Growing Tomatoes by Byron Chitwood.
When planning a garden, one of the first vegetables that come to mind is tomatoes. It’s no wonder, they are fairly easy to grow and nothing tastes quite like a home grown tomato. Most store bought tomatoes are selections that are prolific producers and have a good shelf life. Flavor is secondary.
Tomatoes have been around as long as the human race has been in the Americas, particularly South America where they apparently grew wild and were harvested and eaten by the hunter-gathers that were there about thirteen thousand years ago. Since that time, they have been hybridized and selectively bred to produce what we now grow or purchase at the supermarket.
This is mid March and it is too late to plant tomatoes from seeds. However, your favorite nursery, hardware store or other outlet for plants will have an abundance of plants in many different varieties. They will range anywhere from dwarf to determinate to indeterminate varieties. If your garden plot consists of a few large pots or half barrels, plants designated dwarf, patio or determinate are probably the ones most suited to this type gardening. Unless you have one favorite variety, plant as many different varieties as you can. Container gardening will require more diligence in watering since our Texas sun will dry out the soil much quicker than in a traditional garden. Lightly fertilize every two or three weeks with a well balanced fertilizer.
For the traditional gardener with plenty of space, plant several different varieties in and area where the plants can get plenty of sun and the soil is well drained. The plant outlet sells plants in single pots and containers made up of 4, 6 and 9 containers. Before transplanting the newly purchased tomato plants, have the soil well tilled to a depth of about six inches and amended with peat moss or well composted organic material. Fertilizer can be added to the soil either before or after tilling. Be careful and not use “weed and feed” fertilizer. Just before planting, soak the containers containing the tomato plants in a solution of water and water soluble fertilizer. This will make the plants easier to remove from the containers. Plant the individual tomato plants in holes about an inch deeper than the soil level in the container while being careful to not damage the stems or leaves. Space the plants approximately three feet apart. Hopefully, the last freezing frost was just a few days before planting. However, nature doesn’t always accommodate us gardeners so if frost is forecast, take precautions to prevent freezing of the plant by covering with buckets or some other frost prevention cover.
Cage or stake the tomato plants before they get too large. The Master Gardeners ran a test several years ago and found that the caged ones kept the tomato from contacting the ground and being more subject to soil borne diseases and insects.
The best time to pick tomatoes is just before the birds decide to sample them. Harvest the fruits when they have barely started to turn red or yellow. Place them on a window sill or on the cabinet in the kitchen and they will ripen within a day or so.
When home canning, add some freshly picked basil to each jar along with a teaspoon of vinegar and a half teaspoon of salt per pint. I’ll give you an Oklahoma guarantee that you will never can then any other way.