High & Dry Farm

118 tomato varieties presently growing and the first two varieties to bear fruit are …………….(drum roll)………….. Purple Russian and Indische Fleisch.  Oddly, neither of these varieties was advertised as being particularly early – both are listed as mid-season varieties. But I have noticed before, tomato varieties respond in unpredictable ways to our odd Puget Sound climate.

I don’t know whether to credit global warming, or my new regimen of growing my tomatoes vigorously pruned and trained to vertical posts, but this is the first time in many years I have made it to the first of July without any sign of late blight.  Growing tomatoes trained in this way prevents ground contact and improves air circulation – both helpful in preventing attack by the blight fungus.  In the Puget Sound region  we invariably have a number of days of cloudy, moist and relatively warm weather in June, which the blight fungus loves.  This year my tomatoes survived June unscathed and in phenomenally  good shape.  The majority of my 120 varieties of tomatoes already have fruit.  Shown below is Alicante, a British variety, which fruits early and productively, even in cool climates.

The key to training tomatoes to a vertical support is illustrated in the picture below.

Tomato plants branch by growth of buds that form at the Y between two existing branches.  The bud in the upper panel has been removed in the lower panel by simply pinching it off.  These buds grow amazingly fast in warm weather, so buds need to be removed weekly.  Left unchecked, each bud forms a branch that will form more buds and branches, so the number of vines grows exponentially, from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16, etc. If you remove buds properly you will end up with a  single vigorous vine, which will easily grow 6′-8′ or more up a support.

This year, for the first time, I am training my tomatoes on tall stakes.  This involves frequent pruning of the plants to remove the buds that form at branch nodes, so that the plants grow as one or two long vines, tied to bamboo poles at 10 inch intervals.  The process of pruning and tying 120 different plants takes much less time than I imagined it would.  In theory, growing plants vertically in this manner will improve air circulation around the plant, to reduce the possibility of the plants developing late blight.  I must say, the plants look wonderously healthy so far, so fingers crossed.