Weird weather did produce some winners (and a few winter tomatoes)
Rugby tomatoes can be used for sauce, drying or fresh for salads. They can be slightly heart-shaped or rugby-ball-shaped, and have shown to be good producers in the Central Valley lowlands. Kathy Morrison
Huddled indoors on a cold and rainy December day, I can find warmth in thoughts of summer – and tomatoes.
Now is prime time to order seed for next year’s vegetable garden. But what? Should I let 2024’s failures (and a few successes) guide my picks? Or should I give new varieties a try?
Overall, I had a disappointing tomato year due to poor timing. I planted in late April and early May, which proved to be too late. My vines were just hitting their stride in July – the hottest July on record – and got very poor fruit set.
The plants that survived that heat enjoyed our relatively mild August and set some late-season tomatoes. The big surprise? How much my vines grew in late October and November. Massive plants, they still were blooming on Thanksgiving. But the weather got too cold for their green tomatoes to ripen on the vine. I finally pulled the plants shortly before Christmas (with green tomatoes now slowly turning red on the kitchen counter).
My best producers were Rugby (a paste tomato shaped like a rugby ball), Lemon Boy and Chef’s Choice Orange. Coincidentally, those varieties also were among the 2024 stars for garden expert/podcaster Farmer Fred Hoffman and Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis.
Hoffman and Shor discussed the 2024 tomato season in depth during a two-part podcast, “2024 Tomato Winners (and Losers),” released Friday (Dec. 27) on Hoffman’s “Garden Basics with Farmer Fred.” They came to some interesting conclusions – heirlooms really do hate high heat, some tomatoes can take a little shade – as well as offered useful tips for more tomato gardening success in 2025.
“It’s really good to do this show (in) December, January, so the people who are getting the seed catalogs and watching them pile up on their desks can start marking some of these varieties,” Shor said. “Some of them, you will have to order yourself. You’re not going to find them in most garden centers.”
Hoffman, who lives and gardens in Folsom, picked his last vine-ripened tomatoes on Dec. 18. They weren’t pretty, but they tasted good on a sandwich, he noted. He had three varieties that kept producing tomatoes into December: Rugby, Principe Borghese and Jet Star.
Principe Borghese is a Shor favorite; small and pointy, it’s a little Italian sauce tomato, available from Rare Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange, among others. Jet Star is a fast-maturing hybrid slicer, similar to Early Girl; it can be found at Tomato Growers Supply Company.
Shor grew 35 varieties in 2024 and kept detailed notes on each. He was especially impressed by Rugby, which can be found at Totally Tomatoes and West Coast Seeds.
“We can’t tout that one highly enough,” Shor said of Rugby. “It’s being marketed as a sauce tomato but I’ve got customers who are slicing it and using it as a regular slicer. It cooks down great. It’s not going to be in garden centers, very likely, unless the buyer or the grower at one of the large local chains is listening. Rugby is one you should definitely put in your program because it's just not that widely known yet. But every year I grow it, every year I sell it and plant it, people rave about it. Yield is great. It takes the heat well, sets very well early as well as late, in my case, at least this year. So it’s a really, really high quality tomato.”
Shor also praised Chef’s Choice Orange for its firm texture – he harvested about 60, including many 1-pounders and a late-season second crop – and Bodacious, a big red slicer that matures early.
Both Hoffman and Shor had luck with Lemon Boy, a sweet yellow, medium-size hybrid. Shor said he stopped counting when his Lemon Boy produced more than 100 fruit. “It just really outperformed everything this year,” Shor said.
To hear more (or read the transcript), go to: https://gardenbasics.net/.
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Flowers in My Back Yard Series
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?
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Garden checklist for week of July 12
Get out early in the morning to take care of garden chores. Temperatures are expected to stay below 80 degrees before 10 a.m.
* Remember to water early and deep; your garden depends on you.
* It’s not too late to add a splash of color. Plant petunias, snapdragons, zinnias and marigolds.
* From seed, plant corn, pumpkins, radishes, winter squash and sunflowers.
* Keep your vegetable garden watered, mulched and weeded. Water before 8 a.m. to reduce the chance of fungal infection and to conserve moisture.
* Water before fertilizing vegetables and blooming annuals, perennials and shrubs to give them a boost. Feeding flowering plants every other week will extend their bloom.
* Feed vegetable plants bone meal or other fertilizers high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting.
* Don’t let tomatoes wilt or dry out completely. Give tomatoes a deep watering two to three times a week. Harvest vegetables promptly to encourage plants to produce more. Squash especially tends to grow rapidly in hot weather. Keep an eye on zucchini.
* If your melons and squash aren’t setting fruit, give the bees a hand. With a small, soft paintbrush, gather some pollen from male flowers, then brush it inside the female flowers, which have a tiny swelling at the base of their petals. (That's the embryo melon or squash.) Within days, that little swelling should start growing.
* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushy plants and more flowers in September.
* Remove spent flowers from roses, daylilies and other bloomers as they finish flowering.
* Pinch off blooms from basil so the plant will grow more leaves.
* Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.
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Send us a gardening question, a post suggestion or information about an upcoming event. sacdigsgardening@gmail.com
Food in My Back Yard (FIMBY) Series
Lessons learned during a year of edible gardening
WINTER
Is edible gardening possible indoors?
Hints for choosing tomato seeds
Why winter is the perfect time to plant fruit trees
When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
How to squeeze more food into less space
Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Win the weed war by tackling them in winter
Tips for planting bare-root trees, shrubs and vegetables
Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
Ways to win the fight against weeds
FALL
Dec. 16: Add asparagus to your edible garden
Dec. 9: Soggy soil and what to do about it
Dec. 2: Plant artichokes now; enjoy for years to come
Nov. 25: It's late November, and your peach tree needs spraying
Nov. 18: What to do with all those fallen leaves?
Nov. 11: Prepare now for colder weather in the edible garden
Nov. 4: Plant a pea patch for you and your garden
Oct. 27: As citrus season begins, advice for backyard growers
Oct. 20: Change is in the autumn air
Oct. 13: We don't talk (enough) about beets
Oct. 6: Fava beans do double duty
Sept. 30: Seeds or transplants for cool-season veggies?
Sept. 23: How to prolong the fall tomato harvest
SUMMER
Sept. 16: Time to shut it down?
Sept. 9: How to get the most out of your pumpkin patch
Sept. 2: Summer-to-fall transition time for evaluation, planning
Aug. 26: To pick or not to pick those tomatoes?
Aug. 19: Put worms to work for you
Aug. 12: Grow food while saving water
Aug. 5: Enhance your food with edible flowers
July 29: Why won't my tomatoes turn red?
July 22: A squash plant has mosaic virus, and it's not pretty
July 15: Does this plant need water?
July 8: Tear out that sad plant or baby it? Midsummer decisions
July 1: How to grow summer salad greens
June 24: Weird stuff that's perfectly normal
SPRING
June 17: Help pollinators help your garden
June 10: Battling early-season tomato pests
June 3: Make your own compost
May 27: Where are the bees when you need them?
May 20: How to help tomatoes thrive on hot days
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
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