Grew my first baby tomatoes last year. I'm hooked. Now I'm doing heirlooms to save the seeds for next year. @epicgardening is THE PLACE for great GARDENING lectures, demonstrations and truthful gardening hacks and product recommendations.
Jacques talked about fermenting tomato seeds and showed squeezing into jar….but jumped right into the advantage without explaining what to do once in jar??????
If you only grow a few plants for your family and friends it's easy to get your fertilizers. Kitchen scraps: Greens contain a lot if K, bones, meat, fish is very rich in P and N, stinging nettle that is easy top collect is high in N. No need to buy that if you can't affort the fertilizers. My grandfather used a "dry toilett", more or less a bucket with dirt, and used his own feces to fertilize his plants (after hot composting).
Hi! A year later but I toss any and all vegetables and fruits into a black growing container. I also add brown paper towels and dried up tree leaves. To help speed things up, you can add a bit of soil into the compost bin. I let it sit in the bucket for some time and then I go and turn the soil which just means I mix it up and try to get the bottom part of the bucket to the top and the top soil to the bottom. I do this until all the food I’ve added has seemed to decompose. Once I think its been decomposed enough, I used a strainer to separate the bigger chunks from my soil. I let the separated soil which is now my ready compost, sit in a diff container for a while before I add it to my plants and flowers that I grow. I would say its nutritious compost because anytime I throw seeds into the compost bin, the seeds start growing. A black growing container isn’t more than $5 max and we’ll you already buy fruits and vegetables so that’s “free” besides buying a bag of soil I would say its pretty affordable to be able to do it yourself if you’d like to try. I do this on my small balcony so you don’t need much space and it doesn’t smell at all
I love Jacques garden tips BUT I am not sure the procedure of fermenting seeds as he explained it. I was left going "What am I supposed to do after I squeeze the tomatoes". Please have him elaborate on this. I really want to know how to do. Thanks much!
The fermenting seed "hack" was not informative. Many other gardeners talk about adding water. No mention of the time to ferment, the mold, and what to do after.
You don't have to use a sucker that small. Twice this season, I've accidently broken huge branches off my tomato plants. I plucked all the tomatoes off them. Put them in water for a few days till I seen roots and then back to the garden they went. They are producing as many tomatoes as the other plants.
If you plan on canning your tomatoes, having a lot ripen at once is the goal. I highly recommend learning to can; it's incredibly satisfying, not to mention delicious!
@@Muljinn Freezing is much easier and they keep well. It's awesome to grab a bag in January to make a pasta dish. Scald, peel, quarter, bag, freeze, thaw, cook eat.
@@richardvaughn168 say you don't have a ton of power for a freezer... trust me, canning is a BRILLIANT invention. I have a bunch of backup food like that. My sister has even more than I do.
This year was one of my best tomato seasons. I used 10-10-10 and a big metal barrel of wood ash that I got from somebody that used a wood stove all winter. Early in the season, I cut off the lower branches but there was a quick growth spurt and all of the plants grew into monsters in a matter of days. I decided to withhold pruning and still have hundreds of tomatoes. The biggest problem is I am forced to share my huge lower tomatoes with the many chipmunks that live in the yard and Hank the woodchuck that lives under the shed.
I have TOMATO ENVY! I an so happy for you. So many have complained that it's been a bad tomato year. With that many tomatoes, be thankful and let Chip and Dale enjoy a few...ONLY a few. LOL!
Maybe you could make some sort of barrier to keep the squirrels off? For my parents fruit trees I used thick ish plastic sheeting and made a sort of upside down around the neck cone for like dogs and put them on the trunks of the fruit trees and it really solved the problem with squirrels and mice scurrying up the trunk to eat the fruit, I made mini ones for her tomatoes and stuff too, and made them so they can be adjusted when needed to raise them or accommodate a thicker trunk/vine when they grow. Hope this helps
Regarding using the wood ash, can I simply use the ash from my fireplace? How much? Any general suggestions? I’d love to reuse some of that ash if possible.
Years ago in California I always had a garden. The man across the street from us had a HUGE tree with enormous leaves. I would collect all the fallen leaves I could and dig them into the soil. I know it sounds like I’m telling a tall tale but….I had the biggest and best tomatoes I’ve ever seen. Not only were they huge but so sweet and delicious. Never bought fertilizer just used those pesky leaves. 😊. Of course California is a great place to grow anything. I was a great gardener in the “old” days. Miss it.
can someone explain how I could buy a bag full of fertilizer when the NPK is only 3-4-6? I mean, if I'm paying $10-20 a bag full of stuff, and I want less N, why not 3-8-12, or 6-8-12? 3-4-6 sounds so little, what else is in this big bag of dust? For non-gardeners, bigger number's make it sound worth the money. I mean obviously I don't know what I'm talking about. Can you explain?
@@lcglazer Don't buy a bag of fertilizer like that at all, it is a waste of money. You can mix your own fertilizer yourself: For less N in the NPK mix, put some wood ash in. Either from your heating or from a charcoal barbeque or whereever. I get ash from a neighbor for free and it is essentially a zero N, very high K fertilizer and excellent for all kinds of fruit. Just be certain that the ash is "clean", meaning that there are no pollutants mixed in and only from untreated wood. Else you can poison yourself with Dioxins and similar stuff.
@@donaldduck830 interesting, I have a weber smokey mountain. in the ashtray is mostly charcoal briquet ash, some wood ash. no drippings because there's a bowl in between the grill and the fire underneath to catch. is that considered clean?
@@lcglazer Yes, that is excellent. If fat drops into the fire and burns at suboptimal temperatures you might get problematic stuff, but when it does not, the ash is excellent fertilizer. The element Potassium (K) comes from pot-ash and is concentrated in, well, the ash you got. So, don't use too much and I like mixing it with other stuff, depending on the plants I got.
LOVE that you mentioned that philosophy in viticulture of “stressing the plant out” a little bit… it’s kind of weird, but if the plant senses it might not make it, it will put all its energy into producing fruit that will hopefully sustain the species. I guess it works. Plants have us trained
Thanks for all the hacks! I’d love to learn more about fermenting the seeds, though. It wasn’t explained exactly how to do it. Maybe a video from where Jacque left off to show what to do next?
Hey Kevin, what I like to do with my TOO MANY tomatoes is clean and store them in the freezer in ziplock bag. When I'm ready to make a sauce I pull out the bag, let them thaw completely and the skin slides right off the flesh (easy peasy). Then I proceed with making my sauce. This freezing method at their ripe stage can make the sauce give a slightly sweeter profile, depending on the variety of the tomat. This works Great for my San Marzano and Romas. Good Luck!
I have been gardening for 50 years and never watered or fertilized tomato plants (except watering in transplants). I do mulch well with whatever I can get my hands on that year, and the years I was in hotter parts of the country I planted in locations with shaded afternoon sun. A few years ago (a drought year with 15 inches) I drove my neighbor crazy as he was soaking his every 2 days and mine were actually doing better. I believe that the better root system can help against cold weather as I have occasionally had plants survive light frosts. The down side is any time it rains they split quite a bit, so I pick any fruit starting to ripen before it rains to ripen inside.
I did not garden this year but I have 2 beds of volunteer tomatoes. I get about a handful or two of tomatoes everyday. No fertilizer, no watering or pruning. I have a volunteer tomato that's probably a cross between sungold (only small tomato I had last year) and black krim taste and coloring, slightly sweeter. Holy cow was it good! Probably best tasting tomato I've ever had.
Never had an issue with my tomatoes not ripening fast enough but this season has been a mess! Thank you for that I have been gardening for 3 years and had not heard about topping the plants. I literally have 4 weeks to last frost and a bunch of massive green tomatoes lol so I just paused the video and went out to top them all hahaha carry on now
I think the dry farming hack is also really great for creating new drought tolerant disease resistant varieties of all plants: If you sacrafice one or two growing seasons, of mass production, but manage to get one or two fruits each year of successive plants and save the seeds, genetically the next generation of plant will need less water because it managed to survive without water.
I'm using human poop 💩 to fertilize my tomatoes 🍅 and they grow bigger and bigger every year and more jucy and sweet are becoming... I've learned that from my neighbour...
If you end up with way more tomatoes than you can eat, consider getting a canning setup (mason jars, a big ol' pot, and some tools). You'll need some citric acid to get the correct pH for canning, but this will help ensure you have tomato sauce or tomato chunks all year round. Remember, the best store-bought tomatoes actually come in cans because those are harvested when they're fully ripe. You can also freeze them, but you'll want to prep them into sauce first. I don't know if frozen sliced tomatoes are any good. One of the first tomato tips I learned was from a local expert being interviewed by the local NPR member station, and it's the deep planting tip. He would just cut off all but the top leaves of a seedling, bury that sucker way way deep, and go from there. When I did that, I started getting my first tomatoes.
Just started another round of cherry tomato seeds a few weeks ago here in West Central Florida, zone 9b, Fall is the best time for cucumbers and tomatoes, less pest pressure 🍅🍅🍅🍅🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Ive had tomatoes come up everywhere this year. Turns out the seeds survived the “almost done” compost. I found one clump of about 40 seedlings that all sprouted from a not quite broken down cherry tomato 😅
Too many tomatoes? Share the blessing by donating to those in need and/or preserving for when produce availability diminishes. We gardeners are going to be critical in helping our “neighbors” in the coming years with what’s happening in our society. God loves seeing the hearts of cheerful givers ❤️🕊🌱
I never worry too much about having my harvest ripen all at once because if I'm not going to get around to making a big batch of sauce or soup, those tomatoes will be just fine in a ziploc bag in the freezer. Obviously later on they'll be not so good on salads anymore once thawed but they'll still be great for cooking with.
I've actually never heard of 'dry farming', yet that's kinda what I unintentionally do with my plants. I'm in Texas, where we have heavy clay soil, and heavy winter/spring rains, but dry summers. My tomatoes do amazing in the spring, but get very stressed in summer due to heat & drought. I give them just enough water to keep them alive in the hot summer, and little to no fertilizer, but then once late summer/fall rains hit, I re-apply the fertilizer, and end up with a 2nd crop of tomatoes in November! Right now I have a literal wall of tomato and pepper plants that are producing like crazy.
Great tips, thank you! Tomatoes are a totally new crop for me. I think you and Jacques mentioned earlier this season thinking purple tomatoes are overrated. Respectfully, I gotta disagree. 😂 While waiting for my own tomatoes to ripen, I bought some from my local farm stand. I am not sure what they were, my friend and I think they were maybe Paul Robeson or Black Krim. They made a banging scratch made sauce, I’ll tell you!😊
Black tomatoes of various sorts are my favorites - especially Black Krim. They do benefit from some water/heat stress, and being in Texas, that part's easy. Not the biggest producers, but in "bang for your buck" terms they rock.
They're acid free, unlike many of the red ones. Some people can't handle the acid. With some my tounge would sting. My fathers family wasn't the healthiest and his FACE WOULD SWELL UP as a kid with acidic tomatoes so he just couldn't eat them.
@@soonmeekim930 you possibly got nematodes? I have heavy clay and so does my mother (about half a mile away) and she has nematodes. I only ever grow in pots, except for trees.
Between the deer and the blight and the nonstop rain mine have also been struggling. I was glad to see I wasn't the only one who stripped tomato vines up to about 4 feet high trying to keep the blight at bay
First, I want to let you know how much I'm enjoying these tip videos. They're to the point, informative, and fast! I'm going to try a couple of these hacks for end of season growing. I'll let you know what I did, and if it worked for me.
I tried saving a potted tomato over winter. I cut it off just above the soil and kept the temperature above freezing. The next spring it came back like gangbusters! I wonder how long a tomato plant can live if you continue this. Michael
This year is my first successful year growing pretty much anything edible. Last year was my first unsuccessful attempt. I have green, small tomatoes on their way to growing up right now, but my plants are big huge crazy bushes. Guess I needed to prune a bit better
Hey bro i'''ve been fallowing You For a while..."dry farming" is one thing that tooked few years for me to try but it Was so cool and now My favorite. Hope You speak some spanish cause I will make a video of it here in México today evening so that u can SEE how I do it..with some tips that I implemented to make it work for reals.
Tomatis, we call them that also. Beautiful, watching people my age younger and older jumping into permaculture. It is truly calming and really really nice when you've grown something from seed to harvest. Thank you for some new tips. Peace
I planted 16 tomato plants various kinds, various soils, various trellis ways, pots, ground and raised bed. I got maybe a total of 8 very small tomatoes from a few and literally nothing from 10 of them. Just sucked this year! My beeftakes were in the sun all day and gave me maybe 3 tiny tomatoes. Just awful
My tomato plants always get Curley top virus in late July or mid August. If I give them a side dressing of nitrogen (I use horse manure), the new growth is virus free…
With rhe food shortage coming up, I wonder can I grow tomatos in my small apartment during the winter? What tomatos would be the best for that of any, if anyone knows..?
I'm just guessing (& also a beginning outside container gardener) that you need at a minimum grow lights to ensure good growth & a fan (to mimic the movement that would strengthen the stems to avoid them flipping over, might also help with pollination).
Dwarf tomatoes are good for apartment gardeners. Also a blog and seed market for apartment gardeners is BACKYARD GARDEN SEED. I LOVE their melons and chinese celery.
When my tomatoes grow it's lush and green but when it start flowering it become wilt even it's not over watering or less and die. What can i do to cure it?
Alright, I saw the gardener squeeze a tomato into a jar and he spoke of fermenting the seeds but I must have missed something. What do you do after you squeeze the into the jar?
Hello Eric I really enjoy all the informative how you Garden. I need help with how to place the right plant the right spot etc. Your new gardening designs are beautiful. You have anyone you could recommend to fly to Hawaii and help me lay out my Garden?
I cloned some cherry tomatoes to grow in my house through the winter. I got some tomatoes just as a snack but in my experiment they didn’t die . I only got 3 per group because of no sunlight just grow lights
If I can "clone" a tomato plant from a sucker, is there any reason to ever start the same type of tomato from seed? Any disadvantages from growing a new plant from the sucker?
I find with saving seeds I don't need all that tomato flesh (you can eat your tomato and save the seeds too), just the gel and maybe a few tablespoons of water. I leave them in the jar just the same with some Gladwrap over the top (with a small hole in it).
As always your info is here on your site is indefensible and love the fact I also live here in San Diego and following your tips and tricks have definitely helped my gardening techniques become more proficient. The only thing I didn't fully get was the fermentation of the seeds. After putting them in the Mason jar with the tomato pulp do I vacuum seal the jar or freez it or put it in a dark spot and I'm assuming I need to put the lid on so they don't dry out. I didn't feel there was enough info to run with this. Being it was stated they can last for many years this way I wanted to make sure I'm doing it right. Thanks and look forward to the next video.
@@dillonknight199 that makes sense but there's a little more to that as if you go back about 3 years he has an episode with one of the San Diego Seed company operators. And yes you let them sit in a well ventilated space like most ferment foods. If you've ever made Sourdough Bread you know what I'm saying. But I do appreciate you guiding me in that direction.
I accidentally broke the top of one of my yellow cherry tomatoes one time 😬 and instead of cutting it up and making compost, I just stuck the little sucker in the ground, and by golly, she started growing up and producing tomatoes! I actually started pulling suckers OFF of it! 😆
Getting rootstock varietals is gardening on easy mode. They are about three times as expensive as a regular nursery tomato plant but they require so little effort to get results. I planted only from seed this year and while I am getting tomatoes, they've been slow to ripen and a lot more prone to blight and mold.
There are varieties bred to be disease resistant. Baker Creek Seeds has 4 disease resistant varieties listed now. That's the wonderful thing about gardening. There are so many varieties to choose from, especially in seed form, that if one wasn't so great you just try another.
The dry farming sounds interesting considering the past 2 summers. I’m trying two fruit trees similarly with 3 inches of compost and vermiculite about a foot below the root mass. That’s for the name of the technique. Very helpful.
Eat the tomatoes green they are delicious. I’ll fry some pork chops with onions then add some sectioned green tomatoes on top with spices cover and let them cook. They are delicious.
Those huge tomatoes are common in the veg shops where I live. Together with the cucumbers that glut at the same time they are good for gazpacho. I love this tasty cold soup. But live alone so only 2 makes me enough soup forca few days. 😂
Our soil up here is primarily sandy soil. When I put soil in my community garden bed, I use bagged mixes. It can be expensive; but, nothing grows in the native soil other than the native plants, like sagebrush, wild violets, and if I go further east, I can find cacti. Native grasses also grow pretty good. They are especially drought tolerant. I have tried cloning my tomato plants; but, the cuttings all died. But, if I do not stake my plants and let them sprawl, they will sort of clone themselves. I was just looking at the seed packets for the different tomato varieties and they all take about 80 days to mature. Of course, there is the volunteer plant that is growing in the bed. It has two tiny green tomatoes. I have one tomato plant that is growing in a fabric pot next to my garden bed that his one tiny green tomato on it. Since our first frost can come at the end of September to the first week in October, I don't think that I will have to worry about having too many tomatoes. I do like to dehydrate ripe tomatoes, though. They get crispy like potato chips and I can eat them just like that or I can crumble them up and put them in soup or stew. Dehydrated ripe tomatoes have the same flavor as sun-dried tomatoes.
Kevin, I would LOVE to see a video on Dwarf tomatoes. I'm limited on where I have full sun so am growing a couple Dwarves this year. Even so, I'm still a bit confused over the differences & advantages/disadvantages between determinate & indeterminate when it comes to Dwarf tomatoes. Thank you in advance for your help. 😊
If the soil isn't warm enough yet in colder regions, there is still a good chance of a frost event that would kill the plant completely. Tomatoes really don't like day/night time temps lower than 45F, therefore, make sure outside temperatures are regularly above 55F or better before planting to avoid those risks.
Yes! I do this here in Canada. I read a couple years ago not to plant them out before it's consistently above 13°C/55°F, and even though I got them in much later than others in my area, around mid/late June, I had an excellent crop. I decided to do the same again this year and again they're doing great!
@@FloraM44 Exactly, despite OK soil temps, we often will still get frosts 2nd week in June in Zone 4b/3a. It's better to wait...Tomatoes will catchup quickly and thrive much better instead of having to deal with the ups and down of temps.
I planted dwarf tomatoes that I started from seed. I up-potted twice before planting out, and with each replanting I buried about 1/3 of the stem. I've only watered them twice all summer and they're thriving. I live in Oklahoma, where we had temps over 100 for at least two weeks straight and almost no rain.
I water my tomatoes on drip for about an hour every 7-10 days in spring. It forces the roots down deep and the plants can sustain themselves for long periods of time but the time summer rolls around. I no longer get BER because once the plant is producing I have no need to water often and the threat of the plant wilting is almost non-existent. And no cracking either!
This is my 3rd year of a small home garden... im really bad at it. 😂 the best I ever did was my first year. I bought a heirloom from a farm in ky on the Ohio River. Took it home and sliced up to put on hamburgers. I keep to center slices and laid them on top of some good soil I had that I bought. Then put a maybe a half inch of soil on top of slices. And in 2nweeks. I bet 20 popped out of soil for each sliced. At a inch tall I started thinning them out and at 6 inches I planted about 5 plants in woodchips I got from city from trees that fell in storms... and then let them go. I'm telling you it looked like a huge bush all tangled together after 2 months and I got 100 plus tomato's from it. I bet 200 but wanna be conservative. And they were big and ugly cool looking kind.. never did anything but water and then pick em. I still have 100s ofnthose seeds I saved. Planted some this year. Only about 12inchs now. Going slow. Maybe it was the woodchips. Or just luck. The heirloom goes back to the 1920s if I remember right to this farm.
These tips are a game-changer for my tomato garden! 🍅 Can't believe I've been making some of these mistakes for years. Thanks for the helpful advice, now I'm excited to see my tomato plants thrive this season!
Amazing video :) Truly is soothing, relaxing, and educating. I have learnt a lot from giving this a chance, and I am so glad. Thank you so much for taking the time to create this video with us, :) It really is special and inspiring to get into my own gardening as a way to battle and get better at handling the stressful life I got myself into. Finding the way to the roots of ourselves. Thank you again and wishing you the best :)
Why would you pick your tomatoes green to try to ripen with an apple? Your fruit produce its flavonoids and other beneficial nutrients when it ripen on the vine. If you want your tomatoes to ripen sooner why not hang an Apple in a net bag next to your tomatoes on the vine? I also understand that if you are to take a shovel and prune the roots around the bottom of a plant somewhere around 8 to 10 inches From the plant stem by just pushing the shovel into the soil and cutting the roots but not digging them up will fool the plant into thinking fall is here and that they should get their fruit ripened.
She’s in Canada and has a very short season. Also anyone who lives in a zone that gets frost or freezes will pick all the green tomatoes before the frost takes them.
We scurry to pick all remaining tomatoes before first frost and store them in cardboard flats. Each week, we put a couple tomatoes into a paper grocery bag with an apple to ripen quick. The remain ing tomatoes ripen gradually and we sometimes have fresh tomatoes right up to Christmas and sometimes beyond.
Loving these tips! Especially the dry farming aspect. California remains in a drought, and dry farming is the way of the future. I’m not quite ready to do that either, but definitely want to head towards that direction.
I have some tomatoes that are sun scorched but that still have tomatoes. Actually they just started producing tomatoes and the leaves are looking rough. I think I’ll top them and see if they ripen the ones they have or reshoot. Next year, I probably won’t plant tomatoes there. Way too much sun.
For green tomatoes Ball has an awesome recipe for green tomato salsa Verde. I am never upset getting green tomatoes. Yes the hack banana or apple works but try out green tomato salsa. Yes please more reviews on dwarf tomatos. I grew 5 varieties this season really enjoying the production and stature.
My dudes, this video gave me some motivation to give tomatoes a go this year. I usually dont bother. But you taught me a lot. I managed to clone my tomatoes! 3 from a purchased seedling. I've also grown some sungold from seed. Very expensive to source sungold seeds here in Australia. 1 pack contains 5x seeds! I'm really thrilled with my efforts. Thanks for teaching me 😄 my other venture is beans now. I'm hoping you have some info on beans
This is my favorite of your videos so far. As a newbie gardener, I understood everything you said. Thanks for keeping it simple, and not assuming we know more than we do!
Nice balance of short-season and long-season hacks. I'm in a forest in 7a which for tomatoes is equivalent to much further north -- if I start suckers in early june they do not have enough time to produce before frost. So the diverse climate views are quite helpful.
Epic Gardening you are amazing. You have inspired me to grow sooo many things! I’m grateful for your knowledge and you sharing it. Thank you very much and keep it up!! - from Tehachapi CA.
Wow!! The natural soil where I live is mostly clay. Thanks for mentioning viticulture! I have great spots where I could try this. I'll let you know how it goes. Just got new seeds from Botanical Interests! So excited for this Spring season as I have a new little greenhouse set up now and now my seedlings are looking much much happier.
