17 ms·

Growing Tomatoes

160 points by siong1987 14y ago

joshu 14y ago
Awesome. My wife and I have actually taken classes with and grown tomatoes from the folks mentioned in the article. I recommend it if you can and are nearby.
jmspring 14y ago
Love Apple Farm's is a great local resource here in the south bay. I've had mixed results with their tomatoes, mostly for not following their tried and true approach to nurturing your green leafed friends. This year due to a great pepper plant I bought last year, I've been growing an abundant number of seedlings of assorted types. I plan on following the best practices from Love Apple for tomatoes, but will also look into nurturing the remaining plants. The one thing I've found in raising your own plants from seeds is how much literature is dedicated to interacting with your seedlings. I enjoy my time when I can work at home and interact with my seedlings. If in the south bay and interested in some tomatoes or peppers, feel free to ping me. <username> at gmail.
hp50g 14y ago
As a prolific tomato grower (only because they're damn expensive in the uk if you want non gas ripened crap ones and theyre like a crack addiction), you don't need to fiddle around with all of that rubbish. Plants of all kinds are pretty good at growing on their own with not much help from us if you know what their natural conditions would be. Granted you might get 10% less yield if you don't treat them nicely but its just not worth the 200% more effort. Stick them in cheap compost indoors and keep moist with an atomiser spray until they germinate. Wait until they are about 3 inches high, then cut out with a spoon and wham in any old plant pot. When they are 15cm tall, feed 'em with cheap tomato food. When they are 25cm tall, yank them out of the pot, poke a 6' bamboo stick 12" into the ground and throw the plant in a hole at the front. Water daily. Tie to pole every so often. Tomatoes done. Only consideration is don't grow them in the same place every year or they'll get diseased (technically rotate your crops) and make sure its in a very sunny bit. Make your own compost as well for planting out. I just throw all my veg waste in a black bin and leave it for a year. Anything goes in except for tea bags and meats and plastics. I spend about 3 hours a year on tomatoes and get literally 30-40kg using this method (street value here for same quality is around £480). Get your seeds here (the last respectable seed shop): http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ http://www.realseeds.co.uk/
- eru 14y ago
  > Anything goes in except for tea bags and meats and plastics. You can put the plastics in, if you are prepared to fish them out afterwards. (Unless you are worried about chemicals in the plastics.) What's wrong with teabags?
  - radio4fan 14y ago
    > What's wrong with teabags? Depends on the brand, but the big UK brands (like PG) use some kind of plastic in the bags which doesn't compost.
    - Kliment 14y ago
      It's PLA. It does compost, but at much higher temperatures than most organic waste.
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    They are excellent. Give them your coffee grounds too. Never deprive a garden of its coffee. Worms go nuts about coffee for some reason.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    Plastics seem to attract the crows and magpies who will vigorously shred any seedlings near bits of it. Teabags (twinings every day :) tend to not degrade quickly resulting in tea bags blown all over the garden.
- joshu 14y ago
  some of the breeds that LAF offers are not even vaguely hardy. the more mainstream breeds we've gone with from other folks have a much easier time.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Tomatoes are, I suspect, easier to grow here in New Zealand. A fern I planted sprouted a tomato. I did nothing except water it once or twice. For about the 5th time today I gave away a bag of about 2kgs of cherry tomatoes. I don't like tomatoes much, but they do look good ripening on the vine. From the sounds of the article, California is a bit hot and dry for them, and the UK, from what you describe, a little cool. Do you grow other veges?
rrhyne 14y ago
Growing tomatoes or anything really, is the perfect counter balance to working on a computer. I've solved many issues while removing suckers from tomatoes or spraying neem to ward off mold and pests.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Growing anything is like that. Except lawns, which drive you insane. When you manage to get the majority of a meal out your own garden it is very satisfying.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    Which is why I dug my lawn up and planted potatoes :)
    - lostlogin 14y ago
      They are excellent to grow - only recently stumbled on the system where you keep heaping soil on their greenery to force more growth. It's amazing when you dig them up. Your giving me ideas.
      - hp50g 14y ago
        Yeah that works a treat. Requires a good stock of compost though which is a bit hard the first couple of years.
- jwn 14y ago
  Agreed. My wife is a huge gardener and I often get roped into helping her with a variety of tasks. Bed building, tilling, planting, weeding, watering, all of it! It's a very nice compliment to sitting my ass in an office chair 6 hours a day.
radio4fan 14y ago
Tomatoes are great fun to grow (try Sungold -- fantastic little yellow cherry tomatoes that you can't otherwise buy). But if you're busy, have a go at chillis: no blight, no splitting, they tolerate under- and over-watering and poor soil, and there are a huge variety available (including some great-looking ornamentals). They have a much longer fruiting period so you're not overwhelmed by huge numbers of chillis at the same time. If you put them on a sunny windowsill in winter they will survive and keep flowering and fruiting over winter (probably dont need to bother if you live somewhere like Southern California). You'll need to start using fertilizer if you do this. You can just dry a chilli you like from the supermarket and use the seeds from that: germination rates are near 100%. Then once you're hooked, buy esoteric varieties on the internet.
- dsr_ 14y ago
  Sungolds are commercially available -- in very limited quantities, at least here around Boston. They grow very nicely, though, and have a short enough growing season that you don't have to pay very much attention to exactly when you do things for them. Highly recommended to any hacker in Cambridge or nearby who has a sunny balcony and even vaguely likes tomatoes.
eksith 14y ago
Fun fact: Tomatoes love thrash and death metal. http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/tomato-update/ http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/tomato-update/ http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/tomato-experiment/ http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/tomato-experiment/ I don't know if this is only due to simply loud and/or harsh noises (I didn't check classical) or whether it's only applicable to this variety, but since I can't be attentive as I should be all the time, they worked as a wonderful babysitter.
- hp50g 14y ago
  This is probably on the lines of the vibrations causing the plants to stiffen up and produce better supporting structures. You can do the same thing by pointing a desk fan at your seedlings for a couple of hours a day. Metal is cooler though :)
  - eksith 14y ago
    Ah, it's bit too chilly to run a fan at the moment, but I'm definitely gonna need to try that this Spring / Summer. I think that's probably the most plausible explanation I've had so far. A few people told me that the sound of "impending doom" may cause them to hurry up and get stronger to withstand potential danger, but that seems too far fetched. Thanks for the suggestion!
arrowgunz 14y ago
Joe Hewitt is back!
stevewilhelm 14y ago
Baia Nicchia: Bay Area tomato farm http://baianicchia.blogspot.com/ http://baianicchia.blogspot.com/
nicholassmith 14y ago
I've just started growing this weekend and I'm super excited, we're starting with gardeners delight tomatoes and some chillies, once I've gotten into it a bit more we're going to expand out with a few others (onions and lettuce I think). It'll make an excellent diversion from coding. It's great, I get a nice diversion and a load of fresh veg. Any extra I end up with will either go to friends and family, or if they're happy with it a local food bank.
- hp50g 14y ago
  good luck :) you can't go wrong with gardeners delight tomatoes - awesome variety. Chillis are a pain. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. salad crops are good starters and you can just throw them in a tray on a sunny window sill as well. Wouldn't bother with onions as its cheaper to buy. Try leeks if you have some space instead (let some flower as well as they look pretty cool). Enjoy and don't get discouraged by disasters. I've been doing it for 20 years and still manage to ruin something every year!
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Thanks for the advice! For the moment they're getting grown in the kitchen and then they'll be planted out in our back garden, I've left it a little late in the year for a few but given the UK weather I don't think I'll suffer too much from it.
    - hp50g 14y ago
      Weather has been rubbish so far so you're doing the right thing. My tomatoes are about 2 inches high and on the living room window sill at the moment as I wasn't confident I could avoid last frost. Avidly watching weather reports!
  - Surio 14y ago
    >> Chillis are a pain. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. :( Tell me about it! Neither did tomatoes, nor did Bell peppers/Capsicum, nor did those Courgettes, neither did the marrows, sugar snap peas... oh sugar! I am going to find a safe, dark place, and crawl into foetal position! >> I've been doing it for 20 years and still manage to ruin something every year! +1 Hope springs eternal. Thanks.
meerita 14y ago
Ah... my house at Buenos Aires has around 10 trees that just produce all kinds of fruits. I harvest a lot of fruits, make homemade mermelade. And not to mention my particular collection of vine planted all around the park.
TomAnthony 14y ago
Pleasantly surprised by how fun and informative I found this article. I initially suspected the title was a metaphor of some sort, and almost stopped reading. Very glad I didn't - you've inspired me to give it a try! :)
- sdoering 14y ago
  Well, it is. We (my girlfriend infected me with this tomato-addiction), grow about 60 different varieties this year and some potatoes, some chilies, a lot of herbs and so on... It really is a perfect relief to 8 - 10 hours on a job in front of pair of monitors. And it really tastes great. I am not able to buy this nearly tasteless round-red-water called tomatoes at the supermarket anymore. ;-)
ErrantX 14y ago
Articles like this always make me a bit sad, as a keen gardener. It usually involves some "hip" but impractical course from a fancily named company who are masking over the fact that 90% of successful gardening is digging a hole and watering. In fact it boils down to two things: * Basic gardening is not hard * Fancy equipment is no substitution for practice & experience All of the equipment (and money) he mentioned did little to impact the problems faced when growing tomatoes; he still struggled with the common diseases (why do courses like that not teach about such things!!). Also, why are they handing round seeds with no sensible advice on flavour, treatment and scale! Aren't they supposed to be experts? Some tomato basics: * Tomatoes are great, they generally need very little attention and will fruit under even the worst gardener. BUT initially they do need a very small amount of daily attention! * They grow bigger than you expect. BUT if you only give it a common garden cane to grow up this will help limit its growth :) * General advice for all vegetable growing: plant in stages. And spend time picking your varieties depending on the time they fruit. I generally plant seeds once every fortnight during the early part of the year, to make sure everything doesn't crop at once! It seems this "love apple" totally failed to give this basic, and obvious, advice. It depresses me how many hacks are around selling these gardening courses, when the reality is that it's simple to just get out there and have a go. First year round it won't work so well - but within 4 or 5 years you'll be a dab hand. I recommend trying lettuce as a first attempt - you can plant it straight out in the garden, it grows really quickly, requires minimal attention, and is basically impossible to get wrong (just don't plant the whole pack at once :D). In fact, pretty much anything you can plant out in rows and grows close to the ground will be easy to tend. Most seed packets come with solid instructions to get the best from your plants, so don't neglect reading them. Oh, another helpful tip is to learn how to dig over & fertilise a garden properly [1], as well as the basics of crop rotation - this will do a lot of improving your success rate. To finish with an analogy; what "love apple" seem to be advising here, is similar to a non-programmer sitting down with the fresh install of Rails and reading a single page "How To" on "Cloning Amazon in three weeks". 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/soil_digging1.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/soil_diggin...
- hp50g 14y ago
  you hit the nail on the head with that. Snake oil salesmen. People seem to want to pay to be told something you can read in a book. Its taking money off fools. Buy a book and read it. This one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables-Larkcom/dp/071121963X http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables-Larkcom/dp/... This is the only gardening book i own. People keep buying me new trendy ones etc endorsed by celebrity morons but they usually end up being re-gifted. This is good for anywhere in the world as well even though it primarily targets northern hemisphere. Decades of advice, concisely compiled. Its the SICP of gardening.
OGinparadise 14y ago
You could skip a lot of work by buying already potted plants. Let a professional do that, it's not worth for the 50-100 you need. Steel cages are great if you have 20-40 year plans or have money to waste. Otherwise you can buy a few 2X4s and then create some sort of net with sticks and wire. Each plant is then tied to it and you direct the bigger branches to spread. Yeah they need some fertilizer for better production and maybe pesticide but that's about it. If the land hasn't been used for ages, it will be even better. Of course you can walk into a nursery and come out of it with $2K in equipment, but it's not really needed. You may get say 1.25 lbs more per plant more but...you can plant more and work much less. Tomato plants are resilient and there should be no drama when growing them. Plant them in stages, tie them to the "net," water them, remove the grass and maybe spray them with pesticide. That's all folks!
- hp50g 14y ago
  Bit expensive doing it that way. My toms cost about £10 a year, usually to replace the rotten bamboo sticks and for tomato food. Seeds come from last year's :)
cyphunk 14y ago
so i read this correctly over half of the produce was lost with so much effort. fertiliser and soil treatments people! fish heads. hipsters got too much time for their own good
nkurz 14y ago
I've been going to a large Bay Area tomato tasting for the last few years. In case anyone is looking for more recommendations, my favorites from last year were: * Momotoro * Exotic Blue Green * Black Cherry * Flamme' * Indigo Rose It's interesting how much the flavor varies from year to year, and from grower to grower. Sometimes I find a favorite variety to be blah the next, and vice versa. But I guess I've got to find a source for Orange Russian 117.
- conesus 14y ago
  What's the info on these tomato tastings? I'm in the Bay Area as well and would live to attend.
  - nkurz 14y ago
    This is the one I've been attending: http://kassenhoffgrowers.com/ http://kassenhoffgrowers.com/ They are in Alameda and announce a date in fall.
- joshu 14y ago
  Where do you get the momotoros? You can get the stuff he mentioned from Love Apple Farms. They're in Ben Lomond (down 17 I think)
  - nkurz 14y ago
    I haven't grown them, but only tasted them the Kassenhoff tasting (linked below). I believe they got them (at least initially) from Kitazawa: http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_111-125.html http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_111-125.html
JCraig 14y ago
Tomatoes are quite prolific and can be used in many types of dishes. For sauce, I like plum varieties roasted or dried; for sandwiches and snacking, I like black russians or yellow grape varieties. Some people have already mentioned chilis as a good crop to grow along with tomatoes. Might as well grow cilantro too and you're halfway to a decent salsa (buy the onions, they ripen at a different time of year). I also like to grow basil alongside my tomatoes. You can buy a nursery plant for the same cost as buying fresh basil for cooking from the grocery store, and the basil plant will produce all summer long. Sweet basil is great for pestos, margherita sandwiches and pizzas, and marinara sauce. Thai basil (which tastes of anise) is great for curries. On the whole, I find that growing my own herbs gives me the most bang for the buck. It's still worth it to grow tomatoes since there's no way you can match the taste of a home-grown one.
scotch_drinker 14y ago
One piece of advice I haven't seen yet is to pick varieties that are known to work well in your geographical area. Growing tomatoes in London or northern California is drastically different weather-wise than Texas. Where fancy heirlooms can work in the former, planting them here will net you a couple of really great tomatoes and mostly frustration. Picking varieties that are known to work will with your climate will largely eliminate the need for the fish head-egg shell-aspirin voodoo. Though if you're into those things, feel free. Gardening is better if you experiment and enjoy yourself as most journeys are.
TomAnthony 14y ago
For those looking for his favourite seeds (Orange Russian) in the UK. I just ordered some from here: http://www.heirloomtoms.org/store/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=prodshow&ref=oruss http://www.heirloomtoms.org/store/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=... Was the only place I could find, but seems to be run by a passionate tomato ninja, and checkout was relatively painless.
margaretann 14y ago
http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes
margaretann 14y ago
http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes

160 points by siong1987 14y ago

joshu 14y ago

Awesome. My wife and I have actually taken classes with and grown tomatoes from the folks mentioned in the article. I recommend it if you can and are nearby.

jmspring 14y ago

Love Apple Farm's is a great local resource here in the south bay. I've had mixed results with their tomatoes, mostly for not following their tried and true approach to nurturing your green leafed friends. This year due to a great pepper plant I bought last year, I've been growing an abundant number of seedlings of assorted types. I plan on following the best practices from Love Apple for tomatoes, but will also look into nurturing the remaining plants. The one thing I've found in raising your own plants from seeds is how much literature is dedicated to interacting with your seedlings. I enjoy my time when I can work at home and interact with my seedlings. If in the south bay and interested in some tomatoes or peppers, feel free to ping me. <username> at gmail.

hp50g 14y ago

As a prolific tomato grower (only because they're damn expensive in the uk if you want non gas ripened crap ones and theyre like a crack addiction), you don't need to fiddle around with all of that rubbish. Plants of all kinds are pretty good at growing on their own with not much help from us if you know what their natural conditions would be. Granted you might get 10% less yield if you don't treat them nicely but its just not worth the 200% more effort. Stick them in cheap compost indoors and keep moist with an atomiser spray until they germinate. Wait until they are about 3 inches high, then cut out with a spoon and wham in any old plant pot. When they are 15cm tall, feed 'em with cheap tomato food. When they are 25cm tall, yank them out of the pot, poke a 6' bamboo stick 12" into the ground and throw the plant in a hole at the front. Water daily. Tie to pole every so often. Tomatoes done. Only consideration is don't grow them in the same place every year or they'll get diseased (technically rotate your crops) and make sure its in a very sunny bit. Make your own compost as well for planting out. I just throw all my veg waste in a black bin and leave it for a year. Anything goes in except for tea bags and meats and plastics. I spend about 3 hours a year on tomatoes and get literally 30-40kg using this method (street value here for same quality is around £480). Get your seeds here (the last respectable seed shop): http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ http://www.realseeds.co.uk/

eru 14y ago
> Anything goes in except for tea bags and meats and plastics. You can put the plastics in, if you are prepared to fish them out afterwards. (Unless you are worried about chemicals in the plastics.) What's wrong with teabags?
- radio4fan 14y ago
  > What's wrong with teabags? Depends on the brand, but the big UK brands (like PG) use some kind of plastic in the bags which doesn't compost.
  - Kliment 14y ago
    It's PLA. It does compost, but at much higher temperatures than most organic waste.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  They are excellent. Give them your coffee grounds too. Never deprive a garden of its coffee. Worms go nuts about coffee for some reason.
- hp50g 14y ago
  Plastics seem to attract the crows and magpies who will vigorously shred any seedlings near bits of it. Teabags (twinings every day :) tend to not degrade quickly resulting in tea bags blown all over the garden.
joshu 14y ago
some of the breeds that LAF offers are not even vaguely hardy. the more mainstream breeds we've gone with from other folks have a much easier time.
lostlogin 14y ago
Tomatoes are, I suspect, easier to grow here in New Zealand. A fern I planted sprouted a tomato. I did nothing except water it once or twice. For about the 5th time today I gave away a bag of about 2kgs of cherry tomatoes. I don't like tomatoes much, but they do look good ripening on the vine. From the sounds of the article, California is a bit hot and dry for them, and the UK, from what you describe, a little cool. Do you grow other veges?

rrhyne 14y ago

Growing tomatoes or anything really, is the perfect counter balance to working on a computer. I've solved many issues while removing suckers from tomatoes or spraying neem to ward off mold and pests.

lostlogin 14y ago
Growing anything is like that. Except lawns, which drive you insane. When you manage to get the majority of a meal out your own garden it is very satisfying.
- hp50g 14y ago
  Which is why I dug my lawn up and planted potatoes :)
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    They are excellent to grow - only recently stumbled on the system where you keep heaping soil on their greenery to force more growth. It's amazing when you dig them up. Your giving me ideas.
    - hp50g 14y ago
      Yeah that works a treat. Requires a good stock of compost though which is a bit hard the first couple of years.
jwn 14y ago
Agreed. My wife is a huge gardener and I often get roped into helping her with a variety of tasks. Bed building, tilling, planting, weeding, watering, all of it! It's a very nice compliment to sitting my ass in an office chair 6 hours a day.

radio4fan 14y ago

Tomatoes are great fun to grow (try Sungold -- fantastic little yellow cherry tomatoes that you can't otherwise buy). But if you're busy, have a go at chillis: no blight, no splitting, they tolerate under- and over-watering and poor soil, and there are a huge variety available (including some great-looking ornamentals). They have a much longer fruiting period so you're not overwhelmed by huge numbers of chillis at the same time. If you put them on a sunny windowsill in winter they will survive and keep flowering and fruiting over winter (probably dont need to bother if you live somewhere like Southern California). You'll need to start using fertilizer if you do this. You can just dry a chilli you like from the supermarket and use the seeds from that: germination rates are near 100%. Then once you're hooked, buy esoteric varieties on the internet.

dsr_ 14y ago
Sungolds are commercially available -- in very limited quantities, at least here around Boston. They grow very nicely, though, and have a short enough growing season that you don't have to pay very much attention to exactly when you do things for them. Highly recommended to any hacker in Cambridge or nearby who has a sunny balcony and even vaguely likes tomatoes.

eksith 14y ago

Fun fact: Tomatoes love thrash and death metal. http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/tomato-update/ http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/tomato-update/ http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/tomato-experiment/ http://eksith.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/tomato-experiment/ I don't know if this is only due to simply loud and/or harsh noises (I didn't check classical) or whether it's only applicable to this variety, but since I can't be attentive as I should be all the time, they worked as a wonderful babysitter.

hp50g 14y ago
This is probably on the lines of the vibrations causing the plants to stiffen up and produce better supporting structures. You can do the same thing by pointing a desk fan at your seedlings for a couple of hours a day. Metal is cooler though :)
- eksith 14y ago
  Ah, it's bit too chilly to run a fan at the moment, but I'm definitely gonna need to try that this Spring / Summer. I think that's probably the most plausible explanation I've had so far. A few people told me that the sound of "impending doom" may cause them to hurry up and get stronger to withstand potential danger, but that seems too far fetched. Thanks for the suggestion!

arrowgunz 14y ago

Joe Hewitt is back!

stevewilhelm 14y ago

Baia Nicchia: Bay Area tomato farm http://baianicchia.blogspot.com/ http://baianicchia.blogspot.com/

nicholassmith 14y ago

I've just started growing this weekend and I'm super excited, we're starting with gardeners delight tomatoes and some chillies, once I've gotten into it a bit more we're going to expand out with a few others (onions and lettuce I think). It'll make an excellent diversion from coding. It's great, I get a nice diversion and a load of fresh veg. Any extra I end up with will either go to friends and family, or if they're happy with it a local food bank.

hp50g 14y ago
good luck :) you can't go wrong with gardeners delight tomatoes - awesome variety. Chillis are a pain. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. salad crops are good starters and you can just throw them in a tray on a sunny window sill as well. Wouldn't bother with onions as its cheaper to buy. Try leeks if you have some space instead (let some flower as well as they look pretty cool). Enjoy and don't get discouraged by disasters. I've been doing it for 20 years and still manage to ruin something every year!
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Thanks for the advice! For the moment they're getting grown in the kitchen and then they'll be planted out in our back garden, I've left it a little late in the year for a few but given the UK weather I don't think I'll suffer too much from it.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    Weather has been rubbish so far so you're doing the right thing. My tomatoes are about 2 inches high and on the living room window sill at the moment as I wasn't confident I could avoid last frost. Avidly watching weather reports!
- Surio 14y ago
  >> Chillis are a pain. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. :( Tell me about it! Neither did tomatoes, nor did Bell peppers/Capsicum, nor did those Courgettes, neither did the marrows, sugar snap peas... oh sugar! I am going to find a safe, dark place, and crawl into foetal position! >> I've been doing it for 20 years and still manage to ruin something every year! +1 Hope springs eternal. Thanks.

meerita 14y ago

Ah... my house at Buenos Aires has around 10 trees that just produce all kinds of fruits. I harvest a lot of fruits, make homemade mermelade. And not to mention my particular collection of vine planted all around the park.

TomAnthony 14y ago

Pleasantly surprised by how fun and informative I found this article. I initially suspected the title was a metaphor of some sort, and almost stopped reading. Very glad I didn't - you've inspired me to give it a try! :)

sdoering 14y ago
Well, it is. We (my girlfriend infected me with this tomato-addiction), grow about 60 different varieties this year and some potatoes, some chilies, a lot of herbs and so on... It really is a perfect relief to 8 - 10 hours on a job in front of pair of monitors. And it really tastes great. I am not able to buy this nearly tasteless round-red-water called tomatoes at the supermarket anymore. ;-)

ErrantX 14y ago

Articles like this always make me a bit sad, as a keen gardener. It usually involves some "hip" but impractical course from a fancily named company who are masking over the fact that 90% of successful gardening is digging a hole and watering. In fact it boils down to two things: * Basic gardening is not hard * Fancy equipment is no substitution for practice & experience All of the equipment (and money) he mentioned did little to impact the problems faced when growing tomatoes; he still struggled with the common diseases (why do courses like that not teach about such things!!). Also, why are they handing round seeds with no sensible advice on flavour, treatment and scale! Aren't they supposed to be experts? Some tomato basics: * Tomatoes are great, they generally need very little attention and will fruit under even the worst gardener. BUT initially they do need a very small amount of daily attention! * They grow bigger than you expect. BUT if you only give it a common garden cane to grow up this will help limit its growth :) * General advice for all vegetable growing: plant in stages. And spend time picking your varieties depending on the time they fruit. I generally plant seeds once every fortnight during the early part of the year, to make sure everything doesn't crop at once! It seems this "love apple" totally failed to give this basic, and obvious, advice. It depresses me how many hacks are around selling these gardening courses, when the reality is that it's simple to just get out there and have a go. First year round it won't work so well - but within 4 or 5 years you'll be a dab hand. I recommend trying lettuce as a first attempt - you can plant it straight out in the garden, it grows really quickly, requires minimal attention, and is basically impossible to get wrong (just don't plant the whole pack at once :D). In fact, pretty much anything you can plant out in rows and grows close to the ground will be easy to tend. Most seed packets come with solid instructions to get the best from your plants, so don't neglect reading them. Oh, another helpful tip is to learn how to dig over & fertilise a garden properly [1], as well as the basics of crop rotation - this will do a lot of improving your success rate. To finish with an analogy; what "love apple" seem to be advising here, is similar to a non-programmer sitting down with the fresh install of Rails and reading a single page "How To" on "Cloning Amazon in three weeks". 1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/soil_digging1.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/soil_diggin...

hp50g 14y ago
you hit the nail on the head with that. Snake oil salesmen. People seem to want to pay to be told something you can read in a book. Its taking money off fools. Buy a book and read it. This one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables-Larkcom/dp/071121963X http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables-Larkcom/dp/... This is the only gardening book i own. People keep buying me new trendy ones etc endorsed by celebrity morons but they usually end up being re-gifted. This is good for anywhere in the world as well even though it primarily targets northern hemisphere. Decades of advice, concisely compiled. Its the SICP of gardening.

OGinparadise 14y ago

You could skip a lot of work by buying already potted plants. Let a professional do that, it's not worth for the 50-100 you need. Steel cages are great if you have 20-40 year plans or have money to waste. Otherwise you can buy a few 2X4s and then create some sort of net with sticks and wire. Each plant is then tied to it and you direct the bigger branches to spread. Yeah they need some fertilizer for better production and maybe pesticide but that's about it. If the land hasn't been used for ages, it will be even better. Of course you can walk into a nursery and come out of it with $2K in equipment, but it's not really needed. You may get say 1.25 lbs more per plant more but...you can plant more and work much less. Tomato plants are resilient and there should be no drama when growing them. Plant them in stages, tie them to the "net," water them, remove the grass and maybe spray them with pesticide. That's all folks!

hp50g 14y ago
Bit expensive doing it that way. My toms cost about £10 a year, usually to replace the rotten bamboo sticks and for tomato food. Seeds come from last year's :)

cyphunk 14y ago

so i read this correctly over half of the produce was lost with so much effort. fertiliser and soil treatments people! fish heads. hipsters got too much time for their own good

nkurz 14y ago

I've been going to a large Bay Area tomato tasting for the last few years. In case anyone is looking for more recommendations, my favorites from last year were: * Momotoro * Exotic Blue Green * Black Cherry * Flamme' * Indigo Rose It's interesting how much the flavor varies from year to year, and from grower to grower. Sometimes I find a favorite variety to be blah the next, and vice versa. But I guess I've got to find a source for Orange Russian 117.

conesus 14y ago
What's the info on these tomato tastings? I'm in the Bay Area as well and would live to attend.
- nkurz 14y ago
  This is the one I've been attending: http://kassenhoffgrowers.com/ http://kassenhoffgrowers.com/ They are in Alameda and announce a date in fall.
joshu 14y ago
Where do you get the momotoros? You can get the stuff he mentioned from Love Apple Farms. They're in Ben Lomond (down 17 I think)
- nkurz 14y ago
  I haven't grown them, but only tasted them the Kassenhoff tasting (linked below). I believe they got them (at least initially) from Kitazawa: http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_111-125.html http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_111-125.html

JCraig 14y ago

Tomatoes are quite prolific and can be used in many types of dishes. For sauce, I like plum varieties roasted or dried; for sandwiches and snacking, I like black russians or yellow grape varieties. Some people have already mentioned chilis as a good crop to grow along with tomatoes. Might as well grow cilantro too and you're halfway to a decent salsa (buy the onions, they ripen at a different time of year). I also like to grow basil alongside my tomatoes. You can buy a nursery plant for the same cost as buying fresh basil for cooking from the grocery store, and the basil plant will produce all summer long. Sweet basil is great for pestos, margherita sandwiches and pizzas, and marinara sauce. Thai basil (which tastes of anise) is great for curries. On the whole, I find that growing my own herbs gives me the most bang for the buck. It's still worth it to grow tomatoes since there's no way you can match the taste of a home-grown one.

scotch_drinker 14y ago

One piece of advice I haven't seen yet is to pick varieties that are known to work well in your geographical area. Growing tomatoes in London or northern California is drastically different weather-wise than Texas. Where fancy heirlooms can work in the former, planting them here will net you a couple of really great tomatoes and mostly frustration. Picking varieties that are known to work will with your climate will largely eliminate the need for the fish head-egg shell-aspirin voodoo. Though if you're into those things, feel free. Gardening is better if you experiment and enjoy yourself as most journeys are.

TomAnthony 14y ago

For those looking for his favourite seeds (Orange Russian) in the UK. I just ordered some from here: http://www.heirloomtoms.org/store/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=prodshow&ref=oruss http://www.heirloomtoms.org/store/index.php?app=gbu0&ns=... Was the only place I could find, but seems to be run by a passionate tomato ninja, and checkout was relatively painless.

margaretann 14y ago

http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes

margaretann 14y ago

http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes http://www.readersdigest.com.au:8888/how-to-grow-tomatoes