WHAT TOMATOES NEED: Tomatoes grow best in loose, sandy loam soil that drains well and which is rich in organic material. If your soil is excessively sandy, silty or clay-ey, you can improve it (and your tomato production) greatly by adding large amounts of organic material to the soil.

You can add whatever organic material you wish to the soil, including any or all of these: compost (homemade or purchased), composted manure, peat moss, finely shredded (not large chunks) bark or hardwood, greensand, lava sand, soft rock phosphate, blood meal, bone meal, feather meal, dried grass clippings, partially decomposed hay or straw stable bedding (if it is really fresh, I'd compost it first), shredded leaves, composted cotton burrs, alfalfa meal, etc., etc., etc.

Be careful not to add too much nitrogen-rich materials like composted manure, or you will get "all leaf, no fruit". In general, you can add up to 1 lb. of composted manure per square foot of bed without reaching an excessive level of nitrogen in the soil.

If your soil tends to be slow-draining, it is best to grow tomatoes in raised beds that are raised at least 4" to 8" above the grade of the surrounding area. You can simply mound up the soil after you've added the organic material, or you can build beds with an edging made out of the material of your choice: wood, metal, rock, etc.

Your soil pH is important too. If your soil pH is lower than 6.0, you should try to raise the pH before planting tomatoes. To raise the pH, you can add lime or limestone. The addition of dolomitic limestone will also add magnesium to your soil, and this is a good thing since tomatoes need magnesium (and it is often lacking in low-pH soils).

Till or spade all soil amendments into your soil to a depth of 8" to 10" if you can. You also can double-dig the beds for improved plant growth, but it is a very long, hard process.

I am pretty sure that George double-digs because I know that he is just that kind of a superb gardener and he loves to dig. I have double-dug in the past, but I like digging less than George does, so I gave up double-digging a few years ago. And, George, every time you mention double-digging, I feel lazy and inferior to you as a gardener because I know I OUGHT to be doing it. (smiling)

FEEDING YOUR TOMATOES: I'm an old-school organic gardener, so I believe that if you feed the soil with all these various amendments, you don't have to rely on a lot of chemical fertilizers. In other words, I feed the soil and let the soil feed the plants. However, every year you have to put some nutrients back into the soil to replace those used by the plants the previous year. You can do this by adding organic amendments every year, by top dressing the beds, by mulching and letting the mulch "feed" the soil and plants as it breaks down, by adding organic fertilizers to the soil shortly before or at planting time, by top-dressing with organic fertilizers or any combination of the above.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you enrich your soil only once and that it lasts forever. Keeping soil healthy is a continual process. As your soil gets better and better, though, it will attract earthworms and beneficial microbes that help enrich the soil. You also can use cover crops and green manure crops to enrich the soil over time.

I like to add a handful of an organic tomato fertilizer like Tomato-Tone to the planting hole at planting time. You also can top-dress with it a few times during the growing season.

If you want to use a pelletized fertilizer, add it to the soil with the rest of the amendments. In general, tomatoes need one with a 1-2-1 ratio, like 10-20-10 or 12-24-12 in my part of the state. You made need to use a different type depending on your soil.

You also can fertilize at planting time and periodically throughout the growing season with a water-soluable fertilizer. There are both organic ones like Alaska liquid fish fertilizer, compost tea, Garrett Juice or liquid seaweed and chemical ones like Miracle-Grow Tomato Fertilizer and other similar products. It is your choice.

WHEN TO PLANT: Never plant when there is still a good likelihood of freezing temperatures UNLESS you are prepared to cover up the plants very well at night and take other heroic measures to see them through late frosts or late snowstorms.

Keep in mind that Oklahoma weather is HIGHLY variable, and it is not at all uncommon to have a late freeze in late April or early May in some years.

In general, you should find out the "average last frost date" for your county, and plant as soon after that date as you feel comfortable planting. Keep in mind, though, that an average is only an average. So, if your average last frost date is March 25th, for example, there is still a 50% chance of a frost after that date. Also, you may live in a microclimate that often has a late freeze that occurs later than other locations in your county. (I am in a very low-lying location near the Red River and often have a freeze 2 weeks or so after our last 'official' freeze.)

In addition, understand that the actual air temperature DOES NOT have to go down to 32 degrees in order for a frost to form. It is not at all uncommon to see frost form on plants when the air temperature is 37 or so degrees if other conditions are right. It also is not uncommon for low temperatures to go significantly lower than what is forecast, since the forecast low covers a fairly large area and is just a "best guess". If a LIGHT frost forms and only sits on the plants for a short while, it might not kill them. If plants freeze to the ground, they may even regrow from below ground. However, plants that freeze and regrow often ought to be replaced since they may be less productive or more disease prone than plants that didn't freeze.

Thus, it is always wise to keep buckets, sheets, floating row cover, frost blankets, etc., handy to cover plants if a frost is threatening.

PLANTING DAY: When the soil and air temperatures are sufficiently warm, though, it is time to transplant your plants into the ground.

It is important to plant your plants as early as you can, without planting them so early that they will freeze. Why?

Tomato plants will give you maximum fruit set and yield only when your plants bloom BEFORE daytime highs start exceeding 92 or so degrees. And that is just half of the equation. They need to bloom and set fruit before nighttime temps begin regularly exceeding 75 degrees. Depending on where you live in the state of Oklahoma, the time frame for ideal blossoming and fruit set can be a relatively brief period.

What happens if you set out your tomatoes "late"--say in mid-May or later. Well, unless they were exceptionally large and robust plants, they will not be large enough to bloom and set fruit until the temperatures are already too high for good fruit set. The plants still will produce some tomatoes, but not as many as they would have if they'd been set out earlier.

If your air temperatures are pretty warm, but your soil is slow to warm up, you can cover the prepared soil with thick black plastic for a couple of weeks and it will help to warm up the soil. If you want, you can leave that black plastic on the soil, cut holes through it, and plant the plants through those holes, leaving the plastic on the surface of the bed. However, you will have to cover the black plastic later in the season with some sort of organic material (straw, grass clippings, wood mulch, etc.) so the soil and plants don't roast in the hot sun. Also, the black plastic will interfere with the soil's ability to absorb moisture, so you'll have to run a soaker hose or drip irrigation under the plastic IF you are using a kind of plastic that does not allow moisture to penetrate.

Plant ONLY healthy transplants that have been sufficiently hardened off to the kind of conditions they will be experiencing in the garden.

If you have raised your own transplants inside under grow lights, they likely will die if suddenly and abruptly exposed to full sun and harsh spring winds. It will take about a minimum of a week to adequately harden them off if they've been inside their whole lives. Start with an hour of sun and wind exposure per day and work your way up from there, increasing by an hour a day.

Don't purchase and don't plant diseased plants that already have fungal or bacterial disease on the leaves!! Doing so pretty much dooms the plant and guarantees you're going to have problems from day 1.

Healthy transplants will be a nice healthy green color with thick stalks and a lot of leaves. They should be 5 to 8 weeks old and roughtly 5" to 12" tall. They should NOT be so old that their stems look woody already. You can successfully plant transplants that are taller than 12" of course, but the larger the plant, the greater the chance of transplant shock. Also, the larger the plant, the greater the likelihood that the stem is already getting woody.

Dig deep, wide transplant holes in your prepared beds. If desired. mix in fertilizer as discussed above. Mix it into the soil that will be beneath and around the plant, but not in soil that will be right up against the stem of the plant. If desired, apply one cup of a water-soluable chemical or organic starter solution to the hole and let it soak into the soil before you place the plant in the hole. Set your tomato plant into the soil, and fill the hole with the soil you previously removed while digging the hole.

Tomato plants WILL form new roots all along any portion of the stem that is set underground, so set the plant deep to encourage more root formation. However, do not bury any leaves under the surface of the soil--pinch them off instead. (Don't pinch off ALL the leaves though. LOL) The only time when it might not be wise to plant deep is if your soil is VERY heavy and drains VERY poorly. In that case, dig a trench and lay the plant down in the trench, basically planting horizontally instead of vertically. The plant will still make new roots all along the part of the stem that is in the trench/covered with soil. Of course, you want to leave several inches of the plant and its' leaves above ground. Pat down the soil firmly and water it well. You want good moist soil all around the newly transplanted tomato plant, but not soggy soil with a lot of standing water.

Space your plants no closer than 30" apart. If you are growing plants that you KNOW are large indeterminates, spacing them 3' to 4' apart is even better. Basically, the further apart the plants are, the better they will grow. Planting too close will give you a lower yield and may increase foliar disease problems due to lessened air flow in between and around the plants. Having said that, I sometimes go as close as 18" in between smaller determinates, but only if I know the variety well and am sure it can produce well under such conditions.

Also, since I plant WAY too many tomatoes, if there is any tomato-growing rule that I do break, it is the spacing rule! (Aren't all rules made to be broken sometimes?)

Go down the length of your tomato bed or row and plant your plants. After you've watered them, and the water has time to soak in, walk back up the length of the row or bed and look for any exposed roots, leaning plants, etc. and take corrective action as needed.

What you do at this point is up to you. You can do a little more, a lot more, or nothing more at this stage. However, the more you do now, the less you'll have to do later.

DO A LITTLE MORE: If you are going to stake your plants, pound the stake into the ground beside the tomato plant right away, even if the plant is too small to be staked at the time it is planted. If you wait several weeks to pound the stake into the ground, you run the risk of damaging the plant's developing roots which probably will be running out horizontally into the soil by the time the plant has been in the ground a few weeks.

If you have planted several varieties of plants and you want to keep track of which one is which, label the plants. You can do this by attaching a label to each plant's stake. (I like to cut up the slats from old mini-blinds and use them to make plant labels. I use either a Sharpie or a non-fading garden marker.) Also, right now...the very day you plant the plants, draw yourself a map of each row, labeling each plant in the row. Put your map in a safe place so you can find it later. This map or chart will come in handy later when cats, dogs, wind, etc., destroy, dig up, fade or move your plant labels.

DO A LOT MORE: After I've put a stake in the ground next to each plant and have firmly attached a label to each stake (I use duct tape wrapped firmly around the top and bottom of each label to double the chances of it remaining attached to the stake), I put a cage around each plant AND stake the cage to the ground using two wood or metal stakes.

Then I do whatever companion planting I am doing with my tomato plants, which usually includes (but is not limited to) planting from transplants the chives, nasturtiums, marigolds, dwarf zinnias, basils, dill, (sometimes lettuce and cabbage), borage, sage, oregano and other companions that I use to improve growth and flavor, deter bad bugs, and attract good bugs. I water in the companion plants and mulch lightly. Later on, as the plants grow and the soil warms up, I will continue adding mulch until it is 2" to 4" thick.

At this point, I also mulch all the pathways if they aren't already muulched so I can reduce the chance of rainfall splashing up off the soil onto the plants and spreading soil-borne diseases.

You don't have to add your cages, trellises, Florida weave, tomato towers or other methods of support at this point in time, but I like to do it immediately. If I leave it for later, inevitably the plants grow more quickly that I think they will and it is a lot harder to get the cages over/around half-grown plants. Also, if you come back to cage or trellis them later, you may have to handle the tomato foliage quite a bit, and that can help transfer disease from plant to plant.

CAGE? TRELLIS? WEAVE? SPRAWL? Everyone has their favorite way of raising tomtoes.

Some people let the plants sprawl on the ground.

Some raise their plants inside wire cages made from concrete reinforcing wire or study woven wire fencing (NOT something lightweight like chicken wire).

Some stake their plants.

Some raise their plants supported by twine run between stakes in the Florida Weave style.

Some use cattle panels as a trellis.

Some people use a combination of all of the above. Each has advantages and disadvantages. If you want to start an argument among tomato afficianados, simply state that one way (your way, of course) is better than all the others....and get ready for all-out war, or a heated discussion, at the very least. (smiling)

Personally, I have tried pretty much all the different ways and feel that cages work best for me. (And, over the years and decades I have amassed a stock of several hundred cages.) You will have to try the method most appealing to you, or the one that is most affordable at the time, and see what works. You may try several different methods before figuring out which one or ones gives you the healthiest plants and the best yields.

When I do let my plants sprawl, I have noticed that I have more disease problems, more issues with pests like doodlebugs and turtles eating the tomtoes, and more rot in the tomato fruits themselves. So, I tend not to be a fan of sprawling plants. However, if I gardened in western or southwestern Oklahoma, I might find it worked just fine in that climate.

Once your plants are planted in the ground, watered, staked, caged, sprawling or otherwise supported, then your work is done and all you have to do is sit back and wait for the harvest right? Well, OK, not exactly.

Coming up in Part III, common pests and diseases and how to deal with them as well as how to encourage good plant growth and good production.

Dawn