Tomatoes for Everyone

Sandoval County Master GardenersGardening with the MastersMeadowlark Senior Center

February 4, 2014T. Barts

! Hand watering tricky! Ollas! Drip! T-tape! Timer! Flood

Water, Water, WaterSquare 1 in NM

!Source!Ask questions!Avoid giants!Large plastic pots!AAEMG seedling sale

April 25, 26

Transplanting:Buying Plants

! Internet, local, DIY! Don't bury graft!!Pricey!Increased yields!Still Disease

Susceptible!Hornworms?!Tomtato

Transplanting: Grafted Plants ! Harden off

! When?! Cold frame! Keep covered! Watch Temperature

Transplanting

! Viruses! Leaf Hoppers! Thrips! Cheap, organic protection

Covering Digression

! Amend:

– gypsum, – epsom salts, – alfalfa pellets– compost

! April? May?! Late in the day! Flood hole

More Transplanting

! Gardening with the Masters– John Zarola's talk– Improving Garden Soil– Tuesday, Feb. 18, 7:15 pm– Right here

• ABQ Open Space Visitor Center• Coors south of Montaño• Register at 897-8831– Saturday, Feb. 8, 1:30 pm

• Basic Composting– Saturday, Feb. 15, 1:30 pm

• Bucket Composting

Amending Digression

c

! Row cover envelope

! 18” - 48” between plants! 36” - 60” between rows! Mulch

Still More Transplanting Tomato Varieties:Open Pollinated, Heirloom, Hybrid

OPEN POLLINATED!Self pollinating

HEIRLOOM !Open pollinated!Historic, 50 years

HYBRID!Hand Cross Pollinated

Tomato Varieties:Determinate vs. Indeterminate

DETERMINATE! Annual! Flowers on terminal shoot! No more growthINDETERMINATE! Perennial! No terminal flowering! Will grow on and on, but frost will kill

! Variety! Disease Resistance! Organic! Heirloom! Hybrid

Seed Packet Info

! St Stemphylium– Gray Leaf Spot

! Letter string– VFFFNATSt

! TSWV Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus! (BCTV) Beet Curly Top Virus

– Not yet, sorry!

More Seed Packet Letters

42 Day: determinate, 42 DTM, small

Chemin Hative: Switzerland, semi determinate,

55 DTM, cherry

Coyote: Mexico, indeterminate, 50 DTM, 1/2”

Gold Nugget: determinate, 55 DTM, cherry (?)

Otradni: determinate, ?DTM, small

Silvery Fir Tree: Russia, determinate, 58 DTM,

medium

Sophie's Choice: Canada, determinate, 54 DTM,

large

Local Tomato Favorites:Early Heirlooms, Seed Library

Bella Rosa: determinate, 75 DTM, red, large

Big Beef: indeterminate, 73 DTM, red, large

Celebrity: semi-determinate, 65 DTM red, medium

Heartland: determinate, 80 DTM,red. medium

some resistance to BCTV

Local Tomato Favorites:Nematode Resistant

(All Hybrid)

! Seeds– Google “tomato seeds”– Local stores, nurseries– Seed Library

! Plants– Local nurseries– Growers markets– AAEMG sale, April 25, 26

! Info – tomatodirt.com, etc.

! Till! Choose varieties

Buy seed & gear

! Plot plan! Test irrigation

Tomato Sources

Critters– Rabbits, squirrels– Quail– Dogs– Thrips (virus)– Leaf Hoppers

(virus)– Horn Worms

• BT• Hand Picking

Hurdles

! Blossom End Rot– Culprit, ammonium sulfate – Variety– Gypsum/Epsom Salt spray

! Cracking/mulch ! Viruses! Nematodes, cutworms! Root rot! Heat, no hormone spray

More Hurdles

! Canning! Freezing whole! Drying! Ripening

– Hanging plant– In flats

! Fried Green

Winter Tomatoes

! Seed2Need in Corrales

! AAEMG Raised Beds– 1510 Menaul Extension NW– Just North and West of I-40 and 12th St.

Demo Gardens

! Happy choosing– Variety, variety!

! Happy planting! Happy growing! Happy eating! Happy sharing! Happy saving

– Only Heirlooms, Open Pollinated

Summary!

Tomatoes for EveryoneSandoval County Master Gardeners --- Gardening with the Masters

February 4, 2014 --- T. Barts

Introduction – Who's Who? I live in Corrales just west of Loma Larga and l have been a Sandoval County Master Gardener since 2000. The truth is am a learning gardener, learning mostly by bumbling through . I have grown tomatoes in IL, CA, TX, Los Alamos and here on and off for close to 50 years. I am no expert, but am willing to share whatever savvy I have gathered. Last year I had 16 tomato plants in my garden and lost one. Despite hail and irrigation problems I had a nice tomato harvest last year. This year I plan to plant only 10, Three varieties are hybrids and two are heirlooms. I have ordered two grafted tomatoes, but will start the rest from seed. I am not an organic gardener, but I tend to avoid chemicals until things really get bad. I am not as organized as many gardeners are.Pathways – These are the covered topics in order with some digressions:

• Goal• History• Irrigation• Planting Seeds• Transplanting• Varieties• Growing TLC• Hurdles• Saving Seed• Wrap-up

Goal? – To have a successful harvest choosing wisely and overcoming the hurdles.

History – All cultivated plants were once wild ones including our star for tonight, the tomato. the word tomato comes from a Nahuatl or Aztec word. tomatl which means “swelling fruit.” for the wild plant growing in Peru in prehistoric time. The Italian name pomo d'or means “golden apple,” while the French name pomme d'amour means “love apple.” Germans called it a “wolf peach” and that is the also translation of the Latin or botanical genus, Lycopersicon to English. Esculentum means edible and pimpinellifolium might refer to that species having anise like leaves. The latter species have small currant-like fruits and are rarely planted. Notice that all of these names are “fruity!” and a lot of them are wolfish, and those stories come next. The fruits of the wild plant were small and yellowish green. The plants found their way up to Mexico City where they were cultivated for food, and Cortez found them there around 1519. Either Columbus or Cortez took them back to Spain and by 1544 the tomato plants got transported to Naples which was then owned by Spain. It took at least 100 years for the crafty Neapolitans to cultivate the plants by saving seed from the best ones and replanting over and over again to achieve the red, good sized round fruits we are so fond of today. It's surprising that tomatoes ever became popular edibles. In 1820 Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson ate a basket of tomatoes on the Salem, NJ courthouse steps while a crowd of 2000 watched to see if it was a planned suicide. Even as late as the early 1900s some folks were sure the so-called love apples were extremely poisonous. No wonder, they are members of the solanaceous or nightshade family. Tomato leaves and stems are exceedingly toxic. On top of that in early times in Europe the well-to-do folks were dying after eating tomatoes while peasants survived. Small wonder, though, as peasants ate on wooden trenchers while the rich ate on pewter plates. That explains why they had “wolf”, maybe alluding to “werewolf” in even their botanical name. Tomatoes got the reputation of being an aphrodisiac hence the name, “love apple.” The tomato based foods we are so fond of today, such as spaghetti, pizza, and ketchup, were developed in the 1800s. Campbell's tomato soup was an instant success at 10 cents per can in the late 1890s when a shrewd German chemist figured out to remove half the water from that concoction. Strange that now folks make a profit by shipping water around the country in plastic bottles! A. W. Livingston developed the tomatoes we are used to today that are round and fleshy and flavorful. He tried hybridization first to get a good strain of plants, but that didn't work, so then

he resorted to save seed from desirable plants over and over again until he developed the paragon tomato in 1870.In the US, our respected Supreme Court ruled in 1893, that the tomato is a vegetable so that our country could charge a tariff on tomatoes as on all other imported veggies. Economics ruled then as now! The rational was not based on botany, but on usage. Pretty crafty!Tomatoes have played a role in the controversial genetic modification of foods in our own time. The Flavr Savr was the first GM food approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s. This cultivar was produced to be picked early and to arrive in the market in prime condition. But guess what! It was a failure that didn't live up to its promises and was far too pricey. It flunked and is no longer commercially planted. Currently there are no GMO tomatoes on the market, but in 2012, a GMO tomato that raises HDL was announced by the National Institute of Health and UCLA. Just last week a purple tomato juice from a tomato with a purple gene grown in Canada will be shipped to the UK to be tested on people with cardiovascular disease. Mexico via NAFTA has cramped the FL tomato industry by producing boxes of better quality tomatoes from grafts for $5 per box compared to $9 to $10 in FL. Now there is no tariff on tomatoes, but there is a set price minimum. Sierra Seed based in Nogales, AZ produces 12M grafted Mexican tomato plants every 6 weeks!

Tomatoes grafted on wild root stock are now popular for fabulous yields and some improved disease resistance. Oregon State University has developed the open pollinated indigo rose tomato that is extremely high in anthocyanins for warding off cardiovascular disease and possibly some cancers.

Irrigation – In our area the first consideration for doing any planting is irrigation. Hand watering often fails because we overwater and/or forget to water at all. Irrigation ollas are two large clay pots cemented together which when filled offer more constant moisture to the soil. Ollas can be filled by hand, but then need to be checked almost daily to make sure they are not dried out. They also can be plumbed with plastic tubing and a reservoir with a float to keep the ollas constantly full. Either quarter inch plastic tubing drilled every 6 inches or t-tape do good jobs in a garden plot, especially when connected to a timer. They both will last longer when buried. T-tape is replaced yearly at the Seed2Need garden and is laid by machine concurrent with plastic mulch. It is best to irrigate in the morning and for nominal intervals in two or more cycles to achieve deep watering. Here it is better to water pots or raised bed contrivances from the top to avoid salt buildup. Soaker hoses are not what they used to be. Many of my gardening friends and myself deem soakers a bad investment. They sprout geyser holes in nothing flat either above or below ground. Flood irrigation has been the historic method here, but rumor has it that it will be cut off in July this year.Starting with Seed – I like to start my plants from seed, but that is a very personal bias. Tomato seeds should be planted just under the surface of the soil. Tomato seeds need warm soil, 77 degrees is ideal, and moisture to sprout. I use a seed starter mix well moistened in its bag before placing it in the seedling container, On January 9 I started the seedlings I brought. I have radiant heat and have never bothered with a heating mat. I found a warm spot for the newbies and the first seeds sprouted by January 14. It's OK to cover seedlings lightly with clear plastic as a mini greenhouse before sprouting. I removed the plastic when I first saw the sprouts. If the plastic covering is well supported on its own and will not ultimately be supported by the growing sprouts it's OK to leave it on. I have done just that when I had to leave for short trips about a week long. I like to use plastic bathroom cups for the initial planting and then large styrofoam cups for the first transplant with holes punched in the bottom for drainage. Placing the cups in a tray with gravel on the bottom helps with drainage. Avoid peat containers. They wick away too much moisture in our desert climate. Some folks pot transplant a third time to a gallon or larger container, but I don't. When repotting, bury leggy stems to encourage better root growth. Healthy, numerous roots are what you are after, Sterilize recycled cups in a 6% bleach solution. Seedlings grow well with 16 hours of light daily. Shop lights on a timer work well or for a very few seedlings a fluorescent bulb in a lamp that can be lowered and raised works fine. There are pricey shelves with lights installed to buy if you wish. I use a PVC frame with two shop lights and I raised well over 60 seedlings this way last year. Some folks use a fan at the seedling stage to prepare the stems for our fierce winds. I use a very, very dilute fertilizer 15, 30, 15 for all watering. Warm is better than cold water and rain

water is the very best of all. There is an 6 - 8 week rule of thumb for starting seeds, but because of the great swings for the last killing frost in our area, that adds up to starting seeds any time from the middle of February to the middle of March. I live near Loma Larga in Corrales and find starting seeds around March 7 works well. Planting a second batch of seeds two weeks after the first or at least twice what you are aiming for is a good idea in case your first ones succumb to a late frost. Please note that with our local altitude differences, the last killing frost varies by a few weeks depending on how close to the river you are or aren't.Last year, the Seed2Need garden lost tomato plants and production to root knot nematodes, microscopic worms. I lost a tomato plant last year that may have been due to the nematodes. An organic drench with a product called Actinovate is said to protect the roots from these nematodes. Since carrots I plant have definite evidence of nematode damage I will try the root drench at the second potting this year. This will be an experiment. If you are really interested in planting veggies seeds, try to attend the seed planting class on this Saturday, February 8 at 11 am at Esther Bone Library just north of the Rio Rancho Post Office on Southern Blvd. Judy Jacobs, Sandoval County Master Gardener (SCMG) par excellence will be teaching. On Thursday, March 18 at 1 pm in San Ysidro's Catholic Church's Hendren Hall on Corrales Road, you can get hands on planting experience for the Seed2Need garden which provides about 40 tons of produce yearly for local food pantries.Buying Plants: If you start with transplants, you can buy plants from many locations including the Internet, local nurseries, box stores, growers markets, and the Albuquerque Area Extension Master Gardener's heirloom sale on Friday, April 25 from 1 pm to 5 pm and Saturday, April 26 from 8 am to 1 pm up at the Garden center on Lomas east of Eubank Any place you buy should work out if you choose strong, healthy plants of a well selected cultivar. Avoid huge plants, but look for large containers, preferably plastic. Ask questions. If from a greenhouse, have they had trouble with thrips or leaf hoppers? If outside, have they been protected from thrips and leaf hoppers? Tomato Grafts – This is an exciting technique used for years in Asia and Europe, but just now finding its way here. A familiar cultivar(s) is/are grafted onto root stock closely related to the original wild tomatoes with greatly increased yields. Grafted tomatoes will be available locally at Alameda Nursery and Osuna Nursery and others and also from Internet sources, but they will be pricey, about $10 for a gallon sized transplant. If you are an avid do-it-yourselfer, there is quite a bit of information on the web for making grafts yourself; please see the web bibliography below. SCMG Sam Thompson will try grafting herself this year even though it is reported to be tedious. She plans to use not only recommended root stock, but will try grafting a heirloom to a hybrid plant resistant to tomato spotted wilt virus. Maybe next year she will try her hand at a tomtato! Both tomatoes and potatoes are in the solanaceous family. Grafts have been made with more than one cultivar on the same rootstock. Here is what Joe Holdridge, an Albuquerque Area Extension Master Gardener aka Tomato Guy, reports: “I also had a grafted Beefsteak from Alameda nursery and got 10 tomatoes every week from early July until October 29 when I picked 135 green tomatoes from this one plant. “ SCMG Ann Tellez reports wonderful yields from Brandywine, Cherokee and Rutgers grafted plants. Hornworms avoided the tomato grafts, but munched on a neighboring Sweetie tomato plant. Fluke? Stephanie Walker, the NMSU Vegetable Specialist, points out that these pricey plants are just as susceptible to viruses as any other transplants and need to be protected to avoid seeing your precious investment reduced to compost.Transplanting – Before transplanting to a permanent location, the plants need to be hardened off for a week or two. You can use a greenhouse or a cold frame which can be made off wood or straw bales with a glass top or can be a PVC frame covered with heavy row cover which gives one or two degrees protection from frost. I use the latter in a shady location and an advantage is that I don't need to worry about overheating in our bright sunshine. With other devices, it may be necessary to open the cover a bit for ventilation if it gets too hot.

This is a good time to talk about keeping the tomato plants covered as much as possible. Tomatoes here are susceptible to both Beet Curly Top Virus ( BCTV), carried by leaf hoppers, and Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus ( TSWV), carried by thrips. The easiest way to avoid these viruses is to simply keep the plants covered with row cover. Row cover is available at local feed stores and nurseries and via the Internet. I like the heavier kind that protects a bit against frost and can be used over and over for years.

If you will grow tomatoes in a plot or raised bed, don't plant tomatoes in the same place year to

year. If that is tricky, then consider planting a cover crop like rye grass right after frost to help. Shade is considered beneficial to tomatoes for it discourages leaf hoppers and should help for blossom set during the hottest days of the summer. Using shade cloth, natural shade from trees, etc, even using a card table chair upside down maybe beneficial. Last year I planted sunflowers to the south of the tomatoes, but they never germinated and I still had a good tomato harvest. Tomatoes with high percentages of anthocyanins should not be shaded at all as they need sunshine to develop the antioxidants.

If you plant in pots it is desirable to use fresh, sterile potting soil each year. Then unless you use contaminated tools, there should be no problems with nematodes. Plastic pots retain moisture a lot better than clay or wooden pots in our desert environment. Pick a light color to keep the soil as cool as possible during the heat of the summer. Make sure the pots are big enough or plant cultivars that developed for smaller containers. Avoid innovative contrivances like upside pots, etc.

Try planting a few appropriate a few cultivars tucked in a flower garden.

Tomatoes will grow OK on the ground, but here with our virus problems, it's a good idea to enclose the plant in a cage which then can support row cover material. The best cages are home made cylinders using concrete reinforcing wire. There are folding cages that may work OK. With any cage it is good to stabilize it with a 4' piece of rebar. I use donated , recycled conventional cages stabilized with two pieces of rebar.

Tomatoes grow quite well here despite our alkaline soil. A yearly soil test is recommended. Digging in compost is the best bet for either clay or sandy soils. Some Master Gardeners swear by adding alfalfa pellets, gypsum, and epsom salts to the soil at planting time. Gypsum is calcium sulfate which is a form of calcium more available to the plants when setting fruit to minimize blossom end rot. Epsom salts provide magnesium and many folks claim they get increased production by using it. Alfalfa pellets, (rabbit or horse) are a good source of nitrogen that the plants need to grow their leaves and stalks initially. Raised beds do well with the soil at hand amended with plenty of compost. Manure either fairly fresh or the bagged kind high in salt and so should be applied in the fall and generously watered to leach out the salt. Caliche is a tough situation and probably raised beds may be the simplest answer.

To learn more about soil amendments consider coming to the next Gardening with the Masters talk two weeks from tonight at 7:15 pm right here at the Meadowlark Sr. Center. The ABQ Open Space Visitor Center on Coors south of Paseo Del Norte will host two free talks by Master Composters on this coming Saturday and Saturday, February 15 at 1:30 pm. When to dig in those tomato plants is a real puzzler. As I said before the last frost date varies greatly depending on where you live in Sandoval County. Water walls are a good protection for tomatoes planted early. Last year where I live near Loma Larga in Corrales, I planted in mid April. A few years ago we had frost until the middle of May! Anyway transplant late in the day. Prepare the planting hole by filling it with water and then placing the plant in nice moist soil. Keep the plants well water for the first two weeks, then taper off to twice or three times per week.

To encourage lots of roots, take off the lower leaves and bury part of the stem. This won't work with many other plants, so just bury tomato stems. Planting the start more or less horizontal is fine. Unless you use water walls, transplant the tomatoes to their permanent location well after the last frost. I transplant late in the day and flood the hole well before setting in the transplant. Tomatoes relish soil with lots of organic matter (compost). Remove some of the bottom leaves of the tomato plants and bury the part of the stem to encourage more strong roots. Do not do this for grafted tomatoes. The grafted area must be above ground level. Keep the soil uniformly moist for at least the first two weeks. Even though you don't really need stakes or cages to grow tomatoes, it's a good idea to use cages to save room, make it easier to harvest, and to keep the plants shrouded in row cover to foil the leaf hoppers and thrips that carry lethal viruses. The row covered tomato plants then tend to be more compact and the outer leaves will provide shade and hail protection for the inner tomatoes once the covers come off in July. I use a row cover envelope made from the heavier fabric that I use over and over again for years. This year I found some red plastic sleeve material I will try to use for covering. Coverings are removed when the plants outgrow them and are more able to sustain viral infections.

Allow 18” to 48” between plants and 36” to 60” between rows. Mulch is very important for growing healthy tomatoes. It conserves water and helps to prevent blossom end rot. Straw, newspaper, grass clippings and others can be used for mulch. straw and grass clippings may result in extra weeding. Red plastic mulch has been found to increase tomato production. Silver mulch tends to discourage thrips which carry TSWV. Last year I tried red plastic table cloths which disintegrated almost immediately. I covered the remnants with clear plastic. Drilling holes with a screwdriver for rain water soaking in didn't work that well. Plastic does keep the water where it belongs from leaky quarter inch laser tubing having clogged holes reamed out with a needle.

Tomato Varieties – Cultivar Choices – With over 25,000 tomato cultivars available, there are a dizzying number of choices to make before you decide to grow your own tomatoes. Are you after:

• Superior taste?• Maximum yield?• Interesting looks?• Salad tomatoes?• Hefty slicers?• Good canners?• Heat tolerance?• Antioxidants?

Three major categories are Open pollinated, heirloom, and hybrid. Tomatoes are self pollinated so that the pollen from a flower fertilizes that same flower. This is what open pollinated also means. All heirloom tomatoes are open pollinated, but in addition have a history. Their seed has been carefully gathered from healthy, strong plants with desirable traits. Usually, heirloom seed for a particular cultivar have been around for 50 years or more. Hybrid tomatoes are a cross and are carefully hand pollinated each and every year from two distinct cultivars. The seed from the resulting fruits will produce tomato plants, but without any of the characteristics of the tomato they came from. So hybrid seeds need to be purchased each and every time they are planted.

The next categories are determinate and indeterminate plants. Determinate plants have been bred to be annuals. Once they get flowers on the terminal (top most) shoot they will stop growing. So in milder climates these tomatoes need to be planted in intervals for a continual harvest during the growing season. Here determinate tomatoes I have planted tend to stop growing right when frost is around the corner anyway. Indeterminate tomatoes are perennials and would grow on and on except they are killed by frost. Determinate will grow anywhere from a foot to maybe 4 feet tall here depending on the cultivar. Indeterminates get to be 6 or 7 feet tall. A indeterminate I planted in CA in a shady spot in October grew as high as our house top the following summer.

Seed packets often have great info including the cultivar name, disease resistance, organic, and if heirloom, open pollinated, or hybrid as well as planting depth, days to maturity (DTM) and more. DTM or sometimes listed as days to harvest are the number of days to expect to pick a tomato once the plant is in its permanent location. I find that there is no good standardization of DTM this number may vary a quite a bit for the same cultivar from different suppliers.

Letters after the tomatoes name are for resistance to the following diseases and problems.• BCTV – Beet Curly Top Virus 9not yet commercially available)• TSWV – Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus• LB – Leaf Blight• V - Verticillium Wilt• F – Fusarium Wilt• N – Root Knot Nematodes• T – Tobacco Mosaic Virus• A – Alternaria, Stem Canker• St – Stemphylium, Gray Leaf Spot

Often theses letters appear in a string such as VFFFNSt which means that the cultivar is resistant to verticillium wilt, three different strains of fusarium wilt, root node nematodes, and gray leaf spot. The main ones we have to worry about here are BCTV, TSWV, and N.

So now tomato choices break down into desired characteristics such as flavor, using in salads, snacking, slicing, cooking, canning, drying, grafting, size, looks, maximum production, selling, growing ease, antioxidants and more.

Intense afternoon heat causes tomatoes to not set fruit and to get yellow blotches that don't turn red, but tomato spotted wilt virus also causes yellow blotches.. During a heat wave one can pick the red tomatoes before the blotches appear, but for either cause the tomatoes are edible.

TLC – Tomatoes benefit from having carrots, borage, and basil nearby. Potatoes are better kept further away. If you are not organic, give tomatoes some nitrogen fertilizer like ammonium sulfate in about a week (first number high). Then when the plants start blooming dig in super phosphate near the roots. For organic growers, vermicompost has better nutrient value than other compost. Check on your plants daily to avoid trouble like clogged irrigation tubing, timer problems, picking off horn worms, finding early blossom end rot, finding holes in chicken wire, etc. Here do no pruning as extra leaves provide welcome shading for inner fruits. To encourage pollination shake the plants or even tickle the flowers with an artist's paint brush. Pruning blossoms toward the end of the season will encourage the plants to expend energy ripening existing tomatoes rather than creating more tiny fruits that will not reach maturity.Hurdles – Critters of all sizes and numbers of legs will be headaches. Chicken wire dug into the soil will protect from cotton tail rabbits and dogs. Bird netting enclosing an entire garden will protect from quail. We have pretty well discussed thrips and leaf hoppers previously. Yellow sticky traps around your plants will catch some thrips and maybe some leafhoopers before they do their damage. Unfortunately spraying for either thrips or leaf hoppers will not help because the are merely vectors for the viruses. They will have injected the viruses into the plants before any sprays kill them. BT (Bacillus thurengiensis) spray available at nurseries will kill horn worms and other caterpillars. I even now have the courage to pick off hornworms with bare hands! Blossom end rot and cracking are caused by irregular irrigation, but with our pattern of summer monsoons that is hard to avoid. Plant resistant cultivars. A foliar spray of a couple of tablespoons of gypsum and epsom salts to a quart of water will help at the first appearance of blossom end rot. Use mulch. For nematodes, plant resistant varieties or plant in pots. Get the transplants in as early as possible. Avoid planting tomatoes in locations where there were nematodes in past seasons. Sanitize the soil by covering with black plastic and not planting there for a few years. Recommendations for planting marigolds as nematode deterrents have been proved false by researchers in CA. The Seed2Need garden has had trouble with cutworms and they encircle each seedling transplanted with a ring of aluminum foil.It's a good idea to plant some cherry tomatoes that seem to do better setting fruit during early heat waves. In general indeterminates do better in the heat. Do not bother with hormone sprays to help set fruit. They are effective when the problem is cold nights. Container Growing - Some very experienced gardeners plant all their tomatoes in pots and swear by it. Make sure the pots are at least ten gallon size, are plastic, are a light color, and have adequate drainage. Determinate tomatoes are the best for growing in pots. Local grower's favorites are Bush Big Boy (Hybrid, 78 days), Bush Celebrity (Hybrid, 65 days), and Gold Nugget (Heirloom, 55 days, cherry).Saving Seed – Tomato plants are really a perennial, so in milder climates they might produce for a second or third season. Seed from heirloom and self pollinated tomatoes can be saved for replanting for another crop of the same kind in the following year. Hybrid tomatoes are a cross and are hand pollinated. If you save their seed and plant it, you'll get a tomato plant all right but with mystery fruits. Most of the time the outcome of these seeds is not very good. Saving the seed is a messy process. After scooping out the seed mass, some gardeners let them ferment, then wash them, then preferably sanitize them in a weak bleach solution, then dry the seeds on a paper plate, then finally store the seeds in a cool place until planting time. In the web bibliography section a You Tube demo from Ohio State University is included where they simply soak the seed in a 10% bleach solution for a half hour followed by a trisodium phosphate 20 minute bath

and then dry the seeds. Organic gardeners can sanitize with heat. Temperatures must be very accurate. First soak the seed in a 100 degree F bath for 10 minutes followed by a 25 minute soak in 122 degree F bath for 25 minutes. Maybe waiting to do these baths until planting time might end up with better success.Winter Tomatoes – Good old canning in jars works fine. Freezing washed tomatoes whole is a lot easier and the skins will easily pop off after thawing. Roasting and drying are other alternatives. Towards the end of the season, a whole tomato plant can be uprooted and hung upside down in a garage, etc.with the ripening tomatoes. I pick the green tomatoes and store them in single layers in flats in the garage. Covering lightly with plastic may help to keep more moisture inside. Fried green tomatoes are also a great treat. Demo Gardens – The Seed2Need garden always needs helpers for all phases of the gardening cycle. Please include your address on the Seed2Need email list if you are available and interested. Visitors can also come to take a look during the times volunteers are at work. Contact Penny Davis at sandypennydavis@msn.com for details.The AAEMG will maintain raised bed gardens this year at the Bernalillo County Extension Office at 1510 Menaul Extension NW which is just north and west of I-40 and 12 Street.ASAP – Get a soil test done at Colorado State University. Forms are available here or via the Internet!If you haven't cleaned up last year's mess, do it now and resolve to do it this year in October. Till the soil to help catch moisture and to solarize some of the bad microbes, etc. Choose several varieties to plant and if you start from seed buy it now. Make a plot plan for what will go where. Test your irrigation system on some fine, warm, sunny day. Wait until next fall for amending garden soil with manure. It is probably too late now to water adequately to leach out the salt. Please see Colorado State University's amendment discussion on using manure in the web bibliography below.Summary Happy choosing, planting, growing, eating, sharing, saving seed.Thanks To – Penny Davis, Lynda Garvin, Buck Glenn, Natalie Goldberg (PhD), Joe Holdridge, Mike Maurer, Sam Thompson, Ann Tellez, Stephanie Walker (PhD), and John Zarola.

HAPPY PLANTING! HAPPY EATING!

Tomatoes for Everyone - SCMG Gardening with the Masters 02/04/2014 Some Interesting Web Sites (Web Bibliography)

Historyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavr_Savrhttp://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/vegetabletravelers/tomato.html http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/tomatohistory.htm http://www.landscapeimagery.com/tomato.html

On-Line Tomato Seeds (There are many, many other sources besides these) http://www.tomatogrowers.com http://www.totallytomato.com http://www.Mariseeds.com http://www.seedsavers.orghttp://victoryseeds.com http://www.twilleyseed.comhttp://www.growitalian.com http://www.territorialseed.com

Tomato Growing Equipment (There are many other sources besides these) http://www.gardeners.com http://www.gardensalive.comhttp://www.albuquerquegardencenter.org/garden-shop/http://www.dripworks.com/product/4060/t-tape http://www.aaroncake.net/projects/mulcher.htmhttp://www.rainfloirrigation.com/downloads/2013RainFloCatalog.pdf http://www.irrigationdirect.com/drip-irrigation-kit-for-row-crops-t-tape-starterhttp://www.groworganic.com/irrigation/drip-irrigation/drip-tape.htmlhttp://www.travellingfeetz.com/2012/07/olla-irrigation-oh-yeah.html

Tomato Growing Tips and Morehttp://www.tomatodirt.com http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_circulars/CR457.pdfhttp://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_circulars/CR457B.pdfhttp://aces.nmsu.edu/county/sandoval/mastergardener/mg-presentations.htmlhttp://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07235.html (soil amendments)http://extension.umass.edu/landscape/sites/landscape/files/publications/mulch_colored_plastic.pdfhttp://www.soiltestinglab.colostate.edu/documents/HORTICULTURE_FORM.pdfhttp://tgrc.ucdavis.edu (tomato research)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg8FDRa-rBQ (saving seed, Ohio State)http://aces.nmsu.edu/county/sandoval/mastergardener/documents/2013-seed2need-year-end-report.pdfhttp://www.tomatoville.com

Tomato Graftinghttp://www4.ncsu.edu/~clrivard/TubeGraftingTechnique.pdf http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS052E/FS052E.pdfhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSwTCwlhFgo (University of Vermont)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHnOYcI6B44

Tomato Problems http://www.thesoilguy.com/SG/SoilAmendments (blossom drop) http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext/INF-DA/pathog-manure.pdfhttp://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-106.html http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-242.html (tomato spotted wilt virus)

Tomato Consumption http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/vegetables/vegpdf/TomatoConsumption.pdf

SCMG Websitehttp://aces.nmsu.edu/county/sandoval/mastergardener/