Planting Tomatoes like Trees

We have moved quickly from a glut of summer squash in June to a glut of tomatoes in July. Actually, a lot of different vegetables came to the table in July. We have already managed to get tired of corn on the cob. When I realized what my wife (i.e. chief cook) was doing, the first thought to pop into my mind was “cop out soup”. I had brought in new potatoes, onions, peppers, corn, green beans, the last of the summer squash, and tomatoes. I thought we had an understanding that since she was now retired, she would be willing to process my garden produce… but like to tango, it takes two to have an understanding. She had decided to “make soup” and everything along with beef and broth was going into one super-sized slow-cooker crock pot. She was killing seven birds (vegetables) with one stone by making soup. To me vegetable soup is something you make and eat in winter.  Anyway, it turned out I was surprised; with a tall glass of iced sweet tea on one side and a plate of cold salted watermelon on the other, a bowl of black peppered vegetable soup actually was a very satisfying summer meal …correction, a whole week of  savory summer meals, since she had made so much. We froze some of  it.                                                                                                    Getting back to the tomatoes, I planted some Celebrity variety tomatoes, a truly prolific hybrid, to use as a standard of comparison for several heritage tomatoes. Someday I want to find a really good heritage tomato and be able to save my own seed. In general, hybrids (of which Celebrity is one of the best) are considered to have better disease resistances and be more prolific, i.e. more tomatoes per plant, whereas the heritage varieties have better flavor. I started off by planting all the tomatoes like I had seen directions for planting young trees…in large holes. I skimmed off the ryegrass cover crop and laid that turf to one side. Next I dug out the hole to a depth of over a foot and two feet in diameter, chopped some of last year’s tree leaves into the bottom, and then replaced the  ryegrass sod inverted grass-side down into the hole to act as a sponge and hold water for the roots when the August drought came.  I added a good soil/compost mixture with a handful of bone meal thoroughly mixed in. I left the top three inches of the hole unfilled so I would have a convenient watering basin. I stripped all but the top leaves off the transplants and planted the stems horizontally with only the top leaves above ground. I put a cage over the transplants and that was it. I believe the bone meal really did the trick because we had many large (hand-size) green tomatoes.

                The Cherokee Purple heritage tomato did not compare well on my soil to the Celebrity hybrid. The Cherokees were large but very gnarled and knobby, tended to have rot spots (most ended up on the compost pile) but did have a somewhat better flavor than the hybrid. I won’t try Cherokee Purple next year, maybe Green Zebra instead.

                I planted a heritage Chocolate cherry in front of the old Amish heritage Brandywine thinking that a cherry tomato would have a small vine. Small tomato, small vine…WRONG! The Chocolate cherry (also called black cherry, I believe) had good flavor, better than the Celebrity hybrid; the tomato was about golf ball-size and there were a gazillion of them…definitely the most prolific output of the varieties. The huge vine was very invasive, covering much of the Brandywine despite the fact that there was a two-foot space between the cages. Still the Brandywine produced large well-shaped and good old- fashioned tasting flavorful tomatoes. The chocolate cherry was early ripening and the Brandywine was quite late to ripen. Since I am into organic gardening, I try to pick all the large tomato varieties either opaque green or at first blush of red and wrap them in newspaper to ripen in the house. If allowed to vine ripen, some grasshopper or stinkbug will take a bite and rot will set in. Greenness is the tomatoes own defense against most insects (but not the horned tomato worm). I am interested in giving Brandywine another try next year.

                Because I was comparing several types of tomatoes, we ended up with a glut; what do you do with all those tomatoes? Fried green tomatoes are delicious in June. We eat a lot of BLT’s and fried ham and cheese sandwiches with big slices of red tomatoes, tuna salad with tomato slice and also toasted cheese, mayo and tomato in July.  Tomatoes make a good side dish just salted and peppered. Green tomato pie really does taste like apple pie. If all else fails, MAKE SOUP!