It’s About Thyme
by CHRIS WINSLOW
For the past week or two, hoards of gardeners have been coming into the nursery, phoning me up or e-mailing me to ask what’s gone wrong with their tomato patch.
The most common problem is blossom set… or the lack thereof. Gardeners have beautiful plants but the flowers form and then just fall onto the ground.
The issue here is that it’s just too hot. When day temperatures rise above the mid- nineties and the night times are in the mid-seventies, large tomato varieties simply can’t set fruit.
For this reason, savvy tomato growers try to get their tomato starts out as early in the spring (or even late winter) as they can.
One gardener wrote that her tomatoes weren’t flowering at all, even though the bushes were healthy and the leaves were a deep shade of green. It seems likely here that the soil is overly rich in nitrogen, and poor in phosphorous. All the growth is going into foliage, and none into the flowers.
I advised her to give them a generous feeding of water-soluble super phosphate. Hastagro has a liquid organic formulation (6-12-4) that seems to work wonders in producing flowers on vegetables as well as ornamentals. My gardening friend Barbara Savens says she likes to mix Hastagro with rain water, and the results are incredible.
One easy way to be successful is to focus on cherry tomatoes. They seem to break all the rules by consistently producing fruit through the heat of the summer months.
(Throw some of them into a salad bowl with a handful of fresh basil, mozzarella cheese and a dash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and you will have effortlessly created a healthy and delicious summer lunch.)
On Saturday mornings Keith Reeh (Hill Country Canning) has been driving in from Fredericksburg to Barton Creek Farmer’s Market in a truck laden with boxes of beautiful Juliet tomatoes. These are elongated cherries, and are very tasty.
For those of you whose tomato gardens have finished or wilted in the heat… do not despair! Fall tomato gardening is just around the corner.
Planting time for new tomato transplants extends from mid-July to the end of August. Young seedlings will be reaching their bloom time as the temperatures begin to drop at the end of September.
Many seasoned tomato growers actually feel that the fall is better than the spring. Hey! How cool is that? We get two shots at tomato growing each year.
For fall planting, look for varieties that are determinate. These produce lots of blooms and fruit in a short period of time.
My favorites: Celebrity, BHN 444, Phoenix, Surefire, Sun Pride, Solar Flare and Cherokee Purple.
Happy gardening everyone!
If you have a question for Chris, send it via email to iathyme@yahoo.com. Or mail a postcard to It’s About Thyme: 11726 Manchaca Road, Austin, TX 78748. Visit us online at www.itsaboutthyme.com
