rinse rinse everything off about a half hour later.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yeah, unfortunately, uh tomatoes do get a pest or two. So what's your number one tomato pest and how do you treat them?

SPEAKER_00 41:08

Everybody's friend, the uh hornworm. The good old hornworm. Man, those things can get big. And of course, you know, the best way to find them is uh look for the frass, which is a scientific name for poop. Yes, in case no one's gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

And that's the little black pellets that almost look like, hmm, I didn't fertilize, but I got fertilizer. Yeah, they do. They do look like fertilizer ta uh pellets.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

So you can start with when because they spend uh in a certain section usually at nighttime and they're just going like crazy, so they're pooping in a general area. And so then you look straight up and you'll see some naked branches, and then you can find them that way. However, they're not all nice and big and juicy and easy to find. So uh there's a thing called BT, which stands for Bacillious thermogenesis. That's why they call it BT, by the way. And uh it's beautiful, it's like a natural occurring protein that's only poisonous when in contact with the acids in a caterpillar's stomach. Now, how perfect can you get, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Right, and that's that's research done by agriculture and natural resource departments. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Yeah, yeah, this ain't something I invented. So uh you can spray that on there. I prefer the powder, which is getting harder to find, but you can spray liquid on there, and um it's harmless, and uh they eat it at all sizes, and then finally uh you can use a black light at night and you can find the little ones. So I usually have a pair of scissors, they're on a leaf. I just cut them in half while I'm cut you know, cut them in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

That's the way I do it too. I just uh I snip them in two and let them fall. Um I've even heard that if they get wet they change colors as well. So if you go out after a rain or if you fertilized, I've heard people use that technique. I've not heard or seen that, but I'm gonna look into it. Okay, you're gonna have to you're gonna look into it. So if I'm growing heirloom tomatoes, are they more susceptible to diseases and should I have fungicides and things on hand?

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Well, I'm not a uh fungicide kind of guy. Okay. I just if you know I just try to keep it clean. I'm not a nut. There are cases where I've grown stuff before and I just couldn't control it with safer soap or picking them off by hand or scrubbing them off or whatever, so uh I just pick them out. A green bean I was growing one time had uh green beans had an issue, so at some point it was like, okay, you win, out they go. But um, yeah, so uh I'll tell you what the real secret is, is a big healthy plant. You know, most insects like to attack except the hornworm, of course, it don't care. It goes in. It wants healthy. It does. Um plant uh insects are usually looking for something a little more sickly. So if you've got Good healthy plants. It's not a guarantee, but it uh and well fed and well maintained. Uh they're looking for something a little easier to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

So botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit. But it's really a vegetable. You got to tell us that story.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Well, botanically it's a fruit, legally it's a vegetable. So back in the early days of, let's say, 1880s roughly, uh, you know, the world was growing and uh the uh importing of fruits and vegetables was a thing. So in the wintertime, obviously Central America stays pretty warm. So they would import fruits and vegetables. Well the tomato importers were importing with lettuce and different vegetables. So the tomato guy went to the uh to the taxer assessor and said, you know, these aren't really vegetables, they're fruits, which is edible flesh surrounding a seed. That's right, right. Boredom of flour, born of a flower. So um they uh they went to court in 1893, the Supreme Court, and they decided that it would be since it was eaten like a vegetable and grown like a vegetable, it was going to be taxed like a vegetable. So that's how it became a vegetable. And real quickly, every state has the state bird, the state whatever, the state fruit, the straight vegetable. Well, Arizona or uh Arkansas has their state fruit and state vegetable as the tomato, which I think is cool.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

That that is pretty funny to go both ways. So that so the taxers got us in the United States as usual. That makes perfect sense. So I know when I want to pick a tomato, I know I want the color fully changed, I don't want to see any green. Any other tips for getting re uh for picking tomato?

SPEAKER_00 45:44

How do I know it's ready? Well, when it's it doesn't have to be perfectly ready, and you don't have to know exactly, but you know, these are beautiful summertime red tomatoes. So and I like to actually, although they're great immediately, I like to I refer to it as decant. Decant them inside for a day or two. They just seem to pick up a little more, I don't know, deepness or richness or something. So but obviously right off the vine is the way to go. And the worst you can do if you want to eat them right then is go out there and with a salt shaker and make you know say, well, that's not quite as right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yeah, and do a little testing. Do you uh do you snip them off your vine rather than pull them, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:22

No, they kind of pull off pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

They kind of pull off? Yeah, other things you have to snip off. All right. So almost every county in the United States is a master food preserver program. They can provide plenty of information on how to can, jar, and dry tomatoes. I know our group in Orange County even makes tomato power. Powder. By the way, Brian, what are your favorite tomato varieties?

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Well, a lot of the tomato people like Momontaro, which is a like a six-ounce smaller tomato, kind of pinkish um black cream, is very, very tasty. And uh anything beefsteak. Because there's nothing. And you know, the thing between an heirloom and a hybrid is a high bread, when you cut that beefsteak open, it's a pure, pure slice of beautiful tomato. Yeah, it is. When you cut a brandy wine open, there's a lot of white pith in there.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

So I I kind of lean toward the Yeah, it's a beefsteak you're gonna get on your burger, especially if it's showing that you're uh, you know, that tomatoes the front and center. And so again, putting your tomatoes up, canning them and jarring them and preserving them. And I know if you watch cooking shows, they'll tell you use canned tomatoes because they're they're preserved at the height of ripeness and you get a taste of summer. So that's something else you might want to look into, and that's kind of a uh kind of a a way of preserving them that you want to make sure that you do. And the average com uh American consumes between 22 and 31 pounds of tomatoes annually. A lot of that consumption comes from ketchup and salsa and pasta and pizza sauce. I do. I understand that Americans haven't always eaten tomatoes.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

No, a long time ago, you know, as Europe came over and discovered us, uh they uh brought the belief or disbelief that tomatoes were poisonous. That's because I don't know how it came to their maybe because it's one of the two nightshades. Yeah, nightshades. Yeah. So they uh it took a while. The Creoles in the early 1800s were the first ones to use them and use them uh quite a bit. But anyway, uh back in the back to the eighteen eighties roughly, there was a guy who uh who announced to the world whatever you could announce at that those days, he was gonna eat a bushel of tomatoes and proved they were not poisonous. So of course the uh crowd gathered and watched him eat that, waiting for him to die, and of course it was found out that they weren't poisonous. So they say that event has really had a major in impact on on uh the tomatoes. And you know, once everybody tastes them and realize hey, they're not poisonous, that's why so many people grow them, and that's why that's a number one grown uh vegetable garden in a vegetable garden.

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Fruit vegetable fruit vegetable garden thing. So in recap, regardless of when you're listening to this show, you can do your research for your seeds, you can plan for sprouting those seeds, you can get your beds ready, and you can plant. We're getting ready in planting season here in Southern California. Thanks, Brian, for all the insights on how to grow tomatoes. Whether you're slicing them for a sandwich or simmering them into a sauce, remember that the best tomato is the one you grew yourself.

SPEAKER_03 49:44

Until next time, keep gardening.org or kalk.org.