Tomatoes

Tomatoes grown in a home garden have a certain richness to their taste that you just can't find at the grocery store. Tomatoes are relatively easy to grow. In Houston, March 7th is a good target date for planting tomatoes. I've planted as early as Feb 25th (2018), but that was due to a favorable 10 day weather forecast. I normally mix cow manure & a granular fertilizer into the soil around each tomato plant. I used Black Kow Cow Manure and I've used both Miracle Grow Shake 'n Feed & Jobes. My soil is very loose since I use raised bed filled with Vegetable Garden Soil from Living Earth here in Houston.

As the growing season progresses, I do mix up Miracle Grow in my favorite English Watering Can with the long spout pictured below. The long spout really helps to reach into where the tomato roots are … especially after they have expanded several feet to each side. I use Burpee XL tomato cages with extenders which bring the cage height to over 6 feet. My raised tomato beds are surrounded by 3 foot tall fence posts to which I attach 7 foot tall 2x4s so I can make a canopy over the tomato plants which I cover with wildlife netting in mid May when the tomatoes begin to ripen.

2014 & 2016 were my best years for tomatoes so far. Check those years out first.

2018 Growing Season

2018 wasn't a big year for tomatoes … in part to due some bug problems … but more likely due to changing my focus to daylilies & redoing the front yard landscaping. I planted 6 Celebrity, 6 Early Girl, 6 Beefmaster & 6 Sugary tomatoes on 02-25-17. My first planting in Feb … due primarily to a favorable 10 day weather forecast. I planted 2 more Early Girl tomatoes a week later. You will note the wind screen frame top is now sloped so water will roll off the plastic when placed on top if 20-30 mph winds are forecast. We really didn't have any wind events in early 2018. So I only covered the peppers (more susceptible to wind damage) for two weeks … never had to cover the tomatoes. I took the windscreen frames down on 03-18-18.

2018 wasn't a good year for bugs. I think is was aphids that caused the leaves to yellow on 1 Early Girl and 3 Beefmaster (see 04-29-18 photo). I tried spaying with Malathion. I also had the usual attack of the brown army worms which fortunately struck only one Early Girl. I used Captain Jack's Debugger which worked! Not only do they eat the leaves … they also bore into the tomatoes. Yuck!

In the fall of 2017, I transferred most of the soil in the tomato beds to the newly constructed daylily beds. I ordered more Vegetable Garden Soil from Living Earth. They shipped the Rose Mix which is supposed to be very similar. My tomato plants weren't quite as large in 2018, perhaps due to the new soil. This fall I plan to plant Broccoli & Lettuce in the tomato beds. To be continued ...

2017 Growing Season

Based upon the excellent results from 2016, I planted 15 Beefsteak and 6 Early Girl tomatoes on 03-04-17. The tomatoes did fine in 2017 as the pictures attest. There was a slight disruption in the middle of the growing season: a quadruple bypass for me on 05-03-17 followed by a week in the hospital and a week at home before my wife allowed me to start watering the garden again. She did a wonderful job in my absence and we did have a good tomato crop that year.

2016 Growing Season

2016 was a great year for tomatoes. On 03-06-16, I planted 3 Beefsteak, 3 Celebrity, 4 Early Girl, 4 Arkansas Traveler & 4 Parks Whopper tomato plants. During the period from May 14 to Jul 14 I picked a record 804 tomatoes. The peak day was Jun 12th when I picked 89 tomatoes! See below pictures of the tomatoes as they grew and for a charts of tomatoes picked by day and picked by individual tomato plant.

You will note in the chart above that I put the bird netting on the tomatoes on May 17th. On May 21st & May 30th I sprayed the tomato plants with Neem Oil to control aphids which were turning the leaves yellow. In 2016 I tried planting marigolds among the tomatoes & peppers to control bugs. Not sure that had much if any effect on the bugs … still had them. I also had little black army worms eating the tomatoes which I tried to control with Vegetable Garden Dust. I now use Captain Jack's Deadbug which works much better.

I did plant some Solar Fire tomatoes on June 5th, but they did not do so well this year as you can see from the pictures below. Not everything you plant works each & every time … even if you think you know what your are doing … which I'm not sure I do all the time!

2015 Growing Season

After a very successful 2014, I had high hopes for 2015 starting off with planting 4 Big Boy plants on 03-14-15 followed by 4 Sweet 100, 4 Celebrity & 8 Early Girl plants on 03-19-15. On Mar 22, I constructed a wind screen frame for the Big Boys which I followed up with 3 more wind screens for the Sweet 100, Celebrity & Early Girl plants on Mar 29th. I took down the wind screens on Apr 12 as the tomato plants were ready for their Burpee XL cages and could stand 20-30 mph wind events. I didn't keep track of tomatoes picked in 2015. I imagine I started picking my spring planting tomatoes the last week of May and was pretty much done by mid July as the 07-18-15 pics would attest. 2015 was the first year I framed around the tomatoes by attaching 2x4s to the fence posts then covered the frames with wildlife netting to keep the birds out. You'll also note in the 07-18-15 photos that I extended the sides by about 10 inches (look near the top for the extensions) to allow the tomato plants to expand in the hope of increasing the crop.

2015 - First Planting

2015 - Second Planting

I did plant some Solar Fire tomatoes in early May which by mid July began to produce tomatoes. I also planted some Summer Set tomatoes during the summer, but was disappointed with the production. Growing tomatoes in the fall doesn't result in a bumper crop every year as the fall weather can be quite different year by year.
By the way, beginning 2013 I gradually phased out my old silver flex wire tomato cages (see pic below, I've had these for over 15 years) which I propped up with green tomato stakes on each side. I replaced them with Burpee XL red tomato cages (they also come in green) which are 18 in x 18 in by 58 in tall. I also purchased the Burpee cage extenders which add another 24 inches in height. So we are talking about cages 7 feet tall when you add the extenders. I initially used Nylon Cable Ties to attach the cage extenders, but these require you to cut them off at the end of the season with scissors. It is much easier to use Rapiclip Soft Wire Ties which you can just unwrap at the end of the growing season and then reuse next year.

2014 Growing Season

First Planting - The 2014 tomato season began on 03-14-14 with planting of 3 Early Girl, 3 Rutgers, 3 Homestead & 3 Sweet 100 tomato plants. On 03-19-14, I added 3 Celebrity & 3 Beefsteak tomato plants. Finally, I added 4 Big Boy tomato plants to the mix. The tomatoes were planted in four different beds. That way if one bed was attacked by say stink bugs, the other 3 beds might not be affected … at least not immediately. You will note that by 05-23-14 lots of tomatoes have formed but no wildlife netting yet since the tomatoes have yet to ripen.

2014 - First Planting

I started picking tomatoes on June 2: 3 Early Girl & 1 Beefsteak. By August 1st, I'd picked 647 tomatoes (not counting the 100s of sweet 100 cherry tomatoes), a record harvest to this day. I had 19 tomato plants (excluding the 3 Sweet 100 plants) … so that's an average of 34 tomatoes per plant! I had one Early Girl tomato plant that produced 93 tomatoes! Along the way I did have to deal with tomato hornworms on May 2nd & red Stink bugs (my guess) on Jun 27th. I used Liquid Seven on the Stink bugs. Tomatoes quit setting by mid June since the overnight temps stay above 75 degrees in Houston. So by August 1st, it's more than time to pull up the spring tomatoes. See below for pics from the June & July harvesting period.

2014 - Second Planting

Based on the excellent results in 2013, I planted 8 Hot Spell tomato plants on 06-30-18, 4 Solar Fire & 2 Husky Cherry tomato plants on 07-01-14 and 4 Summer Set & 2 Husky Cherry tomato plants on 07-02-18. All these tomato varieties are supposed to be able to set in the hot Houston summer sun. I had success growing Hot Spell tomatoes in 2013 so I was looking forward to 2014 when I planted 4 different varieties during mid summer.

It turned out that very few Husky Cherry tomatoes didn't set during the summer & fall. The Solar Fire plants did set during the summer heat. The Hot Spell and Summer Set plants didn't start setting until the fall. The 2014 fall weather was milder than 2013 with no frosts that I can remember. Once you get to November, the tomatoes have a difficult time ripening outside.

It turns out the first hard frost/freeze was forecast for the first week in Jan 2015. So on 01-04-15, my neighbor and I picked all the midsize to large tomatoes on the Summer Set, Hot Spell and Solar Fire tomato plants. My neighbor probably picked 150 tomatoes. I picked 340 tomatoes which I laid out on our kitchen table (see pic). By the way, I wouldn't recommend doing this since tomatoes are acidic and by leaving them on the table for a week, you can see marks in the wood which are still there to this day. I did transfer the tomatoes to our kitchen bay window and to the windows in the upstairs man cave. Almost all the tomatoes did eventually ripen. You can see how many I had left a month later in the 02-01-15 photos. The most prolific producer were the 4 Summer Set plants which were absolutely loaded with tomatoes when my neighbor and I picked tomatoes on 01-04-15.

2013 Growing Season

2013 was my first year growing tomatoes after about a 12 year hiatus. I planted Better Boys in early April. They did well until some form of Stink bug attacked in mid June. I planted Hot Spell tomatoes in mid June. The plants did much better and produced a nice late summer/fall crop. I followed this up with a final planting of Legend and La Roma II tomatoes in September. These did less well. The problem with growing fall tomatoes is that they have difficulty ripening outside once you get to November & December. They will eventually ripen inside in our bay window and their flavor is still better than grocery store tomatoes. We had several light frosts in Houston in Nov & Dec which took a toll on the fall tomatoes as you can see from the pics.

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