Late Season Tomato Planting

June should be full of large green tomatoes on your tomato plants. They will soon ripen and play out as we head in to July. Therefore, if we do a little planning and planting now in June, we will have vine ripened homegrown tomatoes up until the first frost in October. Late season tomatoes, aka Fall tomatoes, are usually more sweet and tender.

We planted some of our Organic Mortgage Lifter tomato plants on June 15th. Now is the time, with the first of July being the end of the time, to plant the wave of late summer and fall producers in Middle Georgia. We knowingly choose a soil challenged area of our garden to test some tomato care principles. Your date for the last planting in your area should be determined by the date of the first frost. Refer to a First and Last Frost Table and calculate back according to the day to maturity. We often refer to Victory Seeds Table for our frost information (http://www.victoryseeds.com/frost/ga.html).

WATERING: We stood a 28" piece of 1-1/4" PVC pipe with 1/8" holes spaced 1" apart for the bottom 12" of the pipe in a hole about 18" deep. This will insure deep watering takes place during the hot Georgia summer.

MULCH: After digging the hole that measured approximately 6" by 18", we place a tablespoon of organic gypsum in the bottom of the hole and covered it with at least 2" of organic compost. The amount of compost depends on the height of the tomato plant to be planted. The remainder of the hole was filled with compost, composted horse manure and top soil. this gives the tomato plant a 6" diameter by 18" deep hole filled with composted material and a bottom or deep watering source. We will experiment with the amount of water and the frequency using the deep watering PVC device. The PVC also provides nice initial plant support.

We will cover more of this late summer tomato planting wave as we progress to insure the fruit ripens and is harvested before the first frost. 'First frost,' what a cooling thought on these Summer days of 90 plus degrees.