Sacramento Digs Gardening Article
Your resource for Sacramento-area gardening news, tips and events

Articles Recipe Index Keyword Index Calendar Twitter Facebook Instagram About Us Contact Us

Why did that tomato plant come back to life? And other 2018 surprises

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Kathy Morrison PUBLISHED NOV 14, 2018

Black Plum as of Nov. 10 still had ripening tomatoes.

(Photos: Kathy Morrison)

Lessons to apply to the next season, which isn't that far off

Since no one is doing much gardening this week, what with the bad air quality and all, I thought I'd look back on the past tomato-growing season and make notes for next year.

The seed catalogs start showing up in December, and nowadays I try to start seeds in late January or early February. I don't want to scare you, but that's just a little over two months away. So here goes:

When you grow two dozen varieties of tomatoes every year, you expect a few surprises.

You hope they're delightful ones, but even the hard lessons are worth it. They inform the next season, which will have its own surprises. That's why I could never be a farmer; the surprises can be costly.

Of the varieties I grew this year, six were new to me: Atlas, Big Mama , Black Plum , Egg Yolk, Sunny Boy and Wild Boar Beauty King . Big Mama was the best of the bunch, a productive red paste tomato that was two to three times the size of normal ones. It's going right into the starting rotation.

Sunny Boy, a golden mid-size tomato, and WB Beauty King, a gorgeous bicolor from heirloom tomato hybridizer Brad Gates, did well enough for me to try again.

Egg Yolk, a yellow-gold cherry, was a complete dud. When the tomatoes looked ripe, they were a bit mushy, unlike the reliable Sun Gold and Sun Sugar types. As the weather got warmer, they stubbornly clung to the vine, splitting at the top when I tugged on them. Who wants to use pruners to pick cherry tomatoes?

Atlas was another dud, and not just in my garden. Master Gardener Gail Pothour of the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center reported it also didn't produce there. In both cases, the plants were in pots, mostly because Atlas was touted as a reliable large red that grew on a compact plant. Nope, not going there again.

Black Plum was the surprise. At the height of summer, with temps daily hitting three digits, I was sure that plant was dead. I had planted it with the others in late April, and it had produced some small brownish/purple plum tomatoes. Nothing exciting, but then most black tomatoes have a reputation for not liking extreme heat. So much for that experiment.

But I didn't take it out in mid-summer because my dependable First Prize plant was all wrapped around it by then, and I was afraid I'd damage the red hybrid if I started chopping.

These Black Plum tomatoes were harvested in early November.

So there Black Plum stayed. And the weather gradually cooled, and I kept watering the plants in that segment. They greened up a little, and the spider mites disappeared, and the plants greened up some more. I noticed yellow flowers appearing, then tiny green tomatoes. OK, whatever, I thought.

But then I came back to the garden after a trip near the end of October. Black Plum was covered with gorgeous ripe tomatoes, larger than any it had produced earlier in the year. And two weeks later it still has ripening tomatoes on it.

Note for next year: Black Plum just might be the perfect tomato to grow in Sacramento's fall.

Now, do I start those seeds in February or wait until late spring? Hmm, sounds like another experiment in the making.

Comments

0 comments have been posted.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

UCCE master gardeners seeds tomatoes gardening Sacramento vegetables summer produce air quality fall gardening seed starting climate change

Newsletter Subscription

Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.

Flowers in My Back Yard Series

Aug. 4: Dianthus a deceptively hardy flower

July 28: Naked Ladies put on summer show

July 21: Thank Luther Burbank for these long-lasting beauties (Shasta daisies)

July 14: How to keep hydrangeas happy

July 7: Grow these bright cosmos for bees and butterflies

June 30: Agapanthus adds blue fireworks to the garden

June 23: Easy-care gazanias fill those hot corners

June 16: Daylilies are perfect for water-wise gardens (and a lot more)

June 9: Grow coneflowers for pollinators -- and yourself

June 2: Sunflowers capture Sacramento's summer attitude

May 29: Are your roses going 'blind'?

May 26: Zinnias are the summer flowers every garden needs

May 19: Plant dahlias now for late-summer flower power

May 12: Know your coreopsis from your bidens

May 5: Mums the word on Mother's Day weekend

April 28: Majestic Matilija poppy is worth a look

April 21: Celebrate roses, America's favorite flower

April 14: Small flowers with outsized impact

April 7: Calendulas do double duty

April 3: Make Easter lilies last for years to come

March 31: In praise of a pollinator magnet (small-leaf salvias)

March 24: Azaleas brighten shady spots

March 17: The perfect flower for beginners? Try zonal geraniums

March 10: Keep camellias happy for years to come

March 3: Fruit tree blossoms are a fleeting joy

Feb. 27: Are your roses looking rusty?

Feb. 24: Treasure spring daffodils now and for years to come

Feb. 17: How and why to grow wildflowers

Feb. 10: Let's talk Valentine's Day roses

Feb. 3: Why grow flowers?

Local News

Taste Summer! E-cookbook

Find our summer recipes here!

Sites We Like

Garden checklist for week of Aug. 2

Get out early in the morning and monitor your garden’s moisture needs. Deep water and add temporary shade structures for plants that are feeling a little burned. In particular, protect developing peppers and eggplant.

* Put off fertilization until this heat passes; plants need to concentrate on hydration instead of growth.

* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers.

* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.

* Mulch can be your garden’s best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don’t let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.

* Pinch off dead flowers from perennials and annuals to lengthen their summer bloom.

* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot.

* Prepare for a fall full of flowers by paying a little extra attention to your garden. Cut off spent blooms from roses, annuals and perennials. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.

* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.

* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.

* In the garden, direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips. Make sure to keep seeds and seedlings consistently moist.

* Plant potatoes.

Send us a gardening question, a post suggestion or information about an upcoming event. sacdigsgardening@gmail.com

Taste Spring! E-cookbook