Tomatoes!

This season we built four high tunnels on an urban brownfield – a former gas station on Vernon Drive. The first two houses are growing some luscious tomatoes.

Sweet Sungolds!

So many delicious varieties - Indigo Rose, Moskovich, Big Beef, Black Cherry, New Girl, Striped German, Green Zebra, Yellow Pear, Pink Beauty, Tomatoberry, Yellow Mini, Favorita and Sungolds. Oh goodness, the Sungolds. These are the Farmer’s Market secret weapon – rarely does someone taste a sweet Sungold and make it far from the tent before purchasing a half pint. They are like candy, straight from the sun.

We were super late with the construction of the green houses – like two months late – which meant by the time we were able to get our tomato plants in the ground they were pretty hurting. The plants were leggy, wilted and purple in colour as they were so deprived of space and nutrients. We weren’t sure if any of them would make it but discovered that tomatoes are truly resilient plants.

We planted them fairly deep in the soil, partly to give them stability in their weakened-stem state, and to help with strong root growth. We loosened the roots of each plant to ensure that they weren’t root bound or tightly coiled. Root bound plants rarely make it.

Each of our planter boxes had two staggered rows of plants, 12 inches apart. Because the plants were so weak, we also picked off any flowers that the plants had at this point to ensure the plant focused its energy on producing strong roots and stems. Once the plant was better established, it could begin to flower. We also foliar fed our plants with a kelp fertilizer to help them make it through the transition.

Determinate vs. Indeterminate:

Tomato plants are classified as either determinate or indeterminate. Determinate plants will bloom and set fruit once in a season. They are often more compact which makes them great for container gardening. They do not continue to grow throughout the whole season – they fruit quick and then begin to diminish. This also makes them great if you want a large volume of tomatoes at one time for making sauce or canning. Determinate tomato plants do not get pruned, as they get need to be able to support lots of heavy fruit at one time.

Indeterminate plants continually bloom and set fruit throughout the whole season. They are vining plants, continuing to grow until they meet frost. These plants are the ones that get regularly pruned of suckers and require some vine support such as staking, or in our case, trellising. The tomatoes we grow at the farm are indeterminate varieties. We are able to trellis them neatly in our greenhouses and are able to have a steady, continual supply of tomatoes through the season for our markets.

Trellising drawing from my notebook.

What I’ve Learned About Trellising:

We ran wire along the length of our greenhouses. We then cut baling twine so that it was twice the length of the height between the plant and the top wire. Tie a loose slipknot around the base of the tomato plant with one end of the twine. Toss the other end of the twine up over the top wire and pull it down to tie another slipknot with that end around the twine. You can then tighten the length of twine using that top slipknot. Begin to gently wind the main stem around the twine as you tighten. Be sure to loosen the bottom knot as the plant grows and the stem gets larger. You can tighten or loosen the top slipknot to adjust the tension of the twine if needed. Check out my charming drawing if the explanation isn't too clear.

What I’ve Learned About Pruning:

When the plant is fairly well established you can begin to prune. First, start at the base of the plant and follow the main stem all the way to the tip – this will help you identify your leader, leaf branches and suckers. That main stem running from the base of the plant to the very tip is your leader.

I find it’s easier to start pruning from the bottom. Hold on to the main stem and look at the first leaf branch – check out the elbow between those two, if there is a new branch in the elbow where they meet, you’ve got a sucker! When they are small, just pinch them off with your fingers close to the elbow. When the suckers get big you will want to prune them with a small knife to ensure you don’t damage the stem or leave an open wound close to the main stem – leaving it more vulnerable to disease. Suckers will draw energy from the plant, so removing them removes the energy demand and helps the plant focus energy on fruit production. Also, removing suckers allows for better airflow around the plant which helps with disease prevention. You can also remove any new growth below the leaf branch, or even a few bottom leaf branches to ensure that the leaves are not touching the soil – again this helps with airflow and deters the spread of disease.

Pruned and soon-to-be trellised.

When you get to the top, it may be difficult to discern which is the leader and which may be a sucker – its ok to wait a few days to see how these develop. If you have two branches though, know that the flowers always form on the leader first, and then on the sucker. So if you are holding onto a branch that you think may be a sucker – look at the branch above it, if that one has flowers, you most likely are holding onto the sucker.

Always be careful of the growth tip of the tomato plant – you never want to prune that or damage it, as that is where new growth happens. If you top the plant and remove that growth tip, your plants won’t continue to grow.

Pruning also leaves your hands smelling delicious and turns them a darker colour that is hard to wash off. 

Hot and Dry:

Mixed cherry tomatoes.

The high tunnels are unheated poly tunnels with roll up sides. They get mondo hot during the day, and tomatoes love hot and dry climates. We aren’t dry farming, a technique where irrigation is cut off after plants begin to fruit, but we are keeping the watering to a minimum (partly due to not having a water source from the city for a few months and having to haul water from the fish plant across the street). Dry farming causes the plant stress out, send roots deep to look for water and focus on fruit production to ensure its survival in the form of seeds. The result is tasty fruit. Some critics say this also can lead to blossom end rot and cracked tomatoes if you aren’t able to successfully control the watering (ie. rain) and there are drastic fluctuations in water availability. The relatively warm dry microclimate of the high tunnel does mean our tomatoes taste fantastic!