Featured Vegetable: Tomato
Tomatoes are available in determinate or indeterminate varieties. Determinate varieties grow to a certain height and set fruit. Indeterminate vines keep growing and producing fruit as long as weather permits. If you pinch the suckers at the leaf junctions you can get a tomato vine ten to twenty feet long. This is what the large greenhouse tomato producers do to keep their crop growing year round.
If you are growing an indeterminate variety, you will have to choose between staking, caging, or allowing your plants to sprawl. Tomato plants will form roots anywhere the stem contacts the soil so tomatoes allowed to sprawl all over the ground usually end up rooting the wandering stems where ever they end up in the garden. Determinate plants sometimes benefit from a small amount of support, but staking and caging are not necessary for these low growers.
Staking tomatoes saves space, encourages earlier harvest, helps keep fruit blemish-free, and directs energy into fewer fruits so those fruits are larger than they would be if the plants were unstaked. Total yield per plant of staked tomatoes is lower than in other methods of tomato culture, but more plants can be grown in a given area.
Letting your tomatoes sprawl is certainly less work than staking them. They will take more room than stake tomatoes, and if the fruits touch the ground they are likely to rot or be attacked by insects. Organic mulch can help reduce fruit rot.
Caging is a reasonable compromise between staking and sprawling. Cages are constructed from wire fencing with openings at least six inches square to facilitate harvest, and though they are a significant investment, they will last for years. The little so called tomato cages (as pictured here) that are sold in the spring are not large enough to support an indeterminate tomato plant.
Tomatoes are heavy feeders and will benefit from a sidedressing of fertilizer during the growing season. Place one to two tablespoons of a general purpose fertilizer such as 5-10-10 around the plants once or twice during the season, scratching it in lightly.
Blossom end rot and cracking fruit are common complaints of tomato growers. Both of these conditions can be eased by providing tomatoes with a constant supply of water, watering once a week with at least one inch of water. Mulch can help retain the moisture around the plant and reduce the incidence of these two conditions.
Tomatoes can suffer from several other pests and diseases. If you are having problems with your tomato plants either bring in a sample of the problem plants or send them to the Piscataquis County Extension Office.
Source: Silva, Ellen. “Tomatoes - Grow 'Em Bigger, Better, and Faster,” April 199. Blacksburg, VA; Virginia Cooperative Extension http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/factsheets2/veg/may88pr4.html (accessed July 6, 2007)