Hi Trish54,

SOIL NUTRITION:

If nitrogen is the only nutrient that showed a deficiency, you do not necessarily have to add anything else, but you might want to.

Sometimes a soil test shows that nutrients are IN the soil, but the soil test does not tell you if the nutrients are in a form that is easily taken up by the plants. Thus, it can be hard to know for sure if your soil has everything the plants need in a form that is readily available.

Many people who grow a lot of tomatoes like to put back some nutrition into the soil every year. You can do this in several ways.

1) By growing a fall and/or winter cover crop like cereal rye (not the same as winter rye lawn grass), buckwheat, oats, hairy vetch, etc. and tilling the cover crop into the soil a few weeks before setting out the plants.

2) By adding organic material to the soil every fall or winter. This organic material can be compost (home-made or purchased by the bag), composted animal manure (cow, chicken, horse, rabbit, etc.), shredded leaves, FINELY shredded bark mulch, or peat moss. I like to add several inches of organic material every fall/winter. It not only puts some nutrition into the soil but also improves the soil's tilth and drainage.

3.) By tilling this year's mulch into the soil. I especially like to do this. First I remove ALL the old plant debris from this year's tomato plants because they may have diseases (bacterial, viral, etc.) that could carry over to next year. Each year I mulch with several inches of finely shredded pine bark, old hay or straw, shredded oaks/pecan leaves, grass clippings, etc. The mulch partly breaks down during the course of the growing season. I till it into the soil in November or December after a hard frost has killed everything. THEN I add new mulch on top of the raised beds. This 'new' mulch helps keep winter weeds from sprouting and leaves me with tomato beds that are ready for planting in the spring.

4) By adding an organic fertilizer that contains many important trace minerals. There are a LOT of these trace minerals your tomato plants need, and it can be hard to find them in a chemical fertilizer. These include boron, copper, manganese, iron, cobalt, molybdenum, magnesium, zinc, and sulfur. My favorite organic tomato food is Espoma Tomato-tone because it contains all the essential plant nutrients that tomato plants need.

5. By adding rock minerals and powders to the soil. Every 3 or 4 years I add a little greensand, lava sand, soft rock phosphaste, etc. to my soil.

TERRIBLE TOMATOES:

You need to ask yourself WHY the tomatoes were terrible this year, and I suspect it probably has more to do with the excessive rainfall than anything else.

FLAVOR: If the problem was that the flavor of the tomatoes was bad, I'd blame the weather more than anything. Tomatoes are genetically pre-disposed to have a certain amount (and no more than that) of flavor and sweetness, and it varies from variety to variety. If a plant receives too much water, that flavor is 'watered down' and the taste of your tomatoes reflects that. Also, in years when we have too much cloudiness/rain and too little sunshine, the flavor decreases accordingly.

If the problem with the tomatoes was a lack of productivity, it could be the varieties you chose, the effect of high rainfall and high humidity (it impedes pollination), and nutritional deficiency in the soil.

If the problem with the tomatoes was disease, especially foliar diseases/problems like fusarian wilt, early or late blight, bacterial speck, bacterial spot, etc., that is a result of many factors, including the fact that water spashed from the soil onto the foliage of the plants, carrying diseases with it. Mulching the plants can help reduce this as will spraying the plants preventatively with a chemical like Daconil every 7 to 10 days, or with an organic product like Serenade or baking soda sprays.

For what it is worth, many of us here in Oklahoma had problems with our tomatoes this year and much of it (though not all) was weather-related. Also, if you raise tomatoes in the same beds every year, that soil MUST have some nutrition put back into it every year to replace what the plants use up.

Finally, if I were adding a chemical form of nitrogen, I would add it at least a couple of months before I planted the tomato plants. Too much nitrogen too close to planting time will give you huge monster tomato plants that attract way too many pests and produce too few tomatoes.

Dawn

WOW Dawn, I do appreciate ya! Thanks for the advice on the nitrogen and all others. Since this was my first year of growing tomatoes, to speak of.....I thought it was all the rain we had too. But, then I saw a friends tomato plants in Muskogee (they got the same amount of rain) and the plants were huge and full of fruit. I am glad to know it was most probably due to the rain...keeps me from getting discouraged. Do you start your plants from seed? if not, do you think greenhouse tomatoes are stronger than others? like I said, this is my first time of growing tomatoes and now I am addicted! what variety do you recommend for Oklahoma? I think I had early girls and better boys this year, the early did better than the better, in other words, the girls out performed the boys, lol. I can't wait till next season. I am driving my husband crazy with all the talk, lol. I saw your other posts and was hoping you would answer my questions. I could tell you have had more than a little experience with gardening! Thanks again Dawn. I have other questions but will not bombard you with them with this post, catch ya next time. Oh, forgot to tell you....I had ordered the tomato tone and have two bags of it.

Hi Trish!

First, regarding your comment "I saw your other posts and was hoping your would answer my questions", you KNOW that I cannot help myself and MUST respond to all tomato-related posts. LOL That's what happens when you have someone like me who is tomato-obsessed.

As far as why your friend's plants were larger even when grown in similar conditions, you know by now that it could have been a confluence of many factors, including the variety of the plant, the size at transplantation, the date of transplantation, the type/fertility/drainage of the soil, the amount of rainfall/irrigation received, the issue of full sun vs. partial sun, etc.

I do start my plants from seed. Although I have grown tomatoes all my life, I have only grown my own from seed (consistently) for about the last 15 or 20 years. I originally started growing them from seed because you absolutely could not find heirlooms in nurseries 20 years ago. Now, of course, you can find a good variety of heirlooms in many places, including Lowe's and Wal-Mart.

When you say "Do you think greenhouse tomatoes are stronger than others", if you are asking if I think that purchased transplants grown in greenhouses are stronger than others, the answer is maybe. I would have to ask what you mean by "others" because I don't know if you mean plants started inside your house under grow-lights or those that are field grown in a warm southern (zone 8-10) climate in late winter to early spring and then shipped to zone 7 for sale in the spring.

Ideally, the best transplants are those which have been grown in good light (whether natural or artificial), fed properly, had their foliage kept dry to reduce the chance of disease, and which have been subjected to good ventilation (it helps them grow stronger stalks). It doesn't really matter if they are grown in a greenhouse setting or started at home on a windowsill, a light shelf, or even on a sunny porch and, perhaps, carried inside at night to avoid cool temps.

However, if you are asking me if tomato varieties that are bred strictly for greenhouse production are superior to the typical ones grown outside in the ground, then the answer is no, no, no. Tomato varieties that are bred for greenhouse production are better suited for growing in artificially-manipulated conditions and tend to do less well in the real world.

The key, though, is that any and all plants must be hardened off properly so they can handle full sun and full wind all day long. If not, they can die or be severely damaged by sunburn or windburn if they go from being 'too sheltered' to being 'not sheltered at all'. So, if you grow your own transplants inside under lights, you have to gradually expose them to increasing amounts of sunlight and wind to toughen them up. This is very, very important.

There are very many varieties that grow well in Oklahoma. I'll start with hybrids because they are easier to find in stores. Keep in mind that there are THOUSANDS of tomato varieties, and you could ask 15 people to list their 'top ten' favorites, and everyone might have completely different tomatoes on their list!

HYBRID TOMATO VARIETIES:

Early Girl: For early ones. Bush Early Girl is an even heavier producer than Early Girl and Early Girl Improved.

Better Boy: For all-season-long production

Celebrity: For disease-resistance, good productivity

Jetsetter: For flavor, disease-resistance, productivity

Porterhouse: Relatively new, from Burpee. For large, good-flavored tomatoes, great productivity

SunGold: For great golden-orange, sweet cherry tomatoes. There is an 'improved' version called SunSugar and it is hard to tell the two apart if grown side by side in the garden, but I think SunGold has slightly superior flavor.

Sweet Million (for great red cherries, very large plants, very heavy producers, pretty good disease resistance)

Big Beef (Superior flavor, great production)

Brandy Boy (ALMOST tastes as good as the legendary Brandywine and produces at least ten times as many tomatoes as Brandywine does in our climate)

Husky Red Cherry: I haven't even grown this one, but Susan has raved about it so much, as have some others who grow it, that I am going to grow it next year. It has short internodes, so it is a very heavy producer of red cherry tomatoes that are said to have great flavor.

Better Bush: I grow these strictly to have ripe tomatoes in April and May, and I don't grow this one from seed due to the timing. (I would have to start it inside in November to get plants that are as large/as close to bearing fruit as the ones I buy at Lowe's or Home Depot in mid- to late-February.)

HEIRLOOMS: I'll start by saying that many heirlooms are superior to hybrids when it comes to taste/flavor. So, my top criteria when selecting a plant for this list is Does it taste great?" I could easily list a hundred favorite heirlooms, if not more, but will try to contain myself by listing the best of the best! :-)

Cherokee Purple: Best producer in my garden, great flavor

Black Krim: Produces fewer than CP, but they are very tasty

Cherokee Green: Similar to CP, great flavor

Cherokee Chocolate: Similar to CP, great flavor

Earl's Faux: Flavor similar to Brandywine, better producer

Stump of the World: Big pink yummy tomatoes

Black Cherry: Amazing 'black' cherry tomato. Actually, it resembles nothing so much as a concord grape. Few of these even make it into the house because I eat them while working in the garden. Flavor has to be tasted to be believed.

Neve's Azorean Red: Big red yummy tomatoes

Riesentraube: A cherry of German heritage, produces so many blossoms that you cannot believe it, tons of tasty fruit

Dr. Carolyn: a wonderful ivory to pale yellow cherry tomato named after tomato expert Dr. Carolyn Male who regularly posts on the Tomato Forum as Carolyn137. I think it is a selection from Galina's cherry.

Snow White: Ivory to pale yellow, larger cherry tomatoes than Dr. Carolyn, tastes great. Ialso have grown Super Snow White, which was supposed to be an improved variety, but it was not as tasty nor as disease-resistant for me.

Ildi: A yellow cherry that has superior flavor.

Coyote: A yellow currant, so the tomatoes are VERY small but incredibly flavorful.

Aunt Ruby's German Green: A unique spicy flavor that must be tasted to be believed. The first "green-when-ripe" tomato that I grew.

Green Giant: Newer to me than Aunt Ruby's. Great flavor, but not as good as Cherokee Green.

Nebraska Wedding: Very tough plants that can take our weather extremes without batting an eye. The first orange tomato I ever grew. Superior flavor to other orange ones I have grown here, including Kellogg's Breakfast.

Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter: Huge pinkish-red tomatoes that have out-of-this world flavor. They do not produce a lot of fruit, but the ones they do produce are amazing. Produces more fruit for me, and both earlier and later than Brandywine, here in our climate.

Brandywine--A person could write a book about Brandywine and all its' various forms, which may or may not be related to the 'original' Brandywine. I trust the Brandywine seed from Victory Seed to be the 'true' Brandywine. This is the best tomato you will ever grow and/or eat. Unfortunately, it takes it FOREVER to produce a ripe tomato and you do not get very many fruit per plant in our hotter climate.

Dr. Wyche's Yellow: My favorite Oklahoma hybrid. Produces medium-sized golden-yellow-orange tomatoes with great flavor. In rainy years, though, it has a lot of issues with foliar disease (although, to be fair, so do most other tomatoes).

Jaune Flamme': An orange, ping-pong-ball sized tomato that stands up well to our heat. Flavor is highly variable, and the more rain that falls, the worse the flavor. Once it stopped raining here in mid-July, the flavor of these drastically improved.

Aunt Ginny's Purple: Very tough plant that handles our heat well. Flavor some years is ALMOST as good as Brandywine.

Marianna's Peace: A good pinkish tomato that many people feels is as good as Brandywine and Aunt Ginny's Purple. Personally, I think it is not quite as good, but it is still very good and well worth growing.

You might notice that I didn't list any paste-type tomatoes, although I can add some to the list if you are interested in growing them.

And, just for fun, I think I'll start a list of tomatoes that DO NOT grow well here for me, but I'll start it on its' own thread. I wish I had a nickle for every tomato variety that sounded great in the seed catalogs or gardening magazines and was, in reality, a total waste of space to grow here.

If you have more questions, fire away.

Dawn