Tomatoes in Central Virginia, Part 1: Choosing the right variety

by Mark Levisay

Without a doubt tomatoes are the most commonly grown garden plants.  Nothing beats the flavor of a home grown tomato picked fresh from the garden—especially after eating the ones offered at the grocery store.  Seed catalogs give you lots of options for starting your own plants and garden centers usually have dozens of varieties ready to go right into your garden. With all of these choices available, how can you choose the right ones for you?

How much room do you have?

Tomatoes come in all sizes. They are usually classed in three groups 1. midget, patio or dwarf, 2. determinate and 3. indeterminate.  These descriptions refer to their growth habit and may affect your varietal choice depending on how much room you have for tomatoes in your garden. The smallest tomatoes are designed for pots or containers and probably won’t need much if any support.  Determinate plants will only grow to a set height (usually 3-4’) and then stop.  They usually need some type of caging or staking, but not as much as the indeterminate types.  Indeterminate tomatoes are the ones that get big—continuing to grow through the season until killed by frost or disease. They’ll need tall stakes or heavy duty cages for support.

Big Beef tomatoes tied up to supports.

How are you going to use them?

Choosing the varieties of tomato for your garden is hard because there are so many choices available!  It seems like tomatoes come in every size and color, so deciding what you want to use the fruit for will help with your decision.  Cherry and “grape” tomatoes are great in salads.  Most slicers and beefsteaks are great for general eating or putting on your BLT at lunch!  Paste tomatoes are often used for canning or sauce production, though I make salsa and spaghetti sauce out of slicers. 

Heirloom varieties

If you’ve never grown tomatoes in your garden before, consider trying an “heirloom” variety.  These are usually older varieties passed down through the generations and prized for their flavor. Many are not disease resistant, so if you’ve grown tomatoes before you may have trouble with them as the disease fungal spores can survive in garden soil for up to five years. 

Disease resistance is critical

In my garden, where I’ve grown tomatoes for 30 years, I look for the most disease resistant varieties I can find.  Many seed catalogs will list the disease resistance (using the abbreviations from the list of diseases below) in the description of each variety.  Generally the more letters listed in the description the better!  For example, in my Park Seed catalog the Better Boy Hybrid is listed as V/F1/N/A/St, giving you an idea of its general disease resistance.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of diseases that affect tomatoes. Eight of them are fungal in nature and will persist in your soil from year to year.  Early Blight (As), Late Blight (LB), Anthracnose (An), Fusarium Wilt (races 1,2,3 F1 F2 F3), Verticillium Wilt (V), Alternaria stem canker/crown wilt (A), Stemphylium gray leaf spot (St) and Septoria leaf spot (L).  You also have Tobacco Mosaic virus (T), Spotted Wilt virus (Swv), Bacterial Wilt (B) and Bacterial Speck (Pst). 

In addition to choosing the right variety, there are some tricks in how you grow the plants in your garden that help a lot, and we’ll explore that at length next time.

And remember, regardless of size, all tomatoes are tender annuals that require full sun and won’t tolerate frost at all. 

Lemon Boy tomatoes ripening in late summer.

My tomato choices

This year in my garden I’m going to grow four different tomatoes.  I’m growing Sweet Million Hybrids, a red cherry variety that is indeterminate  with F/N/L/T resistance.  This variety is very vigorous and usually grows taller than the poles I use (8’ 2x2” posts).  Next is a red grape tomato we’ve come to love, called Juliet Hybrid which is a resistant, indeterminate type that will climb the pole and then climb back to the ground and look for the next pole down the row to climb back up on!  I grow Lemon Boy Hybrid yellow tomatoes which seem to have good disease resistance, maybe a little less acid than the red tomatoes and are indeterminate. They make really good yellow salsa!  My main red slicer is the Big Beef Hybrid, a former AAS winner.  These indeterminate plants have excellent disease resistance and produce loads of baseball to softball size fruits.

Next time I’ll review growing methods to get the most out of your tomato patch.

Have a garden question? Send me an email at marklevisay@gmail.com.

Spring Fertilizer Guide: Organic Holly Tone for acid-loving plants

by Mark Levisay

I’m going to take a break from talking about plants and shift focus to fertilizers and soil additives.  The Corner Store Garden Center carries an extensive line of Espoma products that you don’t know about since you can’t come inside the greenhouse and see them all lined up!  That’s a shame, because many of these products could prove useful to you during the garden season.  I took my camera (and mask) up to the greenhouse one afternoon and photographed each product’s bag, front and back, so you could see what you’re missing.  I’ll try to explain what’s in each product and what it can do for your garden.

Fertilizer for acid-loving plants

Holly Tone is an organic, balanced fertilizer with an N-P-K analysis of 4-3-4. It also contains 3% calcium (Ca), 1% magnesium (Mg) and 5% sulfur (S).  The sulfur component is the key here, as this product will act to raise the acidity of the soil where it’s used. 

Espoma’s organic Holly-Tone fertilizer for acid-loving plants.

Espoma’s “Bio-Tone” provides beneficial bacteria

You’ll also notice as you look at the side panel of the bag that it contains 3 types of bacteria.  Healthy soil contains a mix of both bacteria and fungus, and these organisms are critical in breaking down chemical compounds into forms the plant can absorb.  Adding these beneficial bacteria to your soil will improve the overall “biome” and help plants thrive.  All of Espoma’s xxx-Tone fertilizers will have this “Bio-Tone” component.   A side effect of this is that each package will have a “use by” date, as these bacteria colonies will slowly decline over time.

Another thing you’ll notice on the package is the source of the water-insoluble nitrogen (N).  This in-soluble nitrogen needs to be broken down by organisms in the soil to be available to the plant, so it’s considered slow release.  Feather meal, bone meal and poultry manure are all by-products of chicken  and egg production, and alfalfa meal is derived from a common farm crop.  It’s great that these by-products can be used as fertilizer and they also help improve the tilth of heavy soils.  An unfortunate side-effect is that our dogs think this stuff is candy and we can only use it in areas where the dogs are fenced out!

Ingredients panel for Espoma’s Holly-Tone organic fertilizer.

Plants and application

There are a number of plants that benefit from growing in acidic soil conditions.  Evergreen trees and shrubs, azaleas, rhododendrons and mountain laurels, and blueberries and other bramble berries come to mind.  For a more complete list go to espoma.com for additional information.  They have good lists of plants that benefit and application instructions. 

Espoma recommends a spring application and a smaller fall application for shrubs and two separate spring applications for berries.  To be sure for individual plant varieties I’d refer to Virginia Cooperative Extension’s website (ext.vt.edu) as they have loads of information on the nutritional requirements for most garden plants.

Next time we’ll talk about Plant Tone, which is an organic fertilizer I have used a lot in my vegetable garden with great results.

Have a garden question? Send me an email at marklevisay@gmail.com.

Dealing with weeds

by Mark Levisay

Most people probably agree that a weed is simply a “plant out of place.”  Tall fescue, your typical lawn grass, is certainly a weed in your vegetable garden.  A beet showing up in your lettuce bed might be too, but maybe not as onerous!  Dandelion flowers are lovely, but nobody seems to like them in the lawn—but the bees certainly appreciate their early flowers.

What makes a weed such a problem? 

Many weeds are fast growers, and as such may out-compete the flower and vegetable plants you’re trying to grow.  They take valuable nutrients out of the soil to support their own growth, robbing your desired plants of what they need.  They may even shade or crowd your seedlings to the point they can’t grow at all.  Many weeds excel at growing on poor and compacted soils where other plants can’t thrive, so Imagine how much they like your improved garden soil!  Their fast growth and short reproductive cycle (many mature, bloom and set seed in just a few weeks) demand quick action.

Henbit, one of the most pervasive weeds in the garden early in the spring.

What can we do to stop the weeds? 

Physically we can just go out and dig or pull them-most easily done when the ground is wet. For centuries, humans cultivated crops with hoes (and sticks before that) to kill weeds while preserving the desired plants. A few more modern ideas:

• Use landscape fabric as a barrier to prevent weed seeds from sprouting and growing. It’s even more effective when used with mulch. 

• Mulch itself helps a lot.  It makes the weeds that do appear easier to pull and improves the soil in the long run.  Even newspapers can prove effective as a barrier.   

• Mow the lawn as high as your equipment allows so the grass will shade out weeds. 

• Plant wide rows of vegetable plants or put flowers in clumps close together to crowd out the weeds.

Chemical weed control

There are two fundamentally different ways to attack weeds with chemicals.  One is a pre-emergent product which keeps weed seeds (many are annuals) from germinating.  Crab grass preventer for lawns is one example. Applied at this time of year (when the forsythias are blooming) it keeps last year’s crabgrass seeds (and other annual grass seeds) from sprouting.  “Preen” is a granulated pre-emergent product you can use in vegetable and flower gardens as long as you are NOT PLANTING SEEDS in those areas.  This product works great around perennials, or where you might be planting established seedlings like tomatoes or peppers.

Contact herbicides can themselves be divided into two types.  Broad spectrum chemicals like “Roundup” kill everything they’re sprayed on.  Roundup (glyphosate is the active ingredient) is absorbed by the plant and disrupts the cycle of photosynthesis. More selective herbicides differentiate between monocots (grass) and dicots (broadleaf plants).  These are usually applied to lawns to kill non-grass weeds like dandelions or chickweed.  As always, read the label, follow the mixing instructions, and avoid contact as much as possible.  Some of these herbicides are very controversial so make informed choices.

If you keep after them, you can get ahead of the weeds. Try to break their flowering and seed distribution cycle and you’ll have less work to do over time!

Have a garden question? Send me an email at marklevisay@gmail.com.

Simple Raised Beds

By Mark Levisay

Raised beds don’t have to be complicated, or expensive.  Their main function is to enhance drainage in rainy weather, and allow you to enhance the soil, especially if your area has a lot of rocks or clay.  Three or four inches is all you need to achieve those goals.

Size and access

Let’s think first about bed size and access.  You should be able to easily reach into the center of any bed you build, so your arm length may be the ultimate guide for bed width.  If your garden has a fence, you can make beds along the fence 2 feet wide or so, which allows easy access from just one side, and can support large plants such as a row of tomatoes or peppers, or lots of smaller plants.  In areas where your bed will allow access from both sides, four or even five foot wide beds can work.  A bed this size could contain two rows of peppers or tomato plants, or even three rows of something like beans or beets.  Just remember you want to be able to easily reach the center of the bed, as you never want to step in the bed to avoid compaction.

Bed length is determined by your overall garden space.  Some folks go with a “four square’ that is four feet on every side, with easy access from any side.  Many of my beds are twenty feet long, as  row cover material often comes in either 20’ or 50’ lengths (I cut that in half and use two 6’ wide strips to cover a 5’wide bed). 

You should leave “paths” between your beds to allow easy access for you and maybe a wheelbarrow or wagon so you can get your tools and produce in and out.  Three feet or so should be plenty for a path.

Soil

You don’t need fancy soil for your raised beds, especially if you are building them in an existing garden space.  The nearest source could be your designated pathways.  Dig a few inches of soil out of your path, and pile that on your beds.  Mulch the path to keep your feet out of the mud, and you’re good to go!  If you have a really rocky site, or one with heavy clay, you may need to bring in soil.  There are numerous local contractors who can deliver really nice “top” soil by the yard, or for smaller projects you can buy bagged products.  Some are even called “raised bed soil” which seem to contain a lot of organic matter to promote good drainage.  Always plan to use some amount of mulch on the top of the soil, which will inhibit erosion and soil splash (especially important for tomatoes) and retain moisture in dry weather.

Structure

Do you really need to have physical edgings for your raised beds?  You don’t really need edging, especially if you have a fairly level site.  If you’re on a slope, physical borders can help create terraces that create level beds on the slope.  Edgings can also give you a place to kneel when you access the beds for planting, weeding or harvesting.  I’ve used a lot of landscape timbers over the years but found that they rot out pretty quickly.  I may switch to landscape blocks which are designed for retaining walls and garden edges.  This may cost a little more but should be permanent.  Railroad ties, bricks, logs, or cedar boards (naturally rot resistant) will also work depending on your site and what you feel comfortable working with.

If you put in a little up front effort you’ll have garden beds that will work well for you in any kind of weather for years to come. Good luck!

Have a garden question? Send me an email at marklevisay@gmail.com.

I’m stuck at home, what can I do?

by Mark Levisay

March is actually a pretty good time to be home, as there are many things in the garden that need your attention.  Indoors you can be starting seeds, such as tomato, pepper, and basil next to a bright sunny window or with some good artificial lighting.  Planning the layout of your vegetable or flower garden is another way to use your time and be ahead of the game when planting time rolls around.

Pepper seedlings under the lights.

Outdoors there are lots of things to keep you busy. 

Do you have a fenced in area for your vegetables?  If not, put one up!  60” welded wire fencing will keep the deer out, and you’ll probably need to build one or more gates for access to your garden.  Ever think about raised beds?  This is a perfect time to build them, so they’re ready to go—the sooner the better.  Mulching the paths between the beds is a good idea, as it will keep your feet out of the mud after big spring rains.

If you already have an established garden, now is the time to clean out dead plants, leaves and other winter debris from your beds.  Weeding is crucially important, as any weeds that are already blooming are ready to set seed for their next generation.  Getting ahead of weeds now will really help later on in the summer.  I spread pelletized lime on my beds every couple of years to help counteract the many acidifying factors, such as fertilizer, mulch, and rainfall that affect your beds.  If you have an asparagus bed you can also fertilize it now, as the spears should start to appear in April.

Have you thought about using row cover material to protect vegetables like broccoli and cabbage from worms?  This is a perfect time to set up your supports, and lay out a soaker hose where your plants will go.  The soaker hose makes it much more convenient to water once the cover goes on.  Buy your plants, set them, and then cover.  No more broccoli worms!  As a warning, kale is in the same family, so growing it under cover will help protect it from the worms.

As far as actual planting goes, mid-March already getting late for peas and spinach, but you can try if you haven’t already planted them.  Lettuce and beets should wait until later in the month, unless they’re going under a row cover.  Same with broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and brussels sprouts.  Plant now under cover, or wait a week or two to set out in the open.  We’re more than a month away from putting out things like tomatoes, peppers, beans, and squash, but you can plan for where they’ll go.  Poles for training tomatoes or for climbing pole beans and fencing for cucumbers can go up now, and you’ll be ready to go when the time is right to plant them.

Take advantage of any extra time you have to invest in your garden now, and you’ll reap the rewards later this summer!

Have a garden question? Send me an email at marklevisay@gmail.com.