Keith Hansen

What common vegetable has risen from a dreaded "poisonous love apple" to the most popular home-grown crop?

Tomatoes are America's favorite vegetable. They are prolific, easy to grow, and a vine-ripe, home-grown tomato will beat a store-bought version by a mile any day.

Without taking up much room, just a few plants can supply a family with all the tomatoes needed for salads and hamburgers.

Here are 10 keys to a successful tomato garden:

Planting Dates: If you are contemplating a big planting, play it safe and set out transplants a week or two after the average last frost day (about mid-March for the Tyler area). But, if you are only growing a few plants, you can gamble and plant now and be ready to protect them with mulch, hay, blankets, etc. If you win, you'll be harvesting earlier and escaping some of the problems that come with fruit maturing later in summer. If nature beats you with a killer freeze, then just buy more transplants and you'll still be in the game.

Tomatoes tolerate cool soil quite well, unlike peppers and eggplants which require warmer soils.

Tomatoes respond very well to organic fertilizers such as rotted manure, cotton seed meal, etc. In the spring, these materials are slowly released, but in warmer summer soil are more rapidly available. Animal manures can be used at a rate of 60 to 80 pounds per 100 square feet.

New garden spots need a complete fertilizer such as 10-20-20 worked into the soil at planting time (unless a soil test indicates otherwise). Use about 2 to 3 pounds per 100 square feet - less in sandy soils or those amended with manure. Soil pH is also important for tomatoes and all garden crops. Tomatoes don't do well in soils with a pH less than 6.0, and many East Texas soils are in that category. The addition of dolomitic limestone raises the pH, plus adds important nutrients including calcium and magnesium. The additional calcium helps reduce the incidence of blossom end rot when fruit is beginning to mature.

Some standard large-fruited recommendations that work well in East Texas include "Carnival,'' "Celebrity,'' "Bush Celebrity,'' "Champion,'' "Dona,'' "Early Girl,'' "Heatwave,'' "Mount Pride,'' "Summer Flavor 5000.''

Just a couple of plants of the small-fruited types, also called cherry tomatoes, will keep you in bite-size fruit all summer. "Sweet 100,'' "Sweet Million,'' "Juliet,'' "Yellow Pear,'' "Sweet Chelse'' are common varieties of this type.

If you know you have nematodes (knotted or gnarled roots on plants such as tomatoes, carrots, okra), then grow only varieties identified with an "n'' after the name for nematode resistance. Of those varieties mentioned above, "Celebrity,'' "Carnival,'' "Summer Flavor 5000'' and "Better Boy'' are some that have nematode resistance.

Reinforced wire cages make the sturdiest and lasting cages.

Staking results in earlier, but fewer tomatoes, while caging yields the highest numbers. Cages provide frames for wind and frost protection, and can be wrapped in floating row covers for wind and insect protection. Plants left to sprawl on the ground develop more disease problems.

Use your built-in water meter - your finger! If moisture is present in the soil, DON'T WATER. More plants are killed by overwatering than by not enough water. Drip irrigation in an excellent method for watering, promoting excellent growth by keeping the soil evenly moist without wasting water. Organic material can and should be used as a mulch around your plants. Mulches keep plants more evenly moist (which is important to help prevent blossom end rot), help control weeds and moderate soil temperature.

Keith Hansen is Smith County Horticulturist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service. His web page is http://EastTexasGardening.tamu.edu.

His Blog is http://tce-blogs.tamu.edu/mt/etg Texas AgriLife Extension Service educational programs are open to all individuals without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age or national origin.

Keith Hansen
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