Sacramento Digs Gardening Article
Your resource for Sacramento-area gardening news, tips and events

Articles Recipe Index Keyword Index Calendar Twitter Facebook Instagram About Us Contact Us

Thoughts for Tomato Planting Day

Toughest choice: Which varieties to plant?

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED APR 28, 2021

Tomato transplants benefit from some sturdy support

(put it in early!) and plenty of mulch. (Photo:

Kathy Morrison)

Happy Tomato Planting Day! And indeed, this day – and the whole week – are perfect for planting tomatoes, Sacramento’s favorite crop.

In fact, tomatoes rate as the favorite home-grown crop of backyard farmers nationwide. (And everybody everywhere probably thinks their tomatoes taste best.)

Our local (unofficial) Tomato Day was the brainchild of longtime radio (now podcast) host "Farmer Fred" Hoffman. Besides lining up with Sacramento’s traditional planting calendar, April 28 also happens to be Farmer Fred’s birthday.

The decision to plant tomatoes is easy; you live in a place that’s perfect for growing tomatoes. Just do it! The hard part? Choosing which varieties you want to plant.

Thanks in part to the popularity of heirloom tomatoes, more than 10,000 named varieties and cultivars of tomatoes are now available in commerce. Local nurseries stock seedlings in dozens of varieties. From seed, thousands more are available online.

Some varieties are bulletproof, dependably producing summer after summer – regardless of the weather. Among those are Early Girl (a versatile medium red, round hybrid) and Juliet (a heat-tolerant mini-Roma that’s one of the longest lasting producers in any garden). Sungold – winner of countless taste tests for its super sweetness – usually is reliable, too, but last year’s weird weather shut down many local Sungold vines before they ever hit their stride.

Farmer Fred suggests sticking to varieties that can tolerate dry and hot conditions – especially since it looks like Sacramento will be in for a drought-like summer. His picks include Ace and Ace 55, Better Boy, Celebrity, Lemon Boy, Beefmaster, Big Beef, Supersteak and Whopper.

(Psst! Here's a tip from our resident tomato head, Kathy Morrison: If you don't have much room, and are looking at a summer of limited water, put in at least one red cherry tomato plant. Cherry-size tomatoes tend to do well even in bad years, and they still have that great homegrown tomato taste. Try Sweet Chelsea if you can find it; Sweetie, Gardener's Delight (aka Sugar Lump) or Super Sweet 100 also are good choices.)

Which tomatoes do professional growers pick when their livelihood depends on finicky heirlooms?

Profitable Plants Digest, a publication devoted to farmers market growers, picked its top six heirlooms last summer. Its choices (in order): Black from Tula (a Russian tomato with a deep mahogany color and rich flavor); Costoluto Genovese (Thomas Jefferson grew this deeply-fluted Italian tomato and it’s still a classic); Green Zebra (chef Alice Waters helped make this striped and tangy green and gold tomato popular); Stupice (this early producer matures in just 52 days); Brandywine (this classic takes patience – 90 days to maturity – but it’s another taste winner); and Amy’s Sugar Gem (another early producer, it yields big clusters of golf ball-size, extra-sweet fruit).

And no Tomato Planting Day would be complete without some tips from Farmer Fred. Here’s a link to Fred’s excellent tomato tip sheet and planting guide: https://farmerfredrant.blogspot.com/2017/03/tips-for-great-tomato-garden.html .

Comments

0 comments have been posted.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

tomatoes gardening Sacramento tomato planting day vegetables heirloom tomatoes Sacratomato summer vegetables Farmer Fred Hoffman spring irrigation

Newsletter Subscription

Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.

Taste Fall! E-cookbook

Find our fall recipes here!

Thanks to Our Sponsor!

Local News

Sites We Like

Garden Checklist for week of Nov. 3

November still offers good weather for fall planting:

* If you haven't already, it's time to clean up the remains of summer. Pull faded annuals and vegetables. Prune dead or broken branches from trees.

* Now is the best time to plant most trees and shrubs. This gives them plenty of time for root development before spring growth. They also benefit from fall and winter rains.

* Set out cool-weather annuals such as pansies and snapdragons.

* Lettuce, cabbage and broccoli also can be planted now.

* Plant garlic and onions.

* Keep planting bulbs to spread out your spring bloom. Some possible suggestions: daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, anemones and scillas.

* This is also a good time to seed wildflowers and plant such spring bloomers as sweet pea, sweet alyssum and bachelor buttons.

* Rake and compost leaves, but dispose of any diseased plant material. For example, if peach and nectarine trees showed signs of leaf curl this year, clean up under trees and dispose of those leaves instead of composting.

* Save dry stalks and seedpods from poppies and coneflowers for fall bouquets and holiday decorating.

* For holiday blooms indoors, plant paperwhite narcissus bulbs now. Fill a shallow bowl or dish with 2 inches of rocks or pebbles. Place bulbs in the dish with the root end nestled in the rocks. Add water until it just touches the bottom of the bulbs. Place the dish in a sunny window. Add water as needed.

* Give your azaleas, gardenias and camellias a boost with chelated iron.

* For larger blooms, pinch off some camellia buds.

* Prune non-flowering trees and shrubs while dormant.

* To help prevent leaf curl, apply a copper fungicide spray to peach and nectarine trees after they lose their leaves this month. Leaf curl, which shows up in the spring, is caused by a fungus that winters as spores on the limbs and around the tree in fallen leaves. Sprays are most effective now.

Taste Spring! E-cookbook

Find our spring recipes here!

Taste Summer! E-cookbook

Find our summer recipes here!

Taste Winter! E-cookbook

Find our winter recipes here!

Thoughts for Tomato Planting Day

Tomato transplants benefit from some sturdy support (put it in early!) and plenty of mulch. (Photo: Kathy Morrison)

Newsletter Subscription

Tomato transplants benefit from some sturdy support

(put it in early!) and plenty of mulch. (Photo:

Kathy Morrison)