The Perfect Tomato

I am sometimes asked how I get my tomato plants to be over seven feet tall and what is the secret to the lush growth and dark rich fruit of my plants.  I will tell you everything I know.
   It begins will soil preparation as you might suspect and I have been working on my soil for over forty years.
Mine is a mid-sized plot for a city garden, about 40' x 50' and raised with concrete curbing about 18" higher than the surrounding area.  It is all pretty much one big raised bed.  Everything I have done with this soil could be done on a smaller scale.  Tomatoes will grow in a five gallon bucket.
   Natural fertilizers don't leach out like chemical fertilizers and you can add different ingredients in alternating years and their total effect will accumulate.  Your soil will get better and better.  My soil was a fine clay, almost potter's quality when I began and that is why I raised the garden bed eighteen inches.  Over the years I have had grass clippings and leaves two feet deep over the entire garden.  It all composts down to almost nothing when Spring arrives.  One year I will add about six yards of manure spread over the garden in the fall and the next year I will add the expensive stuff.  Bone meal, cotton seed meal, kelp meal and Epsom salts, about ten pounds each dusted over the entire area.  If you use a lot of compost like I do you probably need to add agricultural gypsum or lime to adjust the PH of your soil.  I add about fifty pounds every other year.  It has taken me years to get nice soil but now the top two feet anyway is like potting soil.
    I start my own seeds from the very best tomatoes of the year before.  This is so easy to do and I get almost 100% germination.  I scoop out with a spoon the seeds and jelly of the tomato and press between two pieces of paper towel and place these sheets in my pantry.  When early Spring is approaching, about mid-March I cut off the seeds and a bit of paper towel and plant these in little pots in my greenhouse.  You can also begin seeds on top of your water heater.  They love the warmth.  After they are an inch or two tall place them in full sun near a Southern window.
    Tomatoes are vigorous growers and thrive on being transplanted.  Mine are transplanted three times in the greenhouse before going into the garden.  Each time this is done, always into a bigger pot, bury half the plant into the new soil, always deeper.  The fine hairs along the stem become roots and the tomato will become stronger and stronger.
   When the soil is warm enough in the garden for the final transplanting, again bury half the plant no matter how big it is.  I have had some very large plants that required a post hole digger to dig the holes.  I don't pick off the leaves, just bury half the plant!
    Tomatoes require consistent deep watering.  If allowed their root system is as large as the plant itself, seven feet up and seven feet down!  I water mine twice a week, always in the morning, about three hours each time.  Tomatoes hate going to bed wet.  Never water in the late afternoon!
    Tomatoes develop suckers easily, little shoots in the "Y" between the main stalk and a branch and these should be pinched out to allow all the energy into the main plant.  Nice green foliage is pretty but you want the tomatoes!
   More tomato plants are sold in nurseries to home gardeners than any other vegetable and it is no wonder. Nothing beats the smell and taste and texture of a sun ripened tomato.  In a store you might be lucky enough to find two varieties, neither any good.  At a local nursery you will find many more, hundreds are available.

Something about Dirt

Finally Spring has arrived bringing daytime temperatures of close to eighty degrees f and night time above 45 degrees, so close to being over 50 degrees that magical number that tomatoes like so much.  It is the weather at night that is most important to tomatoes.
   My main organic garden area is surrounded with an eighteen inch curb of concrete like one big 50 foot by sixty foot raised bed and I have been preparing it for planting.  This is a process that I alternate from year to year, one year adding about eight yards of cow manure and other compost layered over the top and dug into the soil and the next year adding the expensive nutrients and minerals in the form of cotton seed meal, epsom salts, blood meal, bone meal and kept meal in addition to a healthy dose of dolomite lime.
   I always begin with the lawn mower, running it over the entire area, chopping down the weeds and winter broccoli and whatever might be growing where I want to begin with nothing.  Each year my garden begins with a clean slate, like my blank canvas.  The paths are never in the same place and I never plant the same plants in the same place.  I then rototil the entire area several times, back and forth and diagonally, maybe in circles even.  No method so far but I am thinking.  In my mind's eye I am the sun crossing the horizon or I am shade at the fence line or I am the plant and wondering who my companion might be.  Or I might be a garden guest and I begin to entertain interesting pathways to investigate this garden.
   After the garden is tilled by not designated in any way I take a break and just pretty much look around.  I have worked this soil for over 40 years.  I have hauled in dump truck loads of grass clippings and the ground up debris from fallen trees brought free to me from the City workers.  Over the years I have added tons of sand and hundred of yards of manure from the local farmers (actually their cows!).  I have added rock phosphate and vermiculite and mushroom compost and mint and bark mulch.  Finally, after 40 years I have pretty good soil.  It is dark and rich, has a good smell, the worms like it and it falls apart in your hands. After all of these years it is only about 18 inches deep and then you will find clay.  Not sort of clay but real clay, almost potter's quality, blue and like plastic.  At least my plants get a good start before their roots discover reality.
    So then I lay out the paths taking a flat shovel and scooping as I walk a meandering path, like a snake through my garden.  Once the beds are designated I sprinkle them with the essential earth nutrients, this year
kelp meal, cotton seed, bone meal, epsom salts and a dusting of lime.  Then I til all of this in again creating a smorgasboard of nutrients  for for the plantings to come.  Then, of course I have to redo the paths but this time I can find them.  Today I will get a truck load of fermented mint leaves and layer the paths about 3 inches thick.  This smells nice, keeps the weeds out, the mud off the shoes and adds to the garden next year when it will be all turned over again.
    Earlier this year, between rain storms it seems, I had already prepared and planted a small section of potatoes, carrots, broccoli, onions and lettuce.  Now I can plant the rest of my garden.  I have discovered places for 24 tomato plants!  All heirlooms and from seeds from the year before.  I also will try again for some corn which didn't do well last year.  And cucumbers, peppers, several squashes, eggplants and maybe another tomato!
   Last year we had a rainy Spring and I didn't get the garden in until the end of May.  This year I will gain a critical three weeks and predict a great tomato season!  I love my garden.  I just like playing in the dirt.