I do try to cut back but have never quit here. I do know a truck gardener who either quits or almost quits. He says that is does cut production but really makes the taste better. He waters till the first heavy set is almost big enough to start turning and then quits. Which is late summer and usually about when it starts cooling off some. I tend to water less but don't quit. I want the production. A trade off either way as I see it. JD

Any observations regarding this?

*****

No direct observations but a few years ago I was giving an heirloom tomato workshop at the now defunct Hortus Nursery in Pasadena and dry farming was the fad of the day.

It can work in CA where rain doesn't come out of the sky as it does here in NYS and constant irrigation is the norm in CA. ( smile)

We can sometimes withhold watering melons when they/re near maturity, for instance, and that does concentrate the flavor, but I sure wouldn't try it with tomatoes.

Carolyn

I've found that one advantage to having a deep (30") raised bed that is covered with the red mulch from GS is that it keeps enough moisture in the soil that I rarely have to irrigate...not sure this is true dry farming but it at least doesn't require a lot of additional water...

I'm going to build a steel frame over it so when it's going to rain hard (and in the Chicago area we can and do get torrential downpours at least a few times a season) I can keep most of it from raining directly down on my bed...the rain will still soak the ground around it but as the bed is downsloped I am assuming the water will drain away from the bed and into the water rentention area directly behind an below my patio...

Last August, when I had a bunch of beatifully ripening tomatoes, we got 7" of rain over two days from the remnants of a tropical storm that hit the Gulf of Mexico -- totally split and ruined the tomatoes so I made a lot of tomato juice and dried tomatoes...

Carolyn...do you think that covering the bed to prevent a downpour on it will work as hoped?