Question
Kathleen Aoki
Do you grow your own tomatoes? I just spent a ridiculous amount of money on a few pots, soil, and other items for my backyard tomato garden. I'm hoping it pays off, at least in flavor!
Answer
I do grow my own tomatoes. In fact, I was just talking to Patrick, who's our moderator, about how many starts for tomatoes I have. I started my starts probably in January, and I have these big, huge flats where I put seeds in when my kids put them in there. And then we water them and put them under grow lights for the first couple months. Right now, they're at the point where I'm able to put them out on a sun porch during the day and bring them back in at night just in case we're getting anycooler temperatures. Actually, it's been fine to be able to keep them on there around the clock. Now I probably have about 75 different starts for tomatoes on the back porch right now, along with a bunch of other vegetables as well. But a huge variety of different tomatoes. I always like to do more than I need to be able to start. That way I can make sure that when I take them from the little inch by inch squares, I go up to the next size, which is usually a four by four or five by five-inch pot, and that's where they all are right now. I transplanted them over the weekend, to be able to make sure that I have strong starts from those, because if you plant 75 of them, not all 75 are going to survive. So in order to be able to get a lot of them and get the varieties that I want to be able to make that happen, I plant a lot at the beginning. And then because I'm in Wisconsin, I don't usually put anything into the beds until usually Mother's Day, is the target area to make sure you're missing frost and all of that, to make sure that they're surviving well. But I grow them so they're almost about eight inches tall before I even put them into the ground, to make sure that they have a really good start. So there's a little dedication in that. There's about four or five months, basically, that I'm growing them inside, and moving them around almost daily to make sure that I'm getting the best quality that I possibly can. So, yeah. That's starting from seed. You can absolutely do them from starts as well. Get them just a good soil. They make different tomato fertilizers that are fantastic for that, for directly in those purposes as well. Just make sure that they have enough room to be able to root out properly. And then some gardening tips to be able to go a long way. As far as tomatoes, you could have all kinds of things from vining tomatoes. I've had years where my tomato plants were 12 feet tall, so having to figure out how to deal with that. And then also determinate versus indeterminate tomatoes. So do they all come at once, or do they come through the whole season and you can pick them at any time? The Roma tomatoes all come at one time typically, whereas things like cherry tomatoes or Cherokee tomatoes or Mortgage Lifters all kind of come sporadically throughout the year. So a lot of different things to learn about growing tomatoes, but definitely a fun adventure.
