You say Tomato and I say Tomahto

And in this case.. it's true.  People tell me they love my accent, and I just look at them bewildered. After all - it's all you bastards that have an accent. I talk normal!

But anyways... I was having my daily roam over the garden, checking in on what's growing - plucking out the odd weed (one of the joys of my setup is the absolute tiny amount of weeding you need to do - a pluck here and there every couple of days and you're done in minutes), when I noticed this:

First baby Tom of the year!

From out of the flowers on the Toms, the first little green ball - just poking his head out.  Now chances are it will fall off, maybe get pecked at, or have some bastard bug chew off the stem - the kids might tug it off or the apex predator of everything growing, my wifes cat, might get outside for 2.5 seconds and chew it off (as it manages to sense what plant is most important to me at any given second, and will attack it without mercy).

I figured it would be a nice break from peas and beans to do something different, and I'll be putting the relevant planting info on a page for vegetables a little later.as keeping records of such things is one of my downfalls.
When I go to replant something the next year  - if I don't have those seeds anymore - I'm kinda S.O.L.

Tom-ay-toes, Tom-ah-toes..  The feeling is they're all the same - and if you're like me (doubly so when I started gardening), you see that seed packed on the shelf with it's lovely juicy fruit in glorious color splashed on the front and you grab them - never paying mind to anything because 'Hey... tomayto-tomahto!'  And if you're lucky to have them sprout and grow you get rewarded with... some tiny little cherry tomato, sitting alone in a sea of vines that have overrun every square inch in the immediate area.

Sounds funny - but it does happen, and did happen to me.  Don't get me wrong - cherry tomatoes of a mysterious never-to-be-found again variety are pretty good and flavor packed - like little ripe bombs of flavor for a fresh garden salad... but sliced over your ham sammich ain't gonna happen!.

So you get a head start from my mistakes - first things first, don't trust the picture!  Some companies (like Burpee for instance) give an accurate pic of what your fruit might look like, others don't (one thing I will say - Burpee DOES give an accurate picture, but rarely with anything to judge the scale by).  One company I have seeds from (bought at the dollar store) have hand painted representations and no proper name - lucky for me though they produced tasty (though tiny) fruits, and I learned enough since to keep them around - even though I ran out of seeds 2 years ago.

Some tips:

If you want a specific type of tomato, google is your friend - find a picture of one you like and jot down its name. If you want to find accurate representations of tomatoes - pay special attention in cooking shows.. Does Iron Chef have an episode on tomatoes? that would be a rather good resource... Personally I'd go watch the episode on 'Beyond River Cottage'  where Hugh does his tomato fair.  Actually all the River Cottage stuff is good as he goes to great pains to tell you about different produce and the differences between them.

READ THE PACKET! It's probably going to have some useful stuff on there about spacing, planting depth, what months... yes I hear you 'well THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! Seed packets have planting info on it.. whoda thunk it?' but there's some not so obvious bits on there you that can help you, and you don't need to know Latin to work them out - although Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur.... (whatever is said in latin sounds profound).

Some words to look out for that will help you get what you want, or what to expect from what you get:

Determinate/Indeterminate - not all packet have this info, or may have it listed as 'bush' or 'vine' - and it's relatively important.  Determinate/Bush plants will grow, and over a 2 week period will flower, fruit, and then die.  All their fruits will come at that one period - now that's not a bad thing, and could be incorporated into a useful planting strategy for power-growing, but if you don't know it, it could leave you scratching your head about your dead plants.
IMPORTANT: Do not de-sucker determinate plants! As they don't vine you'll be substantially decreasing your yield.

Indeterminate/Vine plants will continue to branch out and spread - they will fruit as long as weather and season permits and die off in the frost.  The majority of varieties sold from seed seem to be indeterminate, if in doubt - Google is your friend.

In a name or brand name there is some interesting info to be gathered:

Heirloom - Wikipedia gives a very in depth discussion on what this means. But an oversimplification would be to say it is an older seed, unchanged and unmodified - thus could be called 'Organic' by todays description. As it applies to my plans - it means that the plant will give seed that I can harvest and reproduce with similar result.

Organic - A big buzzword the last 20 years, you all know it.  The anti GMO crowd will probably keep an eye out for this on the packaging - for me, again, seedwise it means I can probably harvest and replant with confidence of getting a similar result.

Hybrid.   This is a cross between varieties for some kind of beneficial trait.  This doesn't mean that it's automatically some big bad frankenplant that's going to sell your soul to Mosanto, just that it's a cross breed.  It's importance in my world?  That like many hybrid plants the seed it gives has no guarantee of producing a like plant - For instance hybridization is quite common in apples, the seed of your Red Delicious has an greater chance, if planted, of delivering a Sour FuckAwful than anything resembling what you ate.  In the case of tomatoes in my garden - this means I can should only propagate more plants by cloning (yep - we're going to get into that later!... spoiler:  if you're expecting a science lab with a cool tesla coil and jars of bubbling stuff... you're in for a pretty big let down).

Taking photos at dusk... not recommended.

So lets put some of this into a practical example.  The 3 plants that sometimes peek into the background of my container pics are planted from Burpee's 'Queen of Hearts Hybrid' seeds. I got them because the packet said 'Ideal for Slicing'.
The back of the pack tells me the usual 1/4 inch depth and a spacing of 3ft between plants - so for the Siggy Square Foot Gardening method, this tells me 'separate planter' as putting 3 ft between plants means putting at least a blank square in all directions - which is a total waste of garden real estate.
The planting guide says 'March to May' - 'July to August' for my general area (being on the cusp of Florida - the deep deep south), so if they do well in spring I can ante-up again provided I have seeds left (and I have some... not many).
The pack also announces that it's organic, with a USDA Organic stamp on it as well.  It also tells me to plant in full sun, and expect 76 days till maturity.
 On the front or back is no mention of 'bush/vine, determinate/indeterminate'.

A check on Burpee's website turns up nada.. apparently they don't stock them anymore... so not only do I not have the information, but if I happen to like these - I have to make my more on my own - this is where the determination of the plant becomes important:

 Lets review:  It's saying Hybrid - so a mix of plants by some means - that might not give me the same results on a seed level.  The USDA organic stamp tells me that it's not 'a genetically modified organism', so it's hybridization was done by breeding. Now the USDA stamp also tells me that they have to keep records on the plant and it's production, so I *COULD* request information on if this is a 'stable' hybrid.... but even if they decided to give me that info, it could be too late.
I could clone the plant - but if it's determinate, that won't work (it won't outlive it's parent - like a Viking of lore, the skein of it's life was woven long ago....... on the upside if the cat gets it it will enter plant Valhalla).  In this case, where 'hybrid' is at odds with 'organic' by my oversimplified earlier explanation - it's obvious that you'd err on the side of 'hybrid'.

So - off to our friend Google.  After a couple of minutes we get the following info:

Maturity	midseason
Growth habit	indet.
Leaf type	regular
Fruit color	red
Fruit shape	oblate
Fruit size	medium
Fruit type	slicer
Variety type	open-pollinated
Country	England

So, although dicey if we we can pull seed, we CAN clone them.  I can produce as many plants as I like from these - and if need be keep one indoors and keep till July - cloning it back into the garden with a head start on that season.  I can (and will) also keep one Tomato for seeds and compare results with this springs produce.

General Planting

When I plant tomatoes I usually try and take advantage of a couple of their more interesting traits.  Firstly they are very easy to transplant.  I rarely lose one when I do, so I'm not afraid to pop three or so seeds into a hole - if they all pop up I can pluck those out and put them into another container,.  I usually plant them in a rather small pot first - or any other available container (tin can, kool aid cannister, whatever) and I also plant them outside.  For my climate it works well and has me avoiding the whole 'hardening off' process (and safely away from their feline nemesis).
Once grown out and healthy (several healthy leaves), I'll transplant them to their larger pot.  When transplanting, sink the plant low into the ground to take care of another trait 'adventurous roots' - the tomato can sprout roots from anywhere on it's stem (they appear as little white bumps) - vines left to grow rampant will bend and touch the ground, re-rooting as they go.  Take advantage of this by planting them deep so they develop a large and healthy root ball.
A more advanced method is to lay the plant on it's side and bury most of it as you turn the plant around in a coil, maximizing the amount of roots you'll develop.

Suckering

Ima git u sukah!

A sucker is a small shoot that, unlike a leaf, will grow out and be able to produce flowers/fruit.  On an indeterminate plant (vine) this sucker can grow into an entirely new offshoot vine - producing suckers of it's own (and eventually growing into a massive huge tangle).  On a determinate plant, simply more flowers and fruits.
Opinion is varied on suckers - some people strip them all off, others let them grow free or cage the plants up and let them grow dense. On a determinate plant suckers should be left alone - as they don't vine, but rather grow in a bush, pulling off suckers will diminish your crop yield.
For me, it's all about what's being grown - on larger tomatos it makes sense to sucker them - to allow the plant to put all it's available energy and resources into growing those fruits - for cherry tomatoes though, more vine means more flowers/fruits - so I let them grow as they will.
As you can see in the photo, they're easily distinguished from leaves - and only grow from the junction of a leaf and a stem. A leaf grows out and goes 'leafy' on a single stalk - a sucker branches out. I like to think of suckers as growing out of a leafs 'armpit' - once you keep that in mind they're easy to spot.  If in doubt - wait and watch, and a sucker will soon make itself known.  Now some folks will throw them away - but for me I take advantage of what was said earlier, about adventurous roots (the ability of the plant to grow roots from any part of its stem) - now as the sucker will grow into a complete vine - I use this to clone the plant.

Cloning

Wow! Here's the cool sci fi stuff!  Sorry.. gonna be a let down.

Here's the sucker plucked off the plant - they practically fall off in your fingers, like they WANT to be taken off.
Side note: those small pots off to the side are cherry toms from the mystery cherry tom plant. These ones were from a fallen cherry tomato that got buried by accident in one of my overflow pots - all the seeds from that fruit sprouted into a dense pack of plants that are still alive in the overflow container (doing better than these little potted ones too I might add).
Anyways you take your sucker and you....

.....put it in a pot.

Keep it well watered for the next few days and give it plenty of sun. It's going to wilt and fall over during the day - just give it some water when it's in the shade and it will pop back again during the evening. In a week or so it's roots establish and it's off and running. Let it grow to a half decent size then transplant into a larger pot.

It's as simple as that.



If you were after something more sci-fi though, tune in later for.....

THE ATTACK OF TOMORROWS DINNER! (IN 3D!)

(no it's not the alien from the end of the Watchmen comic book - it's just kale...)