Saving Seeds

 Tomato seeds are one of the easiest types of seed to save. This is usually done in September when fruits are at their peak and seeds have filled the fruit cavities.

We usually try and take seed from a number of plants of the same variety looking for the most robust tomato off of each vine.

I bring them into the house and cut them open and literally squeeze, squish the seeds out and into clean mason jars. I add some water to cover them. Unchlorinated water. Then they are allowed to sit for a week or more until a scum forms and the fruit itself is beginning to rot.

Black Plum

At this point I empty the contents of the jar into a clean bucket and rinse, rinse, rinse the seeds till they are free of the membrane and tissue connecting the seeds to the fruit.

I use a sifter to pour off the water and collect the seed. Then dump the seeds into the bucket again and again. I repeat this process until I am happy they are cleaned.

With newspaper I make a kind of blotter paper to absorb the water as the seeds dry. I fold up the paper so it is about 8-10 layers thick and put a piece of clean, white paper towel on top. 
This way I can see the seeds. I prepare one blotter for each variety and label them with black felt markers. Each day I remove the paper towel gently and refold the newspaper so a new "dry" spot is exposed. Then I put the paper towel with the seeds back on top. This way the moisture is "wicked" away quicker.
Spread the seeds out so they don't touch as much as possible and make sure they dry thoroughly otherwise you are going to have rot and mold once you put them into envelopes and store them.

Brown Berry

Heritage seed tomatoes that are open-pollinated give you the best chance of having a favorite variety come true. This is one of the best reasons for growing heritage seeds. It helps to keep diversity going.

It may seem odd that I am writing about saving seeds now but it is time to start bringing out the seeds you have saved and begin growing them out. Early varieties can certainly be started now.

If you haven't saved seed then now is the time to check out Seedy Saturdays and local farmer's markets for growers of local seeds so you get the pick from the best selection.

If you have a garden planner, journal or calendar think about putting a note on it for the month of August that you need to begin thinking about and selecting what tomato seeds you might want to save and preserve for next year. I do this a lot for all kinds of reminders. Some things have marginal windows of opportunity in the gardening year and the only way is to remind myself as the date draws near.

Saving seed. I really hope you'll all give it a try.

Stringing the Tomatoes and Setting Up the Hoop House

Want to show you all some of what we have been doing. Yesterday it rained enough to call for a job that kept us out of the wet weather. Tomatoes needed pruning and stringing so that is what we did. I went ahead of the others and pruned each plant, Bryne tied the strings from the wires and the gang attached the clips and carefully wound each stem around the string.  After it was all done each plant was watered. Its always a tedious job but so important to get done. Every week we will prune and wind the growing point of each plant around the string. You want the energy of the plant to go into developing fruit and not growing more stems.

There are about 300 plants in this hoop house and about 12 varieties. Black Krim, Black from Tula, Black Prince, Black Cherry just to name a few. Looking forward to a good tomato harvest.

Early last week we reassembled our original hoop house into another field. We have planted it full of basil. The location gets the very last rays of sun for the day. Good for basil. Those are my dahlias on the right side of the hoop house and snow peas on the left.

Bryne putting the finishing touches on the hoop house before the planting begins. We planted first, watered the transplants in with the sprinklers on and then put the plastic on the next day. I will post some photos of the basil soon. Here on the west coast you really can't grow large amounts of basil successfully without cover. Made some pesto for supper last night. What a great smell and flavour.

Growing Tomatoes

The push is on. We're into the last week of May. These next two weeks we have to get all the long season, heat loving plants into their annual summer positions. Here on the west coast we have determined that if the squash and nightshade (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco ) don't get into the ground by the end of the first week of June they simply won't have a long enough growing season for their fruits to mature. Last year we had the squash in on time and still much of the squash didn't mature properly on the vines before the rainy season was upon us in September. We had a slow start to summer last year and then some cool, rainy weather in August. Squash and tomatoes, peppers need those heat units to give them the sugar content they need to come to full maturity. Fortunately for tomatoes there are more and more varieties available for our cool, damp, often low-light summers.

 Some of our most successful tomatoes are Super Fantastic and Celebrity. Both these can be counted on to provide abundant fruit over a long period of time. Cherry tomatoes do well here too. Red Cherry, Gold Nugget, Yellow Pear, Snow White, Black Cherry are some of the best. They produce until frost in most cases. Many of the older heritage breeds do really well in our climate especially any of the dark brown/black varieties. We try a few new ones every year. This year we are trying Defiant, bred for our climate and resistant to early and late blight. We will see !

We grow our tomatoes in covered, but open-sided greenhouses. The blight is a given and we have learned to live with it. We still produce massive quantities of amazing tasty tomatoes. We try to save seed from some of our favourites  and it is noticeable the strength and stamina of our own seed produced plants. Eventually you get a plant that is aclimatized to it's surrounding soil and weather conditions.

We plant each tomato into a well-dug hole with a level shovel full of aged compost and a small amount of rock phosphate which is the middle number in the NPK formula. We use rock phosphate in place of bone meal. This promotes good fruiting, strong roots and greater resistance to disease. We also feed them with a foliar spray of weak, fish fertilizer solution a few times during the course of the growing season. The tomato can be planted to a depth up to and including it's first leaves. This ensures a good, solid stem and the stem underground will form roots to anchor it in. Once the plants are firmly planted in we string them up to support the plants as they grow and bear fruit. The plants get incredibly heavy once they form fruit and will topple and break without support. One thing we are fussy about is that we don't allow anyone who smokes tobacco to handle and work with the tomato ( nightshade) plants. The hands of smokers can harbour and transfer disease to the tomatoes from the tobacco.

Once the plants are in and actively growing your job is to keep the plants pruned to one stem and assist them by winding them gently along the length of the string. Pinching out secondary growth is crucial to getting good, abundant fruit that will ripen in time. I can recall on more than one occasion going into the tomato house after a week or so and being overwhelmed at the amount of growth in such a short time ! Tackling these plants if they get away from you can be daunting and potentially does a lot of damage to the plants. When you have 500 or more plants to deal with it pays to be on top of the job.

A lot of people ask about growing tomatoes in containers. There are more and more varieties available that are suitable for containers. I suggest you keep to the determinate varieties. This brings me to an explanation of determinate and indeterminate varieties. These words indicate the growth habit of the plant. Determinate means that the plant will grow to a predetermined height and the leader (stem) does not have to be pruned or pinched off. These are usually stocky, bushy plants by their nature. Often a tomato cage alone will support them. They are a better option for container growing due to this growth habit. Indeterminate varieties are the vining type of tomato. The main stem, leader, will grow and grow. We train them up along strings in the hoop houses. Again you want to train them to one stem and keep the branching off to a minimum. In our climate it is a good idea to pinch off the leader at a certain height so that fruit can set and mature. You can determine this once you are happy with the amount of flowering on the plant. We usually pinch them off at about 6 to 8 feet.

So, back to the containers. From what I have heard from people is that they think by growing the plants in containers they are less work. Not true. They are in fact more work. By confining the plant in a container you are taking away it's ability to seek out water and food. It is now dependent on you for those essentials. A tomato plant will totally fill a container with roots in a short time. They have big root systems with hungry appetites. We did this many years ago with about 200 plants in 5 gallon buckets. The watering became an endless task as the roots filled the buckets and any soil was basically eaten up. No soil, nothing for the water and nutrients to hold onto. It all just goes through the container. So my advice is to make sure you grow varieties that are suitable to containers and that the containers are large enough to support the needs of the plant. The plant will require you to water and feed it regularly.

There are places in Canada where tomatoes are planted in the fields with no support and lie on the ground. Ontario and certain areas of B.C. even, this is done. Field tomatoes require dry, dry, sunny conditions. It is really hit and mostly miss to attempt this here on the coast. The dampness and moisture will compromise the plants and the slugs will have a feast ! Slugs love hollowing out tomatoes. Peppers too by the way.

As to planting the tomatoes read and look at my blog on dahlias. The instructions apply to tomatoes, peppers and eggplant as well.  Good size hole, some good finished compost, a bit of rock phosphate or bone meal, a means of support and your good to go. Pruning and pinching them out is an ongoing task. I will take some photos as I do this throughout the season and will post an addendum to this blog when the time comes.

There is no taste comparison to a home grown tomato ! It is worth every bit of effort to grow these luscious, nutritious, tasty treats that you can do so much with. Hopefully I have covered most of the basics about getting them off to a good start.

Please, don't hesitate to comment and ask me any questions you may have about them. Sometimes it is difficult to know how much to say and write about a certain thing. Good luck and happy gardening.