tomatoes in a big flush, but on vines longer than a determinate; or (you wish), a big honkin’ variety whose vines are somewhat better behaved than the norm.
And:
2) Nobody really knows, and this way you can’t complain when what was supposed to be a cute little tomato shoves your pepper plants into the street.
More Stuff to Think About
Now that you’ve determined which type you most want to grow, you’ll probably want to lie down and rest for awhile. Too bad! Tomato growing isn’t for wimps, and you’re not done yet; there are other seed catalog variables you’ll want to consider before making your choices.
DAYS TO MATURITY (DTM)
You should see a specific number of days listed on every packet of seed, included in the description of each tomato variety in seed catalogs, and, if you’re lucky, on those little plant tags stuck in the dirt of garden center transplants. An intelligent person might presume it refers to the average number of days it will take before you bite into your first ripe tomato, which would be correct for a plant you buy already started at the garden center, but a damned lie for the seed packet and/or catalog, because it is actually the number of days it will take the average six-week-old transplant to produce edible fruit. So for plants you start from seed, you would add fifty or sixty days of anxious anticipation to that number. (The extra time is for the seeds to germinate and for the always necessary Wiggle Room.)
….Hmmm. You know, by law, these numbers only have to be found on seed packets, so why should we have to do the math?
[bad img format]
Seed packets (and plant tags) may or may not reveal the determination of a tomato, but most will have a DTM (days to maturity) number on the seed packet and/or plant tag. That’s the number of days on average that will pass after you put a six- to eight-week-old transplant in the ground before you can expect to pick your first ripe tomato—no matter how much you encourage and/or threaten the plant.
Oh well, DTMs are very useful numbers, especially if you live in a frequently frozen latitude. A short growing season means you should stick with tomatoes with the lowest DTMs, even if you intend to start them early, protect them with special warming things like cloches, row covers, or Wall-O-Waters early in the season, and so forth. And yes, the corollary is also true; if you have a long season, do look for big numbers. Take advantage of what some of us don’t have—lots of growing days—and enjoy the rarest and best-tasting heirlooms, some of which can take what seems like forever to produce their first ripe fruit.
Obligatory Cheech and Chong joke:
Q: “Hey man—how good is it?”
A: “It’s here; that makes it great.”
Otherwise, plant as many different kinds of tomatoes as you can fit into your garden space: beefsteaks, slicers, oxhearts, heirlooms, patios, plums, pears, cherries…!
Before we move on, though, let’s get into DTMs in a bit more detail. Really short DTMers like Early Girl and Stupice (named after me) can produce ripe love apples in 50 or so days. They ain’t the best tasting, but they’re there. (Insert Cheech and Chong joke here. Or right there on the side of this page works too.)
On the other end of the scale, some big honking heirlooms can take up to 90 or 100 days. Do the math. Oh, OK, I’ll do it: The math says you better have enough time in the growing season where you live.
DTMs under 70 will almost always be determinate varieties that produce most of their fruits within a tight span of a few days and then maybe a few more over the course of the season, but not enough to justify their garden footprint. Farmers love this. They can circle a date 55 days from planting big, healthy starts, schedule the picking, and then be ready to plant the follow-up crop, like string beans or garlic. Most home gardeners with a single plant in the ground, though, were not hoping for twenty pounds of fruit on Thursday.
Your options if you have an avalanche of tomatoes on the aforementioned Thursday:
Otherwise, you will wait until mid-August (in the Mid-Atlantic and North) for the big heirloom beefsteaks to ripen up. (Actually, they’ll still be green; just wanted you to feel better/worse). Do the math, Kookie—add 90 days to June 1st (it was a cold spring) and whaddya get? At least those brats of yours are back in school.
Super Sweet 100
Super Sweet 100 is an improved (more disease-resistant) variety of the classic Sweet 100 cherry tomato. There is also a further improved (and downright inflationary!) version known as Sweet Million, bred to produce larger fruit.
Bottom line: Nobody wants 20 pounds of tamatas on the 10th of July. And nobody wants to wait until the heat comes back on in the house for their first tamata. So what do you do?
You play the DTM game with 1960s rock ’n’ roll tomato planting! Let’s say you have room for eight tomato plants. Make two of them the earliest varieties possible—like Fourth of July, Stupice, Early Girl… These are the opening acts. Think Aztec Two-Step, Brewer & Shipley, Tommy James & the Shondells.
The next two are rated around 70 days; they’re bigger and tastier. We’re talking Joan Jett, Genya Ravan, Mason Willmans, and John Prine.
Next up splits the difference. With DTMs of 80 to 90, you’re in a better zone than most home gardeners can imagine. This is Deep Purple (which should be a real tomato name), Ultimate Spinach (a real band name; look it up), Strawberry Alarm Clock (ibid.) and/or the Cowsills (the name of your favorite song by them is not “The Flower Girl,” it’s “The Rain, the Park, and Everything” [don’t blame me; I would have voted for “The Flower Girl”…]).
And then, ladies and gentlemen, our featured performers—The Rolling Stonies, The Who, Paul McWhereami?, Pink Floyd (which really should be a variety name!). That’s right—the headliners! The best-tasting and most gifted guitar-playing tomatoes of them all! Who cares that the back-to-school stuff is now on closeout at Wally World—you are now enjoying the best tomatoes in all of whatever-dom, after enjoying the opening acts for the previous two months.
Give it up for DTMs!
“Thank you; thank you very much.”
“Brandywine has
