Biting into the juicy fragrant flesh of a home-grown tomato is within reach if you have a little space in your vegetable patch.
There are a great many tomato varieties, all boasting unique shapes, colors and flavors. Don’t just stick to bland single-colored tomato salads: plant several different species in the garden!
All tomatoes crave sun and rich soil, because tomatoes are demanding fruits. Offer them the spot in the garden that is most exposed, and enrich it before planting with a solid dose of compost.
Whether you opted to grow your own seedlings from seed, or have purchased young plants in nursery pots, you’ll only be settling them in your garden late spring, after the famous Ice Saints days which signal the end of the frosty nights.
Bury the bottom of the stem by an inch (a couple centimeters) to boost root growth, and stake them immediately. It is good to keep plants about 20 inches (50 cm) apart, and to space rows by 3 feet (1 meter).
Cover your beds with a thick layer of mulch. As they grow, you’ll have to thin the branches, and “pinch” them, that is, to remove side shoots and “suckers”, so that fruits may grow.
Among the most tasty, easy and productive varieties, you’ll find:
Don’t forget cherry tomatoes, delicious natural appetizers and easy to grow as part of pot arrangements on the deck.
A classic cherry tomato variety is the ‘Red Cherry’, but other colors grow too, like the delicious ‘Black Cherry’ and ‘Green grape’.
The article names a handful of varieties that are easy, tasty and productive. Here they are side by side, so you can pick the ones that suit your plot and your salads.
| Variety | Distinguishing feature | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| ‘Ananas’ | Sweet orange fruits | Flavour, provided you stake the plants |
| ‘Rose de Berne’ | Good tolerance to downy mildew | Plots where damp weather brings disease |
| ‘Russian’ | Large, fragrant fruits | Big, scented fruit from few plants |
| ‘Red Cherry’ | The classic small red cherry tomato | Pot arrangements on the deck and natural appetizers |
| ‘Black Cherry’ | A dark-coloured cherry type | Adding colour instead of bland single-coloured salads |
| ‘Green grape’ | A green-fruited cherry type | Mixing shapes and colours in the same harvest |
Growing two or three of these together turns a plain tomato salad into something worth looking at.
In summer, water your tomato plants abundantly (at least two or three quarts (liters) water per plant) once a week, twice in dry weather.
Be careful not to wet the leaves because it leads to diseases appearing. In case of downy mildew, pull out diseased leaves and if the weather forecast predicts solid rain, protect your plants under a tunnel or a frame. Stop watering when fruits start turning red, to concentrate their taste.
Laure Hamann
