I think you know I can’t resist a weird tomato. Crazy colouration, misshapen fruit, variegated foliage… the freakier, the better. One of the first tomato anomalies I tried were varieties with fuzzy foliage, and peach-like fruit. There’s a bunch out there: ‘Garden Peach’, ‘Wapsipinicon Peach’, ‘Elberta Peach’… I think you get the idea. All of …
According to the charts, we are now past the point of frost danger here in Toronto. Many of my neighbours have already planted out their entire tomato crop. I have not. I can recall at least a few past years in which a fluke weather system came through when it was least expected, completely decimating …
I don’t typically write about tomato varieties that I am growing for the first time, especially when they are tiny seedlings in the first few weeks of growth. However, these two are visually unique and I thought it would be fun to share them with you now. Both are compact plants (a dwarf and a …
This is a problem that occurs with a few seedlings every year even when the soil or the air inside the humidity dome is moist. It seems to occur most frequently with hot peppers and occasionally with older tomato seed, which leads me to believe that it is related to a loss of vigor. [See …
Until last week I had not been thinking much about my garden plans for the coming growing season. It’s difficult to suspend the reality of -26C (feels like -40C with the windchill) when you’re in the middle of it. After awhile, you start to believe that spring will never come again. Over the last few …
I had these seeds for some time, a gift from a tomato-loving friend that I was finally able to grow just this year. I generally prefer to withhold my judgement of tomato varieties until I have had the opportunity to grow them multiple times over a range of different seasons. I recently posted about ‘Snow …
It was one of the breakout stars of the season. I didn’t see it coming. I have grown ‘Snow White,’ a large, white cherry variety, a few times before, but for some reason it sat in the background while other newcomers caught my fancy. This spring I had a lot of new varieties to try …
Summer is almost over. Or maybe it’s just begun. Temperatures are expected to go back down again. Or was that back up? Who can tell anymore. Every year in the garden is new and different, even if just because of the weather. This is why I can never wrap my head around the old timers …
Do you love tomatoes, want to grow tomatoes, or want some advice on new varieties to try? My guest this week is tomato crazy gardener, Kelly Gilliam. Kelly was a regular of the now defunct You Grow Girl forums way back in the day. Back then she was gardening in zone 8b out on the …
I grew my first multiflora tomato variety back when I had the rooftop garden. Multifloras (aka compound inflorescence) are tomato varieties that produce legions of fruit, usually cherry-sized, per cluster. In a hot year, some multifloras have been known to produce as many as 50-100 fruits on a single cluster! I can’t recall which variety …
I was browsing through some of my old photos this morning and happened upon this one, taken on a trip to New York City back in May 2005 when I was promoting my first book. Looking at this image now, on a cold winter day, the soil long ago buried underneath snow, fills me with …
Since moving to a house with a basement three years ago, I have been experimenting with hanging whole tomato vines before the frost to ripen indoors. I’ve tried this technique in varying conditions: in a cold, dark basement; in the darker corners of an unheated porch; right up in the windows of the same south-facing …