Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half-Hour)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half-Hour)
This event was on
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.
Question:

Can you talk about placement and care for successful tomato plants/planting?
— Char Nolan
Answer:
I think as, um, you know, somebody as a home cook or a professional, I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to have a garden of some sort so you can get, uh, your produce as fresh as possible. You know exactly where they came from and what they're treated with as well too. So, um, for, let's see, for placement, uh, I typically am going to put them about, um, a foot and a half away from each other. And I usually put a tomato cage over the top of them too, even when they're young, just because the tomatoes are going to grow up through them. Um, I also put a couple posts on either side of my tomato cages and I have them kind of lined up in a row. Um, so, uh, I can put string across the very top of them and these are like eight foot poles, and then I'll string down little strings once I get to a certain, uh, height to be able to help bring that tomato plant up. At the same time, I'm going to be able to, I'm going to start looking for, um, the, uh, excess, uh, you know, fauna, the extras, the extra leaves that are kind of coming off of it. You'll notice that, uh, if a tomato plant is growing, and this is the main stalk right here, the leaf will come out here and you'll start to see a little sprout that kind of comes out between that. That basically means that you can cut this one off and this one will actually grow stronger underneath it as well. Now I typically do that up until it gets to, I would say about a foot to two. So the bottom of my plant is gonna be kind of scarce, where the top of it is gonna be much more bushy with a lot more kind of movement in there. And you'll see when the leaves start getting like really, really big, um, you can probably probably find one of those little chutes in between there and I just trim those off as well too. Now, those are kind of the things that I do. I'll just basically look at it, um, you know, with a, a cup of tea in the morning, um, going out, looking over the garden beds, just to kind of make sure that they're all, um, you know, in shape and do any adjustments that I need to do as well too. Now, a couple times during the season, I will look for an organic feed as well, and there are a couple different varieties that you can look for, um, you know, uh, that are specific for tomatoes, which is great. Um, I can't remember the one that I use right now, but it was, um, a natural organic fertilizer specifically for tomatoes, which is like a, you know, they're usually three numbers on a fertilizer bag and I think it's like a ten, ten three or something like that. But don't quote me on that exact number for the tomatoes right now, since I don't have that in front of me, I don't really remember on that one. But as far as gardening, um, it's a wonderful thing to do. I love to grow as many tomatoes as I possibly can fit in my garden. Um, and uh, just this year of expanded my garden out pretty large, so I have lots of cucumbers and Japanese egg plants and a whole variety of different kinds of peppers and my kids love shell peas and snap peas and, um, uh, so we have a lot of those as well. I also love, um, you know, being in Madison, Wisconsin, we definitely have a colder climate. So I do grow a lot of lettuces and I've started those a while ago as well too, to be able to get my, uh, butter lettuces, my kale's, uh, the chars, different things like that, that actually will do well in a cold environment too, and they can last a much longer, um, period. Uh, what I do is I actually plant those in larger kind of pots. Um, they originally trees came them and, um, I put trees in my backyard, but I found these kind of larger, um, pots, so they're just recycled from other places, filled them with a good compost. Um, and then, um, I'm able to kind of move them around during the season two to make sure they don't get overheated.
