Harvesting the Best: Tomato Tips for Washington Gardeners

In this episode of The Evergreen Thumb, Master Gardener Alice Slusher joins us to share tomato tips to help you harvest your best tomatoes yet.

She covers how extreme weather affects tomatoes, gives tips on how we can help pollination along in hot weather and gives listeners tips on how they can improve their tomato yield. She goes over common tomato pests and diseases as well as presents practical solutions on how gardeners can work through these problems. Alice ends the episode with presenting her top tips for growing tomatoes and gives listeners a list of common mistakes that gardeners make with tomatos.

Alice is a 12-year WSU Cowlitz County Extension Master Gardener and has received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award with over 5000 hours of volunteer time.  During that time, she has been the director of the Cowlitz County Extension’s Plant and Insect Clinic and has become familiar with most of the problems that occur in our wet, cold, rainy winters and springs as well as in our hot, dry summers.  Over the years she has realized that planting the right plant in the right place will eliminate 70% or more of plant problems. Half of the remaining 30% can often be managed by monitoring your garden, using common sense methods to deter insect and plant disease, and inviting pest-fighting beneficial insects to your garden. She can often be found in her garden with her magnifying glass and cellphone camera, catching the good guys in action.

• Vegetable Gardening — Master Gardener Foundation
• Growing Tomatoes in Home Gardens WSU publication
• Pests, Predators, and Prevention: Integrated Pest Management for Vegetable Gardens — Episode 017

[00:00:00] Erin Hoover: Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb, your go-to podcast for up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden, produced by Washington State University Extension Master Gardener volunteers and brought to you by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:00:16] I’m your host, Erin Hoover, a WSU Extension Master Gardener since 2015 and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader. WSU Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.

[00:00:44] Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb, episode 27. My guest today is Alice Slusher and she’s here to talk to us about growing tomatoes in Washington. Alice is a 12-year WSU Cowlitz County Extension Master Gardener who received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award with over 5,000 hours of volunteer time.

[00:01:04] During that time, she’s been the director of the Cowlitz County Extension’s Plant and Insect Clinic and has become familiar with most of the problems that occur in our wet, cold, rainy winters and springs as well as in our hot, dry summers. Over the years, she has realized that planting the right plant in the right place will eliminate 70 percent or more of plant problems.

[00:01:23] Half of the remaining 30 percent can often be managed by monitoring your garden, using common sense methods to deter insects and plant disease, and inviting pest-fighting beneficial insects to your garden. She can often be found in her garden with her magnifying glass and cell phone camera catching the good guys in action.

August Gardening Calendar

[00:01:42] Before we jump in today’s episode, let’s go over the August gardening calendar.

Damp wood termites will begin flying late in the month, so make sure your home is free of wet wood or places where wood and soil are in contact. A home inspector once recommended to me that there should be six inches between the siding of your home, if you have wood siding, and your soil level to protect your home from insects like termites.

[00:02:12] Make compost out of lawn clippings and garden plants that are ready to be recycled, but do not use clippings if the lawn has been treated with an herbicide, including weed and feed products, and don’t compost diseased plants unless you’re using a hot compost method where temperatures exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:02:30] Fertilize cucumbers, summer squash, and broccoli to maintain production while you continue to harvest. Clean and fertilize your strawberry beds. Protect ornamentals with mulch. This will help keep them cooler in hot weather.

You can also provide temporary shade, especially for new plantings. You can have like a piece of shade cloth or an umbrella. Even just some like raw muslin-style fabric to provide some light shade.

[00:03:00] Camellias will need deep watering to develop, to develop flower buds for next spring. Prune raspberries, boysenberries, and other cane berries after harvest. Check raspberries for holes made by Crown Borers that are near the soil line at the base of the plant.

[00:03:15] Remove infested wood before adults emerge approximately mid-month. Monitor irrigation closely so crops and ornamentals don’t dry out. If you want your lawn to stay green, you’ll have to water frequently during periods of heat and drought stress. Irrigate at least a quarter inch four to six times per week.

[00:03:33] Measure your water use by placing a tuna can where your irrigation water lands.

Prune cherry trees before fall rains begin to allow callusing in dry weather. This will minimize the spread of bacterial canker.

West of the Cascades prune out dead fruiting canes in trailing blackberries and train new canes prior to the end of the month.

[00:03:54] In high elevations in central and eastern parts of the state prune away excess vegetation and new blossoms on tomatoes after mid-August to compensate for ripening set fruit.

In planting and propagation, you can plant winter cover crops in vacant spaces in your vegetable garden. Plant winter kale, Brussels sprouts, turnips, parsnips, parsley, and Chinese cabbage.

[00:04:18] West of the Cascades, do a mid-summer planting of peas and plant fall crops of cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. On the coast, you can plant spinach.

For pest monitoring and management, remove cankered limbs from fruit and nut trees for control of apple anthracnose and bacterial canker of stone fruit, and sterilize tools before each new cut so you don’t transmit the disease to a new area in the tree.

[00:04:44] Control yellow jackets and wasps with traps and lures if necessary. Keep in mind that they are beneficial insects and help control pest insects in the home garden. So be selective with trapping or destroying nests.

If necessary, early in the month, spray for Peach Tree Borer and or Peach Twig Borer.

[00:05:06] You can also spray for Filbert trees for Filbertworm and check for Root Weevils in ornamental shrubs and flowers, Coddling Moth, and Spider Mites on apple trees.

Scale insects, and pests like that you can treat as necessary. Watch for Corn Earworm on early corn and treat as needed. Also, mite control on ornamentals and most vegetables.

[00:05:28] You can hose off the foliage and spray with an approved miticide if necessary. Check leafy vegetables for caterpillars. Pick them off as necessary as they appear. This is particularly effective in brassicas.

Continue monitoring peaches, plums, prunes, figs, fall-bearing raspberries, everbearing strawberries, and other plants that produce soft fruits and berries for Spotted Wing Drosophila. If they are present, use the least toxic approach to manage the pests.

[00:05:55] East of the Cascades, check for Tomato Hornworm and remove them if they are found. That pretty much covers August.

There’s a lot more pest management going on this time of year and a little less, uh, propagation and planting just to, because of the weather and the time of year.

Introducing Alice Slusher

[00:06:16] So let’s move on to our interview. Alice, thanks for being here today. Welcome to the show.

Alice Slusher: I’m happy to be here.

Erin Hoover: Let’s start off with, I want to ask, what is your gardening passion? What makes you get out in the garden?

[00:06:31] Alice Slusher: Well, you know, I’m not one of these people who really likes to get out in the garden that much, you know, to grow things, although I’m starting to get into it.

[00:06:39] What I like to do is, um, find out what’s wrong with plants and, you know, is it an insect bothering it? Is there something wrong with a disease? Or is the, are the growing conditions not very good? But I’m getting into the growing part a lot more lately.

How Weather Swings Affect Tomatoes

[00:06:57] Erin Hoover: So, we’re talking mostly today about tomatoes. So, with some crazy weather we’ve been having this spring with late rains and now we’re in the middle of a heat wave, how do these swings in weather affect how tomatoes grow?

[00:07:12] Alice Slusher: It’s really tough, isn’t it? Um, I, a lot of people tried putting their plants in April and they said, well, they didn’t do anything. Some of them died. Well, the ground’s too cold. They won’t do anything. They won’t grow. They end up getting diseases out there. I recommend people don’t even plant things, even in a good year until the first of June, unless they take precautions to cover their plants and protect them from the cold.

[00:07:31] The big challenge though, I think, is with the heat, is keeping them adequately watered. It’s absolutely that, and mulched. If you water the equivalent of one inch per week and have a good mulch around the base of your plants, that’ll help them to keep the water in.

[00:07:53] You might still have a lot of wilting during a day like today. At the end of yesterday, my tomatoes looked like they were half dead. They were just kind of hanging there. But I checked the soil and it was moist. So what happened was that plant was evaporating way too much of its water reserves and it just shut itself down so that it could save itself.

[00:08:14] Come evening, it perked right back up. So, you know, if you see your plant doing that, then just check and make sure that the water is moist and give it a little bit of time. The other big problem we have is that in sustained hot weather like we’ve been having with these 90-plus degree days is that the blossoms that are on there won’t get fertilized.

Tomato Tips for Pollination

[00:08:36] You’ll get no fruit because the pollen kind of gets really sticky and tomatoes are self-pollinated for the most part. It’s not the bees that come and transfer the pollen from one to the other. It’s self-pollinated before it even opens. So one thing that you can do, and maybe you’ll have tomatoes two weeks from now and nobody else will, you can go by and gently flick the blossoms with your finger and try to kind of move things around in there.

[00:09:04] Another thing that I tried last year really worked, too. I got my toothbrush, you know, my electric toothbrush and I got the non-business end, not the brush end, the other end, and let it vibrate against the flower. It mimics the vibration of a bumblebee. Now, the bumblebee hangs on that flower, and the vibration will help to pollinate it.

[00:09:28] However, the bumblebees aren’t doing a lot of, you know, work this time, you know, when it’s this hot. But those are, those are my big ones.

One more thing, if you do have tomatoes, um, especially in this hot weather, and they are at the breaker level, which means that you’ve got this tomato that turned from green to kind of pearly white, and now it’s starting to pink up. You’re getting a nice blush on it. Pick it now.

[00:09:54] Pick it now before it gets insect damage or before it gets scalded by the sun. If you cut that off and take it into your, um, kitchen, set it on the counter, within five minutes two to three days, you’re going to have a nice, fine, ripened, flavored tomato.

[00:10:14] It doesn’t matter that you picked it early. Those are my three, three big tips.

Tips to Improve Tomato Yields

[00:10:18] Erin Hoover: All right. Do you have any tips to improve yields in your tomatoes?

[00:10:23] Alice Slusher: I like to do some very light pruning on indeterminate tomatoes. Um, for those of you who don’t know the difference between determinate and indeterminate, determinates are the smaller, bushier, tomatoes that are, you know, good for pots or good for putting in containers and they produce all their fruit all at the same time, which means that they’re very good for canning, right?

[00:10:47] Those you don’t want to do any pruning on except maybe the very bottom leaves that are touching the ground. You never want any tomato leaves to, any leaves of any plant to be touching the ground because that’s kind of like a walkway for, you know, fun, fungus problems. So, keep them off the ground for both kinds of tomatoes.

[00:11:09] The indeterminate ones are the tomatoes that most of us are aware of. They need staked. They get really, really big. And they, once they start producing flowers and fruit. They continue until frost. So, I like to prune, lightly prune my indeterminate tomatoes, and I like to get the suckers out, the ones between the side branches and the main branch.

[00:11:33] The main reason, there are two reasons that you do this. One is to focus the plants, energy into developing the fruit and not making a lot more foliage. And the other thing is that you want to have good airflow because it will help to prevent fungal diseases. Um, last year I had my tomatoes in one of those large cages that was made out of a cattle panel, and I thought that would [00:12:00] be really great, and you know, I can reach in there, my whole hand fits in, but it made it really difficult to get those suckers out because It got so bushy, so fast, and by the end of the season, I had this giant bush.

[00:12:14] Yeah, I had tomatoes, but I could have had a lot more, and I would have had a lot more airflow if I had been able to get in there and get some of those suckers out. You don’t want to trim so much that the tomatoes that you do have are being exposed to an awful lot of sun because they will scald.

Pests and Diseases that Tomatoes are Susceptible to

[00:12:30] Erin Hoover: So you mentioned fungal diseases. Are there other diseases, uh, pests or diseases that tomatoes are particularly susceptible to?

[00:12:38] Alice Slusher: Mostly tomatoes get fungal diseases. They get powdery mildew late in the season, in August. Um, early on they can get, early blight, which is another fungal disease. It’s Alternaria. The problem I have in my garden, it’s actually bacterial blight.

[00:12:54] It’s a bacterial blight of tomatoes. It starts out on the lower leaves, little, tiny spots all over them. Even though they’re not touching the ground, I got the little spots all over them. And then the spots get on the fruit too. They think that is caused by infected seeds. So that’s a problem.

[00:13:14] And it can also, you know anything you’ve got in the soil, if you haven’t cleaned it out, that’s another avenue for, for disease, pests, you know. My biggest problem with pests is flea beetles and it’s only early in the season. They’re teensy tiny little, you know, like the head of a pin-type beetles.

[00:13:32] They’re black and they create tiny little holes on your tomato leaves. You may not even see the beetle because when you go to look and you actually touch the plant, they jump off, but you’ll see these little pock marks. I let them go. Because my plants aren’t so tiny that they can’t recover, and the time that they’re actually doing the damage is very short.

[00:13:55] The other thing is, you can get aphids, you can get a few other things, but if you plant a lot of flowers around your garden, they can attract beneficial insects to eat those. Sweet alyssum is a wonderful plant. But there are a lot of other ones, but sweet alyssum attracts the little, parasitoid wasps. What the parasitoid wasps do is listen for a distress call from a plant that says, oh my god, I got aphids.

[00:14:19] And it will lay its egg inside that aphid. You come back another couple of days and that aphid has blown up a little bit. It’s a color of a, you know, kind of bee color. The new adult has come out of it. If you let the aphids go on your plants, for the most part, I do believe that the beneficial insects will take care of them.

[00:14:44] I’ve never had a problem with them, and I don’t do anything with the aphids. Sometimes they tell you, well, spray the plant off with water. I don’t even do that because sometimes these little beneficial insects are hiding underneath the aphid. And if you spray it off, you’re spraying them off too. If you go around squishing them, you’re squishing the beneficial bugs too.

[00:15:03] So keep an eye on it. Give it a few days and then, you know, move on to other things if you need to.

Blossom End Rot and How to Prevent It

[00:15:09] Erin Hoover: So what about blossom end rot? That’s one I see a lot of people concerned about. Ah, yeah.

[00:15:16] Alice Slusher: Blossom end rot is not a problem with calcium in the soil. It’s a problem with the plant being able to use calcium.

[00:15:23] You’ll see blossom end rot, that black area on the, um, the part of the plant that is furthest from the stem, and it’s caused by the calcium is unavailable to the plant at that point. It’s caused by inconsistent water moisture. You’ll see it on peppers and squash plants too. Any kind of squash family plants, you’ll see that.

[00:15:49] The trick is, to make sure that you keep that soil evenly moist. You don’t want it to dry out too much. You don’t want it to get too wet. Too much water. It really, really makes a difference. Now, some varieties are more prone to it. A lot of the, uh, paste tomatoes, the plum tomatoes are more prone to blossom end rot than others, but usually it’s early in the season.

[00:16:09] It’s kind of like they get it out of their system and later it’s better. But try that. See what happens if you keep your soil moist.

[00:16:16] Erin Hoover: Yeah, I see in a lot of, um, online forums and things that people automatically say, “Oh, you need calcium, you need calcium and, um, you know, or add Epsom salts to your soil”.

[00:16:25] Alice Slusher: Oh, no, no, no.

[00:16:26] Erin Hoover: So, that’s why I wanted to make sure it does have to do with calcium, but it is not a lack of calcium.

Tomato Hornworms

What about, I know we don’t really have them in Western Washington, but Tomato Hornworms?

[00:16:41] Alice Slusher: Oh, tomato hornworms are so much fun. Back in Ohio, where I came from, it was a big shock coming out here to try to grow tomatoes, because it’s hot during the day and warm during the night, and tomatoes grew like crazy, here, not so much.

[00:16:53] But we had Tomato Hornworms. I was a Master Gardener there, and only for a year, and we went out to our county fair, and our displays were problems for our garden. So, we brought in our worst possible examples. And people would stop by and say, you’re Master Gardener. You’ve got this crap here. But one of them was a, um, a tomato with Tomato Hornworm on it.

[00:17:14] They’re very large, um, caterpillars. They’re, oh, about the size of your index finger when they’re fully grown. They are the exact color of a tomato plant. You can look at them and not even see them unless you have a four-year-old whose face is right in there. What alerted me to them is they’ve got their frass; their droppings are about the size of a pencil eraser.

[00:17:37] Very, very distinctive, and if you look carefully, you’ll see them, and they will eat a tomato. The good news is that when they’re small, you can either squish them, or you can use Bacillus Thuringiensis. It’s a, uh, it’s a pesticide, but it’s very specific to caterpillars. But if you let them grow bigger and keep an eye on the damage, there are parasitoid wasps that will come and lay their eggs in those and give it a couple of days and it takes over the whole inner workings of the caterpillar.

[00:18:10] These little white spiky things come out, which are the cocoons, and a couple of days later, the adults emerge. That’s what we showed at the fair. And it was really, good. Quite exciting for everybody involved. But yeah, they can eat your plant, but they can just devour tomato in no time flat.

[00:18:27] Keep your eyes open for the, um, droppings.

Best Practices for Mulching Tomatoes

[00:18:30] Erin Hoover: So, what are the best practices for mulching tomatoes? I know we talked a little bit about mulching.

[00:18:35] Alice Slusher: Well, you know, there’s a whole lot of different ideas about that. If you go to some university sites, there’s one group that is looking at red plastic mulch underneath the tomato plant.

[00:18:47] Um, I tried that one year. It’s supposed to increase yields. I didn’t see any difference at all. There’s another group that says, “Oh, we’ll put reflective mulch underneath it”. Such as, well, even aluminum foil, because not only does aluminum foil reflect heat up, but it also apparently, um, deters aphids. I never tried that because I’ve never had a problem with aphids.

[00:19:11] There are some people that say, well, use black mulch with holes in it, you know, so that water can get through, because that’ll keep your soil warmer, especially early in the season, which actually isn’t a bad practice for early in the season. It does help keep the soil warm. But if you want to enrich the soil, protect the plant’s moisture and keep weeds down, I would really suggest some kind of a, uh, organic mulch.

[00:19:38] I actually use grass clippings. We don’t treat our grass with anything. It’s, you know, we cut it, we don’t fertilize it. We don’t do anything, but grass has a lot of nitrogen in it, which is good. We, uh, put it about, oh, two inches, maybe two to three inches around the tomatoes. If you put too much fresh grass around tomatoes, and it dries out, it’ll become matted, and then you’ll have trouble watering.

[00:20:05] But that mulch really helps, and it does add a little bit more nitrogen to your, to the soil as it decomposes. Another good suggestion is, you know those, um, shredded leaves that you used to put your garden to bed last year? Those make an excellent mulch. So, save some of those, you know, from the end of the year, and put it around them.

Thoughts on Pruning Tomatoes

[00:20:27] Erin Hoover: So you talked a little bit about pruning. Is pruning really necessary? I know you said, you get better yields with the airflow.

[00:20:35] Alice Slusher: You know, there’s a lot of different schools of thought on that. Some people don’t do any pruning, um, and things turn out okay, but they have a higher level of disease.

[00:20:45] You know, I prefer to do a little bit of light pruning just to get the, get the air in. I don’t think it matters a lot. A lot of people are very unsure about how much to do, how much is too, you know, how much is too much. Start out small if you’re going to prune at all. If you start seeing your plant getting way too bushy, then you might want to get in there.

[00:21:04] The thing is you need to start early. You need to take out the suckers when they’re little because if you start taking out large suckers, you’re going to shock the plant. It’s going to stress out the plant. So, make sure you do it when they’re small and keep up with it. If you’re going to do it, keep up with it.

Best Practices for Watering Tomatoes

[00:21:21] Erin Hoover: What are some good practices for watering tomatoes?

[00:21:25] Alice Slusher: Okay, we just had a workshop about this. Um, tomatoes in general, all vegetable gardens, vegetable plants in general, need about an inch per week. So what does that mean? It makes it really hard, doesn’t it? Because you’re not going to, how do you, how do you judge an inch per week?

[00:21:43] Well, over a 12-inch by 12-inch, 1-foot square, one inch per week is equivalent to, like, a little over half a gallon. So, if you, if you’re just doing them one by one, you can do, get a half a gallon of water and evenly distribute it around the plant. That’s one gallon of water per week. The plant’s bigger now and it’s got a bigger root, you know, root area, then you might want to double that.

[00:22:10]. So you’d be putting twice that amount on. The way you figure that, uh, on a larger scale is, for example, I had a container that was two gallons. It took, let’s say it took, we’re going to divide it by four. So, let’s make it easy. 20 seconds to fill this up.

[00:22:34] So, 4 gallons in 20 seconds, and I was able to figure that out, so I only had to, you know, 0. 16 gallons, and I was able to just figure that it was going to take, let’s see, 20 divided by 4, and then about half that, so about 2 or 3 seconds per plant was actually the equivalent of an inch of water.

[00:23:03] Because that was a fast flow for 20 seconds for a, you know, a two-gallon bucket. But it’s a really quick and easy way to do that.

Another way, if you’re using drip irrigation, is to put tuna cans underneath the emitter. See how long it takes for one inch of water to accumulate. And that’s your one inch.

[00:23:22] And how long did that take for that to happen, that’s how much you want to water. Of course, all bets are off, aren’t they, if it’s a, you know, something like today. Your best way to check the water is to stick your finger into the second knuckle. If your finger comes out with dirt on it, which means it’s moist, then it’s fine.

[00:23:43] If it comes out dry, then it needs water. And something I’ve started using recently is one of those moisture meters because I like to check my plants before I go into the office in the morning and I don’t want to get my fingernails dirty, right? So I got one of those moisture meters and those things changed my life.

[00:24:01] There’s no more guessing if your onions have enough water, or if your tomatoes, even though the top inch is completely dry, it looks parched, if you stick the water meter in there and you see that it’s moist, you’re good to go. You’re gone.

How to Support Your Tomatoes

[00:24:15] Erin Hoover: Do all tomatoes need support, including determinate varieties?

[00:24:20] Alice Slusher: Indeterminates definitely do because they will grow, they will grow as, as long as the season will let them grow, they will grow six, eight feet, something like that. Um, also, you can top them. Once the indeterminate tomato is too tall, cut it off.

[00:24:41] Now, determinate tomatoes, the smaller ones, some of them are very vigorous growers. It kind of depends on their growing area condition. You may need to stake them lightly, but probably not if it’s growing in a container. My guess is it’s not going to grow big and no, you won’t have to give it any support.

[00:25:02] There’s a different kind out there called um, the dwarf tomatoes. There are certain dwarf varieties, and the dwarf varieties are pretty cool because they have a determinate growing pattern, which means they’re bushy, right? The shape of them is bushy. They don’t get really tall, but they, unlike regular determinate tomatoes, they give you tomatoes all season long.

[00:25:25] So, if you get online and look for a tomato variety to grow next year, try one of the dwarf varieties planted on your back deck. As soon as you have a tomato, you will have tomatoes until the first frost.

Tomato Support System Examples

[00:25:38] Erin Hoover: Nice. So, what are some examples of support systems for tomatoes?

[00:25:43] Alice Slusher: Well, I made my tomato cages out of cattle panels, and it’s pretty easy to do, but I formed a big square, probably, I think it was like about two feet by two feet by two feet, well, two feet square, and that made a really good cage around my tomatoes.

[00:26:01] I am not an aficionado of those round ones, the graduated round ones, because they really crowd your tomatoes and the inner leaves don’t get enough light, they don’t get enough air. There’s just not enough room for those tomatoes to grow.

[00:26:27] This year I’m using, oh, what are those? I’m not even sure what they’re called, but they’re like fence stakes. I have, um, tied my tomatoes to the stake, and I think I’m going to like that better because I will be able to get in there, I’ll be able to prune if I want to, I’ll be able to, you know, pick out the tomatoes without having to reach in through a jumble.

There’s something called Florida Weave, which I find really interesting that it would be more for people who are growing a whole row of tomatoes in a garden. It’s twisted and they twist the twine around the level of the tomato row to keep them upright and as the tomatoes grow they add another row of the twisted twine and kind of tuck those in there. That really works well for some people.

[00:27:08] My brother was using a string system, which is very much like the um, the posts that I’m using now, except they use strings to clamp the tomatoes and guide them up.

[00:27:18] Erin Hoover: Yeah, I’m using a combination of the tomato cages, but instead of putting a cage on a tomato plant, I put it, like, in between three plants, so I got plants on the outside of the cage.

[00:27:31] and they tie them up as they go. So that way, so that way you don’t have you, they have more room to, and they’re not quite so compacted. Because I have like a 20-foot bed with like a dozen plants in it.

[00:27:43] Alice Slusher: I will try that next year because I’ve got the cages. Yeah.

[00:27:47] Erin Hoover: Yeah. Sometimes they do get pretty dense, but that works pretty well for me.

[00:27:51] So, and this year I’m trying something in between them. I have PVC hoops over the bed that I kept covered in the early spring to keep them warm. So, what I did is I secured twine to that and I’m doing the same thing with securing them to the twine and growing them up for the ones that I don’t have cages for.

[00:28:09] Alice Slusher: That’s what’s fun about gardening, isn’t it? Becoming innovative and seeing what works and what doesn’t. What’s really fun is when you mess up because that’s when you really learn and that lesson sticks with you.

Tips for Knowing When to Harvest Tomatoes

[00:28:20] Erin Hoover: So how can we tell when the tomatoes are ready to harvest?

[00:28:21] Alice Slusher: All season long, I harvest my tomatoes at that breaker stage I was telling you about, even if it’s not overly hot.

[00:28:28] Because the longer the tomato stays on the vine, the more chance you have of insect or disease problems. One of the big problems we have here in Collins County, and I don’t know if it’s everywhere else, but we have stink bugs. The stink bugs will get on your tomato, stick their little beak in, inject something, uh, an enzyme that kind of breaks down the tissue in the tomato.

[00:28:51] They suck it out and they leave behind a taste that is exactly like they smell when you step on them. Really gross. Oh, it’s horrible. Oh, that would, that would be awful. They like the, they like the right fruit. So what I do is pick them when they’re at that breaker level, when they’ve turned pearly, they’re starting to blush up and they’re maybe like 40 percent done of where you’d expect to see them.

[00:29:09] If you left them on the vine another two to three days, they would be ripe and juicy. But they can do that on your kitchen counter, and you won’t taste the difference. So I do that all season long. Another thing is, um, those chocolate tomatoes, you know the brown tomatoes, they usually have on the side that doesn’t have any sun, they’re usually green as they’re developing.

[00:29:32] For the longest time I had no way of knowing when the chocolate tomatoes, the brown tomatoes, were done, you know? Well, if you look on that shady side, you’ll see that that color, when it’s very ripe, it’s as ripe, it’s red as any other tomato. But I pick that one, too, when it starts to get that blushy color, and I let it ripen on my counter.

[00:29:55] Erin Hoover: Yeah, we had a similar problem. We did a, it’s a really deep purple tomato, similar kind of chocolate tomato. My husband kept picking them raw. I’m like, “Gotta stop picking them, you know when they’re still green”. He’s like, “Well, how can you tell?”, and that’s the same kind of thing. Instead of being red on the, it was more on the bottom of the tomato, you could see where it was green.

[00:30:13] And when it was ripe, it would start to kind of blush up. Yeah, they never tell us these things, do they?

[00:30:20] Alice Slusher: No,

[00:30:21] Erin Hoover: You have to trial and error.

[00:30:22] Alice Slusher: Yeah. The other thing is, toward the end of August, at least here, our first frost is, um, November, the first couple weeks of November. You have to look at your plant and say, you know, this little bitty tomato or these flowers are never going to produce a full fruit by the time it’s, you know, the frost comes.

[00:30:40] For me, I start at the second week of September, depending on the year, depending on how the weather is acting. If it’s wonky, it might be before that. But, um, I’ll go out and trim all the flowers off because I don’t want the plant expending its energy into making new tomatoes that are never going to grow, never going to give me anything.

[00:31:00] And I do take off the little bitty tomatoes too. Then I just keep the flowers off it as, as the season, you know, winds up toward the end. And that way you’ll have more tomatoes.

Another tip toward the end of the year. You’re going to get rain in September, right? Get out there, if you’re not picking them at the breaker stage, get out there and pick the tomatoes that are like that, because if you don’t, and we get this huge flood of water, all that water is going to be taken up into the plant, and it’s going to be more than your tomatoes can stand, and they’re going to go, and they’re going to burst and they’re going to split.

[00:31:36] Erin Hoover: Yep. That’s something we’ve learned over the last couple years. We’ll go out there. So if there’s rain in the forecast, I’ll go out and pick anything that’s got any color on it and let it ripen on the counter.

Tips for Extending the Harvest Season

Erin Hoover: All right. So do you have any tips for extending the harvest season?

[00:31:51] Alice Slusher: I haven’t done that, but I know a lot of people who do.

[00:31:55] I have a cage like you do, a PVC cage, and I’ve used it on the peppers, because peppers, they just like the heat. I will cover it with a good-quality row cover. And that seems to help too. Uh, one year I did extend it by, um, using, instead of covering it with row cover, I covered it with plastic wrap and that created a little bit of a greenhouse.

[00:32:19] But you, if it’s going to be warm the next day, you gotta get out and uncover it. Um, a friend of mine did that and she had fresh tomatoes from her garden on Christmas Day.

I, on the other hand, went out and harvested all my tomatoes right before the, you know, before the first frost warning and brought them in my garage to ripen and I separated them into the, you know, this really is an iffy, it might not ever ripen, this one is all nice and blushy, kind of low blush, but it’s going to ripen and then the third box was one that I knew was going to ripen in, you know, a short period of time.

[00:33:00] So I had to tomatoes on Christmas Day, too, but I didn’t have to go through all the trouble of extending the, you know, growing season by covering up my tomatoes.

[00:33:05] Erin Hoover: And I know there are some varieties, too, that keep better than others.

[00:33:10] Alice Slusher: That’s true. You have to be sure to make sure there aren’t any splits in the tomatoes or any kind of wounds because that’ll cause them to rot and you have to go check them a lot. And the other thing you have to do, I’ve learned this, I did better this year, I had them in my garage in the year before that as they were ripening, I had a huge cloud of fruit flies all over everything.

[00:33:26] But if you cover the boxes lightly with, um, row cover fabric, it, it really makes a big difference. I didn’t have nearly the problem with fruit flies I did before.

Alice’s Top Tips for Growing Tomatoes

[00:33:43] Erin Hoover: Well, that’s good to know. So what are your top tips for growing tomatoes?

[00:33:50] Alice Slusher: Keep the soil consistently moist. Plant at a time when your plant’s going to have less exposure to cold weather and cold soil. It’s best for us to plant in the first week of June. Pick your tomatoes throughout the season at the breaker stage to avoid insect damage, water damage, and sun damage. Lightly prune your indeterminate tomatoes.

[00:34:18] Help your tomatoes to pollinate during really bad heat spells. Fertilize according to directions. Get a soil test. Make sure you know what your soil has.

If you’re not doing that, then you should probably just use a general balanced fertilizer, like a, you know, a 5-2-5, something like that, and then follow the directions on the label if that’s the way you’re going and throw on some compost during the season.

[00:34:50] And I think, have I covered them all?

Common Mistakes When Growing Tomatoes

[00:34:52] Erin Hoover: I think so. So what are some of the more common mistakes that you see when growing tomatoes?

[00:34:57] Alice Slusher: Underwatering and overwatering, you get the same results from both. The plant will die or will not do well. If your plant’s not doing well, then it’s very vulnerable to things like blossom end rot, but also to insects.

[00:35:12] A plant in distress sends out distress signals and the insects pick those up and they come. They will come to a distressed plant and hurt it.

You know the main thing is the watering and planting them too close. That crowds them too. That’s kind of like, you know, we’re talking about pruning.

[00:35:30] Well, if you’re planting them really close, there’s no airflow either.

So, planting them too close is a problem as well.

[00:35:37] Erin Hoover: Yeah, that’s one that I tend to do a lot because we start so many seeds and then I’m like, well, what am I going to do with all these plants? I have to put them in the ground.

[00:35:44] Alice Slusher: Right.

[00:35:45] Erin Hoover: So I just stick them all in.

[00:35:46] Alice Slusher: I did not do that this year. I found homes for them because I’ve done that every other year.

[00:35:51] Erin Hoover: Yeah, this was the year we finally did it. My husband took them to work and gave them to his coworkers.

The final question I have is what is the most important thing to you about being a Master Gardener?

[00:36:02] Alice Slusher: I love telling people about things I’ve learned.

[00:36:04] I, really enjoy teaching. Any aspect of it is, is just so much fun for me. I enjoy doing this. I enjoy having in-person workshops and seeing the AHA moment go off in people’s eyes when they say, you know, “I can do this, I understand I can do this” and they do it. And they come back and tell me they did it.

[00:36:26] That’s really great for me.

Final Thoughts on Growing Tomatoes

[00:36:27] Erin Hoover: Is there anything else you’d like to add about growing tomatoes?

[00:36:31] Alice Slusher: No, just enjoy them. There’s nothing like that fresh August tomato. My grandpa used to bring over some tomatoes in August. We didn’t have a garden. I still remember my first bite. It was like a whole new world opened up to me.

[00:36:44] So, enjoy the tomatoes that you’re growing for as long as you can.

[00:36:49] Erin Hoover: Growing up, I always thought I didn’t like tomatoes. Turned out, I just didn’t like store-bought tomatoes.

[00:36:53] Alice Slusher: Well, isn’t that the truth? I think we were all raised on those anemic things that were three to a little carton at the store.

[00:37:00] Erin Hoover: Yeah.

[00:37:01] The first time I had a garden, I grew tomatoes and I didn’t even think I liked tomatoes. That was what I wanted to grow anyway, for some reason, because that’s what my mom grew.

So, all right. Well, thanks for joining me today, Alice. This was fun. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Evergreen Thumb.

[00:37:17] Brought to you by the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program Volunteers and sponsored by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State. We hope that today’s discussion has inspired and equipped you with valuable insights to nurture your garden. The Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State is a nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to provide unifying support and advocacy.

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