Garden Tip: If you want a fall crop of tomatoes, the time to plant them is at hand. Hopefully a nursery near you will have the types that set fruit well in Texas (small and mid-sized, not large varieties). Some of the best are Tycoon, Celebrity, Roma, Super Fantastic, Sweet 100, Red Cherry and Yellow Pear. Avoid Big Boy and Beefsteak, and be forewarned that heirloom types are often low-producers. Buy sturdy transplants that are acclimated to full sun. Plant them into well-prepared garden soil, and construct a lightweight “A-frame” to cover them temporarily. Wood shingles or stiff cardboard work well. Position it so that the plants will receive sunlight only during the morning for the first day or two, then gradually lengthen the sunny period by an hour each day for a week, until you have them in full sunlight. Keep your plants moist at all times, and apply a high-nitrogen (lawn-type) fertilizer regularly to keep the plants growing vigorously. Late spring and early summer insect and disease problems generally leave new transplants alone. A couple of notes: if your nursery doesn’t have transplants now, ask if they can order them in for you within the next 10 days. You must plant them early enough that they will have 10 or 12 weeks to produce. Don’t be lured into thinking that you can plant them in late summer or fall. Most varieties require 75 to 80 days for the first meaningful harvest. And the other note, just to have said it preemptively: It is almost impossible to pull spring-planted tomatoes through into the fall with the same level of productivity that a fresh planting made now will have. People will shuffle from foot to foot arguing that fact. I’m just going by my years of experience. New plants set out now are normally the most productive and highest quality tomatoes you will grow. They’ll be free of most pests, and sun scald and splitting will be virtually non-existent.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 01:00:20 +0000
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