The bad dirt could be a problem. There are ways to improve bad soil, but they generally involve a sunstantial investment of time and money, especially if you want to do them quickly. Still, there are some veggies that grow really well in clay soil. And, one good thing about the clay soil is that it really is very fertile because it is high in minerals.

Do you or your parents have any previous experience with raising vegetables? Also, I am assuming you have access to a tractor, as "farming" six acres by hand would be incredibly difficult and time consuming.

You need to base your decisions about "what to plant" based on what crops are in demand at the Farmer's Market where you intend to sell the vegetables. It doesn't matter if you can grow all the potatoes in the world (for example), if no one is buying potatoes.

At most Farmer's Markets, fresh, homegrown tomatoes always sell very well. So do many other vegetables, including green beans, okra, squash (winter and summer), hot and sweet peppers, melons like cantaloupe and watermelon (although melons do best on sandier soil), cucumbers, corn, and black-eyed peas.

2008 should be a GREAT year to sell vegetables at a Farmer's Market. Why? With the continual increase in gasoline prices, the prices of produce in standard grocery stores continues to rise and rise. A lot of people will go to Farmer's Markets this year hoping to get more there for their dollar. Unfortunately, the cost of commercial fertilizers goes up along with the cost of gasoline, so you have to consider how much it will cost you to fertilize your plants and do your planning (and pricing) accordingly.

Tomatoes and peppers both would perform best if planted on raised beds to help give them improved drainage. You don't have to build formal raised beds with edging....just mound up the soil so it is a few inches higher than the surrounding grade. Also, if you have any organic material available to add to the soil, I'd add it to the soil where you intend to grow the tomatoes and peppers.

Although breaking up the soil with a plow is a commonly accepted practice, read up and learn what you can about no-till farming, and use it if you are able. Why? Every time you plow or rototill the soil surface, you expose weed seeds to sunlight and hasten their germination. The less weed seed you stir up, the better, unless you're looking forward to weeding those vegetables all summer long.

As far as specific vegetables:

Tomatoes: There are thousands of tomato varieties out there, and some produce many more tomatoes per plant than others. Be sure you do your research carefully and choose tomatoes that taste great, produce well and have proven disease resistance.

Hybrids are the best option if you are not experienced at raising tomatoes, but heirlooms are great sellers also. You must start with transplants, as plants that are direct seeded take many, many more weeks to produce ripe tomatoes.

Plant several different types of tomatoes. Not only do you want to grow slicing tomatoes, you should grow the bite-sized cherry (or grape or currant) tomatoes, and paste tomatoes (for folks who like to can them or make salsa from them).

One of the biggest problems you'll have with tomatoes are the many diseases that attack the foliage. Since you're going to be growing for market, you probably ought to spray your foliage regularly with a fungicide to prevent those diseases. It is always better to prevent a problem from occurring in the first place if possible. (If you were only growing produce for your family, I'd strongly encourage you to grow organically.)

Tomatoes need EVEN watering in order to produce well. Try to keep the soil evenly moist and avoid a cycle that runs back and forth from very wet to very dry soil. Tomatoes that have uneven watering often have blossom end rot (which renders the fruit worthless) and problems with cracking.

PEPPERS: Peppers are very popular and grow well here. It is best to start with transplants and not to direct seed. You need to put the plants in the ground only after the soil and air temperatures have warmed up sufficiently since plants that are exposed to very cold soil for even just a few days will not produce well at all for the rest of the season.

CORN: Remember to plant your sweet corn in blocks, not in long, single rows. Corn is wind pollinated and each plant needs to have other plants on all sides of it (to the extent possible) to achieve proper pollination and well-filled ears.

Since you have the space, it would be a good idea to grow several different varieties with varying date-to-maturity numbers so you can prolong the harvest and sell corn over a longer time frame. You need to grow the different varieties at a distance from one another so they don't cross-pollinate.

Corn Earworms and Corn Borers will be your primary corn pest (as will raccoons if they are common in your area) and you need to keep them out of your corn or they can ruin your crop.

Plant your corn seed in the ground only after it has sufficiently warmed up. Regular sweet corn will germinate in soil that is 50 degrees or warmer. For the supersweet varieties, your soil needs to be a minimum of 60 degrees
to ensure good germination (and 70 degrees is even better).

BEANS: Beans are in important crop because they can literally manufacture there own nitrogen and, thus, do not require heavy fertilization. Plant bean seed only after your soil temperatures have reached 60 degrees since beans don't sprout well in cold soil. Bush beans are better for market growers as their harvest is spread out over a longer period of time. (Pole beans tend to produce one large, heavy harvest.) Also, bush beans are easier to harvest. You can succession plant additional beans at 10 to 14 day intervals to give you a more prolonged harvest.

Don't forget that green beans aren't all green, but can be grown in other colors as well, especially yellow and purple ones.

CUCUMBERS: Before your plant cucumbers, do your research. Some cucumbers are best for fresh-eating and others are preferable for canning. Both types will sell at Farmer's Markets, so be sure to grow both. Both vining and bush types are available. Be sure to pick your cucumbers regularly. If you leave the cucumbers on the vine too long, production drops.

OKRA: Okra needs warmth, so it should be one of the last crops you plant in the field. Okra will germinate poorly if soil temperatures are below 68 degrees. Okra seed can germinate erratically. You can improve germination by soaking your okra seed in water at roon temperature for 24 hours prior to sowing it. Unless your soil is exceptionally dry (or we have exceptional drought this year), okra can be grown dryland (without supplemental irrigation). Okra is exceptionally susceptible to cotton root rot, so avoid growing it if you know for sure that cotton root rot is or has been a problem on your soil.

SQUASH: You can grow many kinds of squash, both winter and summer squash, and pumpkins as well. Your biggest challenge with these will be squash bugs, squash vine borers and foliar diseases--especially powdery mildew.
Do your research and plant varieties that have some insect and disease resistance.

Summer squash plants (both the yellow crookneck or straightneck and zucchini as well) produce a lot of sellable product quickly, and you'll need to pick the squash every couple of days to keep it from getting too large and declining in maturity.

MELONS: Cantaloupe (muskmelons) will produce on clay soil although they'll do better on loose, sandy or silty soils. They like warm conditions, so don't sow seed or set out transplants until your soil is at least 60 degrees. If you use transplants, you'll get a crop about 3 weeks earlier.

Watermelons aren't hard to grow, but don't plant them until the soil reaches 70 degrees. If you are not experienced at determining when a watermelon is ripe, read and do your research and be sure you understand the methods used to determine if the melons are ripe.

HERBS: Herbs are pretty easy to grow....so much so that it is easy to produce more than you can sell. Some of the more popular herbs are dill, basil (there are many different basils you can grow), rosemary, thyme, cilantro, chives, sage and parsley.

FLOWERS: Flowers are a popular "crop" to sell at Farmer's Markets. As a beginner, it is best to stick with the ones that are easier to grow, like sunflowers, zinnias, verbena bonariensis, celosia and some of the different daisies. With flowers, since you would be selling the stems with leaves attached, it is important to keep your foliage looking good via proper fertilization and watering, as well as the use of pesticides to keep insects from disfiguring the leaves.

FRUIT: Fruit sells well at Farmer's Markets. Blackberries are pretty easy to grow IF your garden is going to be an ongoing project that you intend to do for years. Blackberry plants planted now won't give you much (if any) of a harvest this year, but would in subsequent years. Blackberries grow just fine on clay soil, and they will grow even better if that clay is "improved" by the addition of manure and organic material.

If your soil is deep enough and drains well enough, you could plant a row of peach trees. If you do, be sure to do your research and plant those with the proper number of chilling hours. Peach trees begin producing only a couple of years after being planted, and fresh home-grown peaches are HUGELY popular at Farmer's Markets.

DECORATIVE CROPS: In late summer and continuing through fall, decorative crops can sell quite well at Farmer's Markets. Decorative crops would include ornamental corn, ornamental gourds, pumpkins and winter squash, and plants like amaranth that produce large colored seed heads.

Regardless of what you intend to grow, seek the advice of your county's agriculture extension agent since he or she can give you advice based on specific soil and climate conditions for your county.

Also, stick with tried-and-true proven varieties, at least during your first year.

Good luck with your garden.

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks for the great information. I, too, am starting a vegetable garden this year (though not for sale..been gardening with perennials and annuals for years, but veggies are rather new to me). I'm starting small this year; we're restoring a house and I'm going to graduate school...so I think we are just going to try tomatoes and peppers this season. What are the planting dates for tomatoes and peppers? (I'm in Shawnee). Also, do you prefer to grow tomatoes in cages? What about peppers? Thanks so much! I'm really enjoying the forum!!

Ada

Ada,

I'm glad you're enjoying the forum. I enjoy it a lot too.

There is no "guaranteed" date that it is safe to plant tomatoes since our spring weather varies so much. In your part of the state, I probably wouldn't plant tomatoes any earlier than April 8th or 10th. And, if the nighttime temperatures are still in the low 40s at that time, I'd probably wait another couple of weeks.

Planting tomatoes "too early" generally does not buy you a lot of extra growth or a significantly earlier harvest since the plants don't grow well in cold soil. Don't believe me? Plant a couple of tomato plants the last week in March, and then plant a couple more (same variety, same approximate size) about 10 days later, and plant the rest (same variety, same size plant) about 10 days after that. Watch them grow. By the end of May they probably will be about the same size.

For a commercial grower who sells at a market, there IS an advantage to planting earlier since the earliest "home-grown, vine-ripened" tomatoes tend to sell for a premium price. The commercial grower, though, may be more willing and more able to take extra precautions (floating row covers or frost blankets, growing in high tunnels, etc.) to keep a late frost from killing the plants.

Peppers need significantly warmer soil, so I plant them "by temperature" and not "by date". I wait until the soil temperature is between 60 and 70 and also wait until the nighttime lows are consistently staying above 50 degrees.

I grow tomatoes in cages made from welded wire fencing. My cages are 3' to 8' tall depending on which tomaoto variety I am growing inside a given cage. (I have hundreds of cages.) The cages are staked using metal or wooden stakes. If I am using wooden stakes, I like to hammer them at least 6" to 8" into the soil. I use zip-ties to attach the stakes to the cages.

For peppers, I use either the 3' tall cages or the three-ring or four-ring tomato cages you see in stores at this time of year. (In general, these 'tomato cages' really aren't sturdy enough /large enough for indeterminate tomato vines, but are OK for pepper plants.) Pepper plants are VERY brittle and break easily, so the cages give them a little protection. You don't "have to" cage or even stake peppers, but I often have wild animals in my fenced-in garden out here in our rural area, (rabbits, possums, coons, foxes, bobcats, etc.) and the cages help protect the pepper plants from being broken by the wild things as they walk around the garden.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn! I've had similar experiences with planting certain kinds of annuals- it doesn't pay to plant them too early! I appreciate all your knowledgeable advice. This will help a lot. :-)

Ada

Dawn~

Thanks so much for the generous response to our "summer project!" We are slowly trying to educate ourselves in our new family venture....It's going to be fun getting started.

If you have a minute to respond, I have a few more questions, well really more than a few, but I'll only ask a few :)

We're only planning to garden about 1/2 acre this year and slowly grow it over time. Currently, our acreage is grasses and weeds. You mentioned the no-till method which I'm wanting to read more about. But, as for the raised bed approach, I know we wouldn't enclose that big of an area with a border, so wouldn't the dirt we bring in and mound up not wash away with rain? If we don't till and just put the dirt on top of weeds, grass, etc. wouldn't that stuff just grow right on up through our good dirt? Alot of weed pulling, I guess.....

Soil preparation...we're planning on having topsoil hauled in. We're also hoping to get some compost to work in with it. Should we then just mound it in rows and put the plants and seed in? How high should the "raised" dirt be? Any helpful hints on this is appreciated.

As for the critters...we're out on an open acreage with all the wildlife that brings. How do you keep raccoons and other larger critters out of the garden?

Also, what's your earliest and most prolific tomato producer?

Again, thank you...I truly appreciate your generous post!

Becky

Becky,

First of all, a half-acre garden is HUGE for someone who is new to gardening. To succeed with a new garden, you have to get on top of the weeds and grass early, and stay on top of them, or they will overtake your garden by mid-summer and ruin all your fun. : )

Secondly, do what you have to do to get rid of the weeds. You have two quick-and-easy choices, because planting season is rapidly approaching so you can't do some of the methods that take significantly longer. (1) You can either rototill them into the soil and THEN immediately apply a pre-emergent to soil to keep annual weeds from sprouting, and then build your raised beds (mounded soil is fine....just mulch it to keep the soil in place AND the weeds out) on top of that treated soil; or (2) Spray the entire area with a glyphosate-based herbicide to kill the existing weeds and grass, and then build your mounded rows. You'll have to mulch the soil to keep out weeds and to keep the mound from eroding. And, understand that ANYWHERE you have bare soil, weeds will sprout and grow, so you have to be prepared to pull them, hoe them, spray them, etc. Also, keep in mind that a pre-emergent will keep annual weeds from sprouting but won't prevent perennial weeds from coming back from roots that are in the soil.

A failure to keep the weeds and grass under control is the number one reason that new vegetable gardeners get frustrated and give up, so be agressive with the weeds early....and often.

For mulch, you certainly don't have to go to the store and purchase bags of chipped or shredded bark. You can use straw, hay (tends to have more weed seed than straw) or my favorite, chopped shredded leaves (if you have them on your property).

Also, be sure your look at and evaluate any topsil you are having hauled in. Make sure it is good soil....a lot of people will bring you junk dirt that's now fit for everything. Also, expect any soil to have some weed seed in it. It is unrealistic to expect anything else.

How high to mound the soil is up to you. If you have very slow-draining soil that will be underneath the mounded soil, I'd try to mound it up 8" to 12" high. You can make beds 4' to 5' wide so that you can reach into the center of the moung to weed from either side without stepping on the mound and compacting the soil. If you have sandy or sandy loam soil, you could mound your beds up 4" to 6" to 8" above the ground.

If you are in a rural area with a lot of wildlife, you MUST do something to keep them out or they will eat all your crops and you will get nothing. I'm not kidding!!!
Along with my family, friends and neighbors, I also provide produce to raccoons (they love, love, love corn), deer (love all the cool season crops, sunflowers and okra in my garden), coyotes (they LOVE melons), rabbits (they love everything), turtles (they love tomatoes) and every other living creature, including snakes, bobcats, skunks, possums and armadillos. The least expensive route would be to put up an electric fence. You will need one strand VERY low to the ground to keep the bunnies out, and several strands above ground to keep the deer and larger critters out.

My most successful method of coon control is to trap them in a live trap, using canned cat food as bait, and then to drive out into a VERY rural area where no one has a garden, and release the coon near a creekbed. You have to be careful. Trapped coons are not very happy campers and will try to tear up you, the trap and anything they can reach. You could shoot them (and after they eat your corn, you'll want to) but I am so soft-hearted than I can't do that.

Most of my garden is surrounded by a 4' welded wire fence and it keeps out the smaller animals but not all the deer. (I really need to add another 4' in height to keep all the deer out all the time.) Just a couple of days ago, I was sitting on the ground in the garden, mulching the onions, so I wasn't real visible and a lovely, large doe walked up to the fence and was preparing to it. When she saw me, did she turn and run? Nope. She stared at me, snorted (you know, that sound they make when they are blowing air through the nostrils in an attempt to scare you off), and did everything she could to make ME go away. Bold little thing. I didn't leave, so she finally did.

My earliest tomato is not at all my most prolific tomato, so I will give you multiple choices for tomatoes. Because I raise all my own plants from seed, I grow many, many obscure heirlooms that you probably won't find in the average nursery or big box store. IF you happen to live in northeastern Oklahoma and can buy plants from the Tomatoman and Daughter, you could buy anything they sell there and have success, though. So, I'll mention a few of the commonly sold ones that are easy to find.

HYBRID TOMATOES THAT ARE EARLIER THAN MOST: Early Girl (52 days from transplanting), Sungold (a golden-orange cherry that is about 56 days from transplanting, I thing, but not easy to find in stores) and Celebrity (about 70 days from transplanting).

HYBRID TOMATOES THAT ARE HEAVIER PRODUCERS: Better Boy (about 70-75 days from transplanting, maybe 80 if your weather stays cool a long time in spring), Big Boy (fewer tomatoes per plant than Big Boy, but they are big and yummy), Porterhouse* (huge red tomatoes in profusion--but I've never seen it in stores), Traveler (aka Traveler 76 or Arkansas Traveler, Porter (small, pinkish-red fruit all summer long), Super Fantastic, Sioux or Super Sioux, Lemon Boy or Brandy Boy* (hard to find commercially). A couple of other prolific producers (and they tend to be early as well) are Fourth of July and Bloody Butcher.

[*The two tomatoes with an asterisk are amazing. It is too late to start your own transplants from seed unless you are extremely far north and wouldn't be planting until May any way, but they are SO worth having. Both are available from Burpee as plants, but they are not cheap. However, they are worth it!]

SMALLER TOMATOES FOR SALSA, SAUCE OR CANNING: Any tomato with Roma in the name is a paste tomato (more meat, less juice) that can be used for salsa (yippee!), tomato sauce or canned tomatoes. Other Romas commonly sold include La Roma and Roma II. Other paste tomatoes commonly sold as transplants include Rio Grande, San Marzano and Viva Italia.

CHERRY, GRAPE, OR CURRANT TOMATOES: These are smallish tomatoes that generally are the shape/size of either cherries, grapes or currants. One that I've already mentioned is SunGold. Others you might find in stores or nurseries are: Husky Red Cherry, Large Red Cherry, Sweet 100, Sweet Million, Black Cherry*, Yellow Pear, Juliet, Sugary or Tiny Tim (a dwarf that isn't that great of a plant). [*Hands down, this is THE best "new" cherry tomato to hit the market in decades as the flavor is absolutely amazing. I've never seen them in stores as transplants, but if you stumble across them, you MUST try them! They are, in fact, possibly the best cherry tomato ever.]

HEIRLOOM TOMATOES THAT POP UP IN STORES, INCLUDING LOWE'S AND WAL-MART FROM TIME TO TIME: Cherokee Purple and Black Krim (the best good producers), Brandywine (the best flavor but a poor producer in our heat), Bradley, German (or German Giant or German Pink), Big Rainbow and others.

Finally, about those raccoons....there is one old-timey gardening trick that might work, especially since you have lots of room. Raccoons DO NOT like to work their way through the rough, prickly leaves of pumpkins. You can use this to your advantage. You could plant a "border" of pumpkins on all four sides of your garden....and that would keep the raccoons out. Or, plant the pumpkins on all 4 sides of the corn bed just to keep the coons out of the corn. The key is to start your pumpkins inside in either paper cups of those little fiber-looking pots made of compressed peat or whatever. Why? You need to get the pumpkins going early so they get big enough fast enough to keep the coons out. Starting the seed inside and planting out as soon as you can after your last frost date helps you get a head start.

If you have a thousand questions, go ahead and ask them. I'll answer all I can, and I am sure others will as well.

Finally, if you start a garden and find yourself plagued with weeds, and feel like a "failure" as a gardener a few weeks or months from now.....get over it! (smiling as I say that). Weeds are doing EXACTLY what God made them to do, and you aren't a failure just because they are doing their thing. You just have to be more persistent than they are. Every year, I see new gardeners till up the soil, plant, and then let the weeds take back the soil in a relatively short period of time. As long as you stay on top of them (weed early and often), you can have a successful veggie garden.

Dawn

If I were a young gardener starting out with a 1/2 acre garden, (a very large garden for a beginner)I would garden the old fashioned way, with a good troy bilt tiller and simply cultivate with the tiller twice or three times through the season. THat's not the way we do it now, we only till once at the beginning of the season when we till down the winter weeds and once at the very end of the season when we till under the chicken litter and wood chip bedding. (ANd some years we only till once very early in the season and turn under the litter then.) Then we hoe the early weeds and mulch with clean grass clippings later. But I can't imagine keeping the weeds under control any other way on a plot that size--but then I'm old--maybe young energetic folks could handle that much hoeing. And although we garden without added fertilizer now--just chicken litter, compost and woodashes, on a plot that size I would use commercial fertilizers--a little 10-20-10, but also some organic fertilizers--check out the organic forum for sources. Nitron industries sells by mail order. Then over the winter I would plant a cover crop--a green manure crop to plow under in late winter. Winter wheat or rye works. The down side to that is that it attracts deer which once they get into the habit of eating in your garden will come back for your veggies. So you have to be prepared to scare them off again. tin pie plates banging against stakes will help scare deer and crows, but the only real solution to deer is an 8 ft fence--or a couple electric strands with strips of white cloth fluttering from the top wire. ANyway, good luck let us know how it comes out. Dorothy

Dawn & Dorothy~

Thanks for your many words of wisdom. You know, we've been measuring our plot that we were going to use and it is only 1/8 of an acre :) ONLY, ha ha....It is actually still looking pretty huge to me!

We calculated the amount of dirt we'd need to bring in and it would take about 10 dump truck loads LOL! So........we've scaled down our plan and decided to do many raised beds, starting with maybe 6-8 this year and adding from there. It could be we only end up with half that for this year. We'll see how fast us amateurs can work.

I was wondering how many tomatoes on average can you harvest per plant. I know it must depend on many factors, but we'll mainly be planting hybrids, very resistant types. Any enlightenment here would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for all your advice.....We'll keep you posted....

Becky~

Very interesting thread. Becky, congratulations on this project. Sounds wise to scale down a bit, as you mention above. I'd rather see a new gardener anxious to expand, after their first season, than still twitching from the bad experience of being overextended!

Here's just one tip regarding squash. If I were growing winter squash for the market I'd probably focus mostly on butternuts, or something related to them. They have good resistance to squash vine borers, which can decimate vine crops. Acorn and most summer squash are notoriously susceptible to borers. Squash bugs are another matter. Seems they get all squash.

Zucchini and other summer squash are very productive. You do need to carefully inspect the base of their stems for borer holes and be prepared to insert a knife blade to kill them, heaping soil over the wound afterwards. Successive plantings are also very helpful in coping with borers.

If you raise squash and get overwhelmed with squash bugs be sure to eliminate the plants along with all the bugs that go with them, in a way that lessens the "carry over effect" on next year's garden. I try to burn old vines, at the end of the season, in order to kill eggs and insects hiding in them.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Becky,

Well, it is better that y'all are starting smaller because I could not imagine starting out with several acres.

I don't track the number of tomatoes per plant, because it is highly variable, depending on the fertility of the soil, rainfall, etc.

Some hybrids produce many more tomatoes per plant than others. Perhaps, in your case, it would be wise to contact your county's agriculture extension agent and ask him or her to recommend a few varieties that are good producers for commercial growers. The varieties developed for commercial growers are often bred to be heavy producers and often have been bred for increased disease resistance as well. Or, you can go to the OSU agriculture extension website and read what they have there about growing tomatoes. I am pretty sure they have separate documents for home gardeners and for commercial growers.

Also, ask your ag agent if their are any serious tomato diseases in your county that you need to be aware of. If there are, you would want to plant varieties that have resistance to or tolerance of those diseases. I am thinking of some of the more "unusual" tomato illnesses that we home gardeners rarely see, like Spotted Tomato Wilt Virus or Curly Top. In some parts of the country, these diseases have become a huge problem and I have heard both have been reported in Oklahoma, although probably in commercial fields and not home gardens.

Among the common, readily-available tomato plants that you often see at retail stores, these are some of the more productive ones: Better Boy, Celebrity, Early Girl, Big Boy, Jetstar, Jetsetter, Rutgers, Super Fantastic, First Lady, Carnival, Homestead or Homestead 24, Peron Sprayless (harder to find noadays), Bonnie Best or Roma (for paste tomatoes for spaghetti sauce or salsa). If you stumble across heirloom tomatoes for sale somewhere, you probably want to stick with the red-fruited varieties the first year as it can be hard (and can take agressive marketing) to get people to try any tomato that is not red. In my experience, people are more likely to try odd-colored tomatoes in the following order: pink, yellow, purple, orange, black, green, white. So, pink heirlooms would be a safer choice than, say, purple or white.

For cherry or grape-sized tomatoes, most of the ones commercially available are good producers. Some of my favorite hybirds are Sweet Million, Sweet 100, Large Red Cherry, Husky Red Cherry, SunGold, SunSugar, Tami-G, Sweet Baby Girl or Juliet. If you happen to run across someone selling heirloom cherry or grape tomatoes, the best include: Black Cherry, Ildi, Galina's, Dr. Carolyn, Snow White, Rosalita, Grape, or Porter/Porter's Pride (Porter is a great producer in heat with fruit slightly larger than Large Red Cherry.)

Good luck, keep us posted, and keep asking questions.

Dawn

I am wondering what is "too late" to plant for tomatoes. And is that about the same for other veggies like zucchini, cucumber, peppers, herbs, etc....?? As all of you experienced gardeners know, preparing for the garden is taking time. I know we won't have the plants in by the 15th(our goal) - hubby will be leaving for a week and we won't have the beds ready by then.

Also, we don't have time to be too creative on out tomato cages, so is there anything better to use besides the standard, round tomato cage??

Thanks so much for your expertise. We finished our plan on paper and now we're starting on building the beds today!! We've already been learning much and having some laughs along the way. The boys have been trying to name their garden "jobs"....it seems they all want to be in charge of critter control...I guess it's the boy/war/protector thing inside of them :) We've actually looked online at pics of some of those bugs that will hopefully not be coming and my are they quite scarey looking. The boys, of course, thought it was great to have an enlarged size of one of those bugs on my computer screen every time I turn it on......Gross!!

It should be a nice day for being outside.....Have a great Saturday!

Becky

Becky,

It is hard to say what is "too late" for tomato plants as their blooming period/pollination must occur during specific temperatures and I am not certain when you have that range of temperatures in your part of the state. And, of course, some plants do set fruit at slightly warmer temperatures and some set fruit all summer long in spite of the temperatures. So, I'll try to explain it all a little below.

"BEST" PLANTING FOR TOMATOES AS RECOMMENDED BY OSU'S SPRING GARDEN PLANTING GUIDE: April 10th thru April 30th

"Best" Planting Dates For Average Large-Fruited (Slicer and Beefsteak Types) Tomatoes: April 10th - April 30th*

"Best" Planting Dates for Paste Tomatoes (Roma types grown for sauces, salsas, and fresh eating: April 10 - June 1st*

"Best" Planting Dates for Cherry/Grape/Currant tomatoes (all the smaller bite-sized ones): April 10th - June 15th*

"Best" Planting Dates for Plants Bred to Flower/Set Fruit in the Worst Heat of the Summer: April 10th - July 1st*

* The catch is that the later they are planted, the later they produce ripe fruit. Keep in mind that even the earliest tomatoes will still take about 8 weeks to produce ripe tomatoes after the plants are transplanted into the ground. The larger, later tomatoes can take 3 months. A few take even longer.

So, if you did make that April 10th planting date (and I know you don't expect to), you could expect your first ripe tomatoes around June 10th, although my experience says that it is more realistic to expect them sometime in the last two weeks of June.

If you get your plants in the ground by April 30th, you can expect ripe tomatoes no earlier than June 30th and, more realistically, sometime during the first two weeks of July.

But, of course, there are some varieties that produce above average yields and earlier than expected and some produce below average yields and later than expected.

TOMATO BLOOM AND POLLINATION: Tomatoes begin blooming once the plants are a certain size (and they really don't have to be very large) AND the temperatures fall within a certain favorable range. Basically, they need nighttime temperatures that are no warmer than 75 degrees and daytime temperatures that are no warmer than 92 degrees in order for maximum fruit set to occur. Notice that I said "maximum fruit set". As a market grower, of course you want to get maximum fruit set because you need the greatest "output" (tomatoes to sell) to cover your "input" (costs). However, it is likely you won't get maximum yield in your very first year because there is a learning curve.

What happens once "hot" weather arrives that causes pollination to shut down? Well, basically the pollen gets "sticky" and that "stickiness" can keep the pollen from moving from the male part (the anther cone)of the tomato flower to the female part (the pistil) and more specificallly the stigma, which is the pollen-receptive tip of the pistil. (Tomatoes are self-fertile and self-pollinate.) And, even if pollination occurs, fertilization may not happen because heat causes some tomato pollen to become sterile. And, even if fertilization does occur, not every fertilized flower will set fruit. Some fertilized flowers merely fall off the plant once the plant feels like the weather is "too hot". This loss of flowers is called blossom drop and it cannot be prevented.

SMALLER-FRUITED TOMATOES: Both the paste-type tomatoes and the bite-sized ones are not generally affected by temperatures, so pollination and fertilization will occur during hot weather. Most paste-type tomatoes, though, are determinates to they produce all their ripe tomatoes at the same time. Most bite-sized tomatoes produce continually throughout the summer.

In general, date-to-maturity numbers can help you choose your tomato varieties. Most varieties that will give you the best production in the heat will have DTMs of 70 to 80 days. Some of them will even have DTMs of 55 to 70 days, but these tend to be those with smaller fruit.

Some tomato plants ignore the rules and produce fruit even during the hottest weather, but those tend to be the exception rather than the rule.

Finally, breeders are now breeding tomatoes that can pollinate and fertilize in daytime heat of up to 96 degrees. Unfortunately, these are not being bred for flavor, really, and some people don't like the flavor of these heat-setting tomatoes. You can recognize these by the use of certain key words in their variety names, mostly "Sun" "Solar" or "Heat". Some of these varieties are Heat Wave II, Sun Leaper, Sun Master, Solar Fire, etc.

I hope all this info helps you understand how the date that you plant affects the tomato plants and their ability to produce tomatoes. The one key fact to remember is that tomato plants generally pollinate and fertilize when nighttime temperatures are in the 55 to 75 degree range.

In future years, once all your beds are built and you have the whole routine figured out, you will be able to plant at the earliest time when your soil temps (55 to 60 degree minimum) and air temps are ideal to give you early production. Keep in mind that the earlier you have ripe fruit to sell, the more you can charge for them, especially if you are among the first grower at the market to have ripe tomatoes. Later in the season, as more tomatoes ripen and all the growers have plenty of them, you will have to charge less per pound to be competitive. That is a great lesson for the kids in the law of supply and demand.

Now, about the tomato cages. Cages are used by home gardeners but usually are not used by market growers or commercial tomato farms. The cages are very labor intensive and expensive, taking a certain amount of time to make and then to set up in the rows and stake. They also slow you down when it is time to harvest. Many market gardeners use trellises and large commercial tomato farms use methods that are conducive to the use of commercial harvesting machines.

How many plants are you intending to plant? Let me know and I'll describe the best support options for that size of an operation.

Have a lovely day in the garden.

Dawn

Hi Dawn~

Thanks for your post. We're going to attempt to get 200-ish tomato plants in the ground. We may be a little high. Ultimately, it depends on how many of the beds we get ready. We're shooting for 10, but it may have to be less this year. We'll see.....

Any input you have about supports will be greatly appreciated. Happy gardening!

Becky

Becky,

There are quick and easy trellises made of posts and twine that can be used when you have a large quantity of tomato plants. They are easier to set up and easier to work around at harvest time (compared to cages).

One method is called the Florida Weave, and I assume its' name means it probably originated in commercial field there. I'll link some Florida Weave info for you.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Info On How To Do The Florida Weave

"Florida Weave" is what I use.

Didn't know that was what it was called though. That's just the way we always did it. Always used hemp or jute baling twine too.

I found this thread while doing a search on corn, and I read the whole thing lol.

Anyone but me curious how it all turned out?

Yeah, I wonder. This is around the time that newbies often play out and get discouraged. Soil is the biggest issue, I think. It's fairly easy to fix with time, but really hard to fix quickly.

She has posted more, and it looks like they were expanding for year 2.

Also, they do have a few market days. This thread just didn't end the story well lol.

Where did she post again? I wanna know what happened.
Kristy

Kristy,

The last time I remember Becky posting was last fall and I think, if memory serves me correctly, she was either planting something for fall and winter or making plans for spring. She didn't post terribly often....probably because she was out there planting and maintaining a huge number of plants.

You might be able to find her old threads by entering her GW name in the forum's search box.

Dawn

I'd read it too and was wondering how it had all turned out :-p

Mandy