DIY Network

Tips on Growing Tomatoes

Master gardener Maureen Gilmer, host of Weekend Gardening, shares a little tomato history and gives some growing tips, too.

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	When not rotated, tomato plants can be afflicted with soil-borne viruses. (Photos courtesy of Maureen Gilmer)
	Homegrown flavor is what makes tomatoes America's favorite backyard crop.

Tomatoes Took a Roundabout Path to Garden Plots

By Maureen Gilmer

Hard as it is to believe, Italy was entirely without tomatoes during the days of the ancient Etruscans and the might Roman Empire.

The Coliseum was a moldering ruin by the time this plant and its famous red fruit found itself in the birthplace of pasta. It's hard to imagine Italian cuisine without this critical ingredient, but until the discovery of the New World, the tomato was wholly unknown in the old one.

The first tomatoes to reach Europe were a yellow-fruited variety known in the Americas as tomatl. Even after its introduction, the fact that tomato plants fall into the poisonous nightshade family kept them out of the kitchen garden. In the beginning they were seen as ornamentals, appearing only in pleasure gardens.

Italian herbalist Dodonaeus in 1586 still believed the tomato fruit was itself poisonous. The plant was grown only as a medicinal for treatment of scabies and eye diseases.

But in parts of Italy, where heat and dry terrain limited what could be grown, the tomato was making inroads. In the lean years hungry peasants began to eat the "poisonous" fruit with oil, salt and pepper. Very early on the fruit was preserved by sun drying. Later, as Italian cooks experimented with this most versatile fruit, canning as a sauce was developed. Virtually all the tomato-based dishes were developed over the past 400 years.

Tomatoes didn't catch on in the American colonies until 1779, when they were used to make ketchup in New Orleans. Thomas Jefferson records bringing them to his table, even though the fruit was still spurned by most of the American population. During the late 19th century, eating a tomato in public was considered so daring it drew crowds. George Washington Carver did the same in 1900 to encourage poor farmers to plant them for high vitamin content and dietary improvement.

Today tomatoes are the most commonly grown vegetable in home gardens. Even if you're a beginner you can grow award-winning tomatoes if you follow these four important tips:

1. Buy determinate or indeterminate varieties. Determinate varieties of tomatoes were bred to produce fruit that ripens all at once so quantities are available for canning. Indeterminate varieties produce fruit over a much longer span of time, rendering fresh, table-ready fruit over an extended season. If you're using your tomatoes for fresh eating over the warm months, be sure to choose indeterminate varieties to prevent running short midseason.

2. Hedge your bets with heirlooms. It's wise to always include a few heirloom varieties in every tomato garden. In certain years, weather or disease anomalies can wreck havoc with modern tomato varieties. Heirlooms are less vulnerable to such fickle conditions, ensuring an anomaly won't take your whole season's crop. Plus, heirlooms offer uniquely colored and striped fruit with varying flavor for more exciting salads and salsas.

3. Rotate your crops. Many tomato diseases are soil borne. When tomatoes are grown in the same place in consecutive years, the diseases become stronger. A second or third year in the same location can completely destroy the crop. Each year it's best to plant your tomatoes in a different place in the garden. The rule is to skip three seasons before planting in the same place again. This helps keep plants strong and disease free.

4. Plant deep for best rooting. Tomato plants are unique because they can produce roots all along their stem. When you plant a seedling tomato, bury it very deep so that a lot of the stem is underground. This gives them a larger root system that is capable of feeding a more extensive plant. You can even lie them down in a trench to maximize this rooting potential.

Whether you love tomatoes freshly sliced, chopped into salsa, marinated with antipasti or sauteed, nothing beats homegrown. If this is the one crop you grow, do it well and enjoy.

(Maureen Gilmer is a horticulturist and host of Weekend Gardening. E-mail her at mo@moplants.com. For more information, visit: www.moplants.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)

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