Tomatoes & friends
Tomato (heirloom, roma, cherry)
10–20 galStake or cage, prune suckers on indeterminates.
- Indoors
- 6 to 8 wk (late Mar)
- Outside
- Transplant after frost
- Where
- Grow bag, raised bed, or in ground
- Sun
- Full sun; six hours minimum
- Water
- Deep and even; swings split fruit and bring blossom end rot
- Harvest
- Jul to frost
The main event: heirlooms, romas, and cherries started in late March and carrying the kitchen from July to frost. Bag sizes and pruning vary by type, but the season is one arc: out after May 12, first cherries in July, sauce weeks in September.
Growing
Six to eight weeks indoors from late March is enough; a stocky six-week start transplants better than a leggy ten-week one. Plant deep after frost, burying the stem to the first true leaves, in a 15 to 20 gallon bag for indeterminates or around 10 gallons for determinates and cherries. Stake or cage at planting, and prune indeterminate suckers weekly so the plant spends on fruit instead of foliage. Water like a metronome, deep and on schedule; it is the lurch between soaked and bone dry that cracks ripening fruit and blackens the blossom end. Once the first trusses set, feed with something low in nitrogen.
Varieties
Cherokee Purple and Brandywine hold the slicer spots; Amish Paste out-yields Roma for the sauce shelf; Black Cherry and Supersweet 100 cover the snacking end.
Pests
Tomato hornworms appear in July, always bigger than seems possible; hand-pick at dusk, and leave any wearing white cocoons, since those are braconid wasps finishing the job. Early blight climbs the lower leaves in humid stretches. Mulch, water the soil rather than the plant, and strip spotted foliage promptly to slow it down.
In the kitchen
Cherries rarely reach the house. Slicers carry tomato-sandwich season through August, and the romas get roasted flat with garlic and frozen in quart bags as winter sauce.