I have very good luck in the winter greenhouse letting the daytime temperatures climb into the high 90s so that I can heat my passive solar storage, and letting the night time temperatures go down to about 45. There are sunny days when the temperature goes over 100 with no noticable deliterious effects. I water automatically twice a day on a drip system, and grow in mostly 2 or 3 gallon containers. The plants become huge over time because I don't bother pruning suckers or laterals. Plants are spaced about 3' apart in a row, and trellised so that they grow up about 10', and then hang down again. The plants look quite messy and unkempt, but they produce lots of good fruit. Here are some of the current varieties I'm growing. Arbason is a mid-sized tomato with very vigorous growth. It, like almost all the varieties I grow, is resistant to blossom end rot. There are a few heirlooms that get BER even with the regular doses of calcium nitrate I use in the fertilizer. Fruit is still good tasting, just ugly. Verona is a small tomato, larger than a cherry, with good production as a salad addition. Sun Gold is a yellow cherry that visitors often really like. It has a low acid taste, and is quite productive. Yellow pear is probably the favorite tomato of visitors; it produces huge numbers of low acid fruits on a vine that sprawls all over the place. One plant is well over 8' wide, and trellised at several points. This is a tomato that even those who say they don't like tomatoes like. I grow Brandywine, and find the flavor ok in the winter greenhouse, but it can get to be a bit meally, and I don't think it is as tasty in texture as some of the others mentioned. It is a quite large fruit, however. Other heirlooms also tend to get a bit meally during the winter, and I am slowly moving toward growing more of the modern varieties specifically bred for greenhouse production because of the better textures and flavors in the winter. Renais

Hi jll, Arid land farming usually takes advantage of it's seasonal rains to plant out into the ground & then the crop gets it's luck from weather vagaries. Watsonville probably has a wetter season & then that tomato would have been dry farmed after getting established. If you are in the high desert & out of synchronization with any planting rain then don't hold back on water for seedlings - water rationing would be for established root systems. This tomato might be worth trying to harvest for seeds to plant at the tail end of your next wet weather season. Then you can prepare the growing site before the rains for better arid agriculture. One archaic dry farming technique is to create berms of soil on a honey comb pattern. These diamond shaped enclosures have their apex at the lower point of the land slope. The sparse rain then runs down to the lowest point of each area prepared, where it is slowed enough for greater penetration into the soil (uphill from the dirt barrier). This keeps more water in your quadrants of honey comb planting sectors. When it is time to plant the lowest triangle (inside each of these berms) is where to grow, because the ground will have relatively more retained moisture. In other words, the total area available is not used to plant in. Rather the field is broken into segments (before the rains) & designed to give at least some part of each diamond enough water to grow a crop.

No, it is a rip-off and preaches all sorts of weird junk. Unfortunately it keeps rearing its ugly head here and on other tomato-growing forums in discussions, strongly negative discussions except for the spamming by the seller. I linked a bunch of them below you can read through if interested. Don't waste your money. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato magic discussions

While I haven't seen a discussion of Postawski's book in particular, there has been many discussions about pruning here. I've seen that book's advertising and nearly bought it, but decided time spent in greenhouses probably taught me what he wrote. I've suggested in a few threads that greenhouse techniques are being recommended for all conditions, and 'I think' this is an error. I was referring to Postawski and a few others with that comment. I suspect some of the educated experts around here can explain scientifically why three leaves are not going to do the job for a heavy set of outdoor tomatoes in most of our growing zones. Very simply, my understanding is the leaves create the sugar that is delivered to the fruit while protecting it from sunscald. Greenhouse cultivars like Trust are very much different plants specifically bred for single stem, heavy pruning, indoor, hydroponic growing. This is very different than outdoor growing. I did my own experimenting this year in Las Vegas like high desert conditions, extreme dry heat. The early results for heavy pruning, though not as severe as your books suggests, were pretty good for larger fruited plants, not so good for cherries. Basically I got fruit much earlier off of the pruned plants, but the cherries almost seemed injured from the amputations, and one picked up fusarium while the others thankfully resisted it. Here in midseason, the heavily pruned larger fruited plants are now behind in production. I have had to fashion fake foliage out of burlap and old sheets to protect their fruit from sunscald. Pruning hasn't been worth the extra effort. Once I let the pruned cherries branch out they really took off. Had I kept a careful record, it's probable the wounded cherries ended up being as or more productive than the others. I dunno, it's close. But it was still unnecessary. I think there's one obvious benefit to heavy pruning. You can squeeze more plants into less space allowing you to sample a better variety of the myriad heirlooms discussed around here. And I think there's one not so obvious but fairly well documented other benefit. You can get fruit earlier. I will likely prune a plant here and there going forward for this reason only. Earlier does not equate to more though. My experience is less. I don't believe you necessarily get bigger fruit by pruning, though I suspect it is true with some cultivars, primarily greenhouse varieties. I guess it is really up to you if you want to do this. A third possible benefit is the plant is easier to support with simple stakes or string trellising from above. I was a little brainwashed by all the online advice before coming here and reading very successful, knowledgeable, and experienced growers adamantly against pruning. Digdirt Dave's input, Containerted's and Raybo's pictures (and many others) should be all anyone needs to see to know pruning is not necessary for fantastic results. Those guys (and many others) know what they're doing. They do not prune.