to get the best tasting tomatoes - don't water them!

I may only water my garden in early spring if there hasn't been enough rain. But once they get to growing good I never water again. When we get our annual summer drought with heat waves 100 to 114 degrees, I still don't water cause it takes too much electricity and water to justify the expense. Not to mention everything gets sunburned.

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

I plant mine in large black tree pots so I have to water them about every 2 weeks. They get 2 sprinkler cans each. Otherwise they get blossom drop and quit blooming, no water, few tomatoes. We get little to no rain from July through September some years. I have seen people try to raise tomatoes here without water and they get a small harvest. I water only when I HAVE to after the tomatoes start to turn....James

I live in Central California. I rarely water my tomato plants even in the hottest of summers, and of course we do not get any rain for the entire summer and most of the fall (think at least three months where the daily high is probably above 90, usually it gets above 100 for a few weeks too...and no rain whatsoever). I plant them early, and bury them in deep holes (this is the secret) with just the tips of their leaves showing, I try to buy the larger plants, or if I am growing from seed I let them get a foot and a half tall before I bury 90% of them up in their final spot in the garden). The crop generally comes out with stunted fruits, but since they were planted in a time when the soil was very moist they usually get at least five or six feet tall and overall make a bush about four or five feet in diameter, they get loaded with small roma size tomatoes that are perfect for salads and such. It is not uncommon for them to have several hundred ripe fruits per plant. I prefer to use beefsteak varieties for this because they have a decent (though smaller than normal) sized fruit, they also fruit throughout their life which works for me as I mostly use these 'dry' plants for salads, salsa's and basically all of my fresh tomato needs for 6 months or so. I have not had too much luck with any of the heirlooms (purples, brandywine, yellow striped) I have tried, although the taste of some of them will knock your socks off. I water them maybe once a month or every six weeks. They produce until the first frost, which slows them down, kills the tomatoes on the vine and makes them ferment on the vine, then I just rototill the works into the soil as green manure and much needed organic material as most of the soil here is alluvial plain and mostly inorganic. If I am going to want a tomato larger than a store bought roma, I water them regulurly. I water by the furrow method (my well is 320 feet deep and in the summer I have sounded it to have a head of 75 feet of water), I make the furrow with the attachment that came with my tiller, another way to water them GOOD is to use your brass twist style water hose sprayer and just let it drip on your plant until it is completly wet, this will take 24 hours per plant. I also bury as much fish head and fish guts near the plants as I can in the summer. Tomatoes are in the nightshade family, which are mostly desert plants. Most of them are very poisonous too. Hope this helps some of you in arid areas.

I have been doing this for the past 10 growing seasons and it has worked real good for me. I assume Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, etc. could do it exactly the way I put forth here. My buddy has no luck with this method and buys his seedlings late and plants them shallow and waters them once a day. His plants turn out a sickly greenish yellow and are splindly and baer a few fruits which he is proud of...so I don't make fun of him. If one plant is not bearing at least a five gallon bucket of fruit you are doing something wrong. Above grade gardening is not something that works in hot areas, and you end up spending more money for water than the end product is worth.

FYI, I use indicator trees to tell me when the last frost will be. Hickory trees (Pecan) very, very rarely get thier new leaves burned by frost. I plant my tomatoes in the garden as soon as the Pecan leaves "are as big as a squirrels ear" as the saying goes. This has worked out for me and I have never (knock on wood) lost any plants due to a late frost. Find a pecan tree in your area and use it!

Don't water em here, they die. Quickly.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

The plants could survive all summer without water as long as they are transplanted early, and planted deep enough. I have experimented doing this and have found that the plant goes into self survival mode and quits blossoming and sometimes drops all fruit, (which defeats the purpose of all this) . A month or so between waterings is about right. Your mileage may vary according to soil type, shade, intensity and length of heat wave etc. Pay attention to your soil. If it looks like it is strangling your plants to death, it is time to water. Watering once a week is waaaay to much water for tomatos IME. The landfills in my area sell compost by the cubic yard, get truckload of it and till it into your soil. Do that next year too, and the next year...Out here where water = money you learn real quick to become a plant whisperer and listen to what the plant is really telling you...sometimes it is telling you no more water PLEASE! "I am sick and yellow...oh no! Here comes the hose!"

In a number of cases, watering too much and too early leads to problems later. Too much in the beginning leads to feeder roots too close to the surface and tap roots not going very deep. When a dry period follows that, the system which brings calcium up through the plant is damaged and BER results. My plants are growing in soil which usually has sufficient moisture. I can't imagine someone even planting in soil which has no moisture at 2' depth. If I did have that problem, I'd be replacing 3' of soil under each plant. As it is, I only replace 18".

Martin

Whew. Glad someone from Texas spoke up. I was reading the first five posts of this thread, and going "Wha-!?"



I water my tomatoes all the time, and have always been thrilled with the outcome ... I was having a hard time accepting I've been doing it wrong.

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I LOVE DONUT BALLS

i dont like to think tooo much before i speak ... heehee ... i like to be just as surprised as you are.

3 ft of soil?? a man would have to rent an escavator for that.....it would be easier to garden in containers.

and for some reason ive never been successful with tomatoes in containers.

Hey Martin, I have found that what you said about watering to be exactly right. But the soil replacement issue you talk about does not make sense to me though. Soil does not dry from the bottom up, it dries out from the top down. What would be the point in replacing the soil at depth if what I said was true? Depending on the year, and cover crop I have found that ground moisture migrates downward slowly at first and as the earth heats up this starts to gain pace, at the end of summer ground moisture moves downward at about 1 cm per day. But fortunately for me, I have fake rain, and can make it wet where and when I want it wet. Why would I want to dig a hole into dry dirt and put wet dirt into the hole, when I could just add water? There must be something I am missing.

For those not in the know about Texas, in particular... it is such a vast state that where I am located is a very different growing area than up in north Texas, which is different again from northeast Texas, which is yet again different from west Texas. Some parts of the state have rich sandy loam, some terrible black gumbo clay, some deep red sand with little loam, some with rocky white caliche....

Rainfall is another variable. Where we are, we get ample rainfall in the spring, summer and fall. Up in northeast Texas, they don't get quite as much as we do, while the DFW area and west toward Abliene, San Angelo, etc. gets even less. Far west Texas is arid when not irrigated, although there is a lot of dry-land cotton, etc. grown there. Coastal areas turn into swamp in many places. Then there are the quirky areas of the state, such as the so-called 'Winter Garden' area around Uvalde, where they grow stuff year 'round. Del Monte has a lot of that area sewn up. And even though they are much further west, I usually can't grow the things over the winter here that they do there.

At least in Texas, it's not practical to infer similar practices from one part of the state to another. For example, my friend who lives in north Texas gardens in deep red sand, and must add lots of compost, and they actually plant in trenches. Here, the soil is loamy sand, and if I planted anything in a trench, it would rot very quickly. I must plant raised beds in order to have them drain well.

I never water my tomatoes.....


never. Of course I get natural rainfall enough to get the plants established and have a high water table. even when its very dry for months, they seem to do jsut fine.

My excavator is a simple spade. A hole is dug which is about the size of a 5-gallon pail. Half of the dirt is indeed dumped into a 5-gallon pail. The remaining 2½ gallons are mixed with 2½ gallons of compost and back into the hole. Total surface area is barely a foot across but think about it. Not so hard to dig a hole the size of a 5-gallon pail. Move over a foot next year and it's new ground again to change. Doesn't have to happen all at once since one hole at a time is enough. Depending upon how close things are planted, just the 5-gallon pail depth will result in super soil 18" deep. That's even deep for most containers. The important element is what is returned to the hole. My leaf-based compost mix is great for moisture retention providing nutrients to feed the plant. And in the event of a heavy rain, the deep hole acts as a drain.

Best I can say is that if you are gardening in soil which is unable to retain enough water to grow tomatoes, you either have to resign yourselves to supporting your water supplier or supply your plants with a suitable growing environment. Both are the extreme ends and each depends solely upon the efforts of the individual gardener. There are Texan and others who know what they are planting into. They know what their soil is and what is under it. They then plant a seedling and expect it to produce as if growing in optimum conditions. Then they spend half the season just trying to keep the plant alive. A small percentage of that later effort could have been expended to create a suitable environment for the seedling. Several have posted about their success of growing tomatoes in containers. Most containers max out at about 18" and are highly successful. No rule says that that 18" has to be above ground. Same equivalent would be an equal-sized hole in the ground filled with proper growing medium. That rule applies to all 50 states and all soil conditions.

By the way, Dead Wabbit, never did establish a final number of tomato varieties which I grew this year. I think that the total started was 106 different. Aimed for just 100 but more seeds were arriving as late as 20 April and had to be grown out. 2011 is lazing since I'm only up to about 50 or so new ones to grow out. Don't know what the SSE Yearbook total entries are going to be but well over 300. Could mean that I may have grown a few tomatoes now and then?

Martin

I must add an anecdote to how tomatoes taste according to how they are grown. I hearken back to about 8 years ago. Friend died and he and his wife had moved from the farm to a retirement complex several years before. No place for a garden but pots and containers were OK. At the funeral, I joined the family and the conversation quickly turned to the big garden that the farm had and then to the container growing. Container medium had mostly been steer manure from the farm. I expected a good report when I asked how everything tasted. Almost in unison, she and her son and daughter replied with one response: "Cow sh--!"

Martin

i just sank about 35 post holes in the ground...by hand. hand augar couldnt penetrate the dirt. red clay that when it dries its like chipping rock. it took over 15 mins to get a hole big enuff to put a 3-4" post in it w/ a lil crete around it.

your scenario would not work here. it would be more effective to rent a small backhoe to dig the tomato holes you speak of...lol..

im working on composting the garden plot but it will take some time. even then. i feel doing what you speak of will not be effective here as it is where you are.

tell you what, y'all come down here to my place in Texas in July, I'll save you a spot for a couple tomato plants and I'll let you put your theory to a test, bring any kind of soil you want to.

I've gardened in Minnesota and Wisconsin and in Florida and Texas -- Northern and Southern gardening are NOTHING alike. I had to learn how to garden all over again when I moved south.

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Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction - Readers and writers welcome

Deep enough being about 200 feet here. The desert starts about 25 miles west of me.

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Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction - Readers and writers welcome

Not a secret, its a way of life in the south.

You guys just don't get it, you're not talking to amaturs here, we know what works in our part of the country.

I know y'all don't need to water in many parts of the north, but try that in many parts of the south and you won't have a crop. Please stop trying to tell us you know better than us what works in OUR area.

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Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction - Readers and writers welcome

3 days of hundred degree heat and no water around here will finish your tomatoes off. I dig holes with a 9 inch auger, 3 ft deep, and fill them in with topsoil and chicken manure mix. That's how I get to go 3 days!

The OP implied that all you have to do to get a tasty tomato without watering the plant is to just make a heavy layer of compost and, without further work or consideration, those tasty morsels will just magically appear, come September. Reminds me of that roasting machine they advertise during the late night hours---"Set it...and forget it!"

I can recall, that Dad's farm in Indiana was a 'set it and forget it' operation in the Eighties. The heavy clay soil underneath nearly always retained enough moisture to grow ketchup tomatoes without much further ado(save weeding and dusting) Nearly always, that is; in some of the really dry years, the tonnage dropped severely, and Dad had a little trouble collecting the rent money from the neighbor (he was a softie and didn't demand cash up front).

And when I moved here to this part of Michigan, so far as water goes, I always had pretty good success with tomatoes--and nearly all garden crops--until just a few years ago. Whether this is a local, microclimate issue, or a sign of the time to come(global warming, etc, etc,etc) I haven't figured out yet, but I have become a really concerned radar watcher these days, during July and August. The tomato growing advice which most nearly suits my condition seems to be from North Carolina : http://www.ncsu.edu/sustainable/profiles/pp_toma.html and especially the paragraphs titled "Water Requirements", "Mulches", and "Physiological Disorders"

My basic soil hasn't changed much, but I believe my climate sure has. I think this area would be a major winter wheat area, since we still get good doses of winter and early spring moisture, but by July, it becomes like North Carolina and areas in the South. Good for wheat, bad for tomatos and potatoes.

So, I usually drag hoses back and forth--in addition to making deep oases, mulching, and all the other techniques mentioned here in this post. Set it and forget it? Hardly.......

geo

Some of us that don't have the room or energy to make everything to the "experts" liking do what works for our area and for us individually. Nothing works best for everyone. If there isn't the moisture needed because of drought or area, we are not wasting water by supplimenting what is natural. I water my garden from my grey water collection system. I have a spring that never quits but I don't just use all I want. Plus what I use for cleaning is good for the plants and helps keep insects away. I use the gravity spring to make electricity but I don't want to deplete the ground water so I let it go back into the aquifer through the use of a bioswale, I use recycled for my gardens....James