I mist the plants during the day to keep the temperatures down, but still have some fried leaves when it got too hot in there. Fortunately the plants are healthy enough they are bearing heavily anyway.

The heat does encourage ripening so I am now getting more tomatoes than we can eat. I use a Vita Mix to puree extra tomatoes to freeze for soups in the winter. That is fast enough I can do it, canning is not anything I have time to manage.

As you can see from the picture, the plants are now 5 and 6 feet tall, reaching for the ceiling in the hoop house. This is quite a change from the early June photos!

Here is a photo of a large Caspian pink tomato. The slices were larger than the slices of bread. Now that is my idea of a great tomato sandwich!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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This photo shows most of the three rows of tomatoes with some peas in the background. As you can see, compared to planting time, the plants have grown considerably.

I really enjoy seeing all the water droplets hanging from the plants in the morning before the sun has warmed the hoop house.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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Preparations for Planting Tomatoes
The first digging was to get the Jerusalem artichokes out of the way. They are not really artichokes, but actually a member of the sunflower family with edible tubers. They liked the north wall of the hoop house and became so rampant I decided to dig them all out of there. I cannot have them encroaching on my precious tomatoes!

I dug four full five gallon buckets of tubers and still have a section in the corner to finish, probably another couple of buckets or so. I hauled in three wheelbarrow loads of compost to level the ground where I removed the tubers. I dug that into the ground.

Then I raked the dry grass clipping mulch off each row and spread shellfish fertilizer on the row. That had to be dug into the ground as well, simply to get rid of the odor so I could continue working. I spread the mulch back over the rows, which further reduced the odor.

All of my supplements for my high brix experiment were ready to use. I set up the aerator and began brewing a microbe tea. I tossed an aspirin in the mix to help activate the tomato plants resistance to cold nights since they will no longer be in the heated section of the hoop house.

I made little containers of the other ingredients, which included another microbe inocculant, the fertilizer to feed those microbes, another mostly organic environmentally friendly fertilizer for the plants themselves, gypsum, and bone meal. I would have used all gypsum but the nursery only had one small box, so I added bone meal to be sure I have enough calcium. I will add rock phosphate later.

I placed the containers at the end of the row where I intended to begin. Then I raked the mulch back off the row again.

Choosing and Arranging the Tomato Plants
Usually I have a carefully planned layout for my plants, putting the tall cherry tomatoes in the peak of the hoop house where they have the most room to grow and the slower plants on the shorter ends. This year I did manage to put the Sweet Million Cherry tomatoes in the center peak locations, but the rest was considerably more random.

The reason is I tried growing the plants 8 weeks from seeding instead of 6 weeks. The plants grew so large they gradually fell backwards off the bench, hanging down and doing mid air u-turns to grow back up. This made working behind the bench nearly impossible. The plants also tangled in an alarming manner.

This photo shows the plants on the bench prior to planting. The tall plants in the picture are actually the smaller plants that are two weeks younger. The nearer plants which appear smaller only look smaller because most of the plant is hanging off the back of the bench. You can click on the photo for a closer look.

Due to this difficulty the tomatoes mostly went in the ground in the order which I untangled them. Handling these large plants without breaking the stems took careful handling and perhaps a certain amount of luck.

I dug the first hole at the end of the row, putting the dirt in a large blue muck tub. The hole was fairly deep as I wanted to lay the root ball sideways and bury as much stem as practical without breakage.

The root ball was then covered with dirt from the next hole to the left, mixing in the additives from my prepared containers. I continued working my way down the row in that manner until the end, when the dirt in the blue muck tub was used to cover the last root ball.

This photo shows the third tomato plant positioned in the hole. I roughly circled the base and plant label of the first two tomato plants so you can see more clearly how I was proceeding.

Training Tomato Plants on Strings
I allowed one sucker to grow on each plant so two main stems developed. I have two nylon strings hanging down from the ceiling for each plant so each stem will have a string to support it upright.

Tomatoes will not cling to the string unaided, but if you twine the string around the stem as it grows, the string will support it beautifully. A little slack is needed in the beginning as the stem will take it up as it gets larger.

This photo shows a tomato plant with its two main stems and the strings wound around them to support the plant upright. This allows for more efficient use of the greenhouse space and better air circulation at the same time.

All nine plants in the first row are planted, mulched, and trained on their strings. The plants are a bit untidy due to the contortions created in their stems by falling off the bench and changing directions. The plants have not yet had time to rearrange their leaves to catch the sun in the normal way either.

You can see other strings in the foreground and background which do not yet have plants. In the far back is a row of peas with a casually tied nylon string trellis for the cucumbers which will grow there later. In the far left back corner are the remaining Jerusalem artichokes I still have to remove.

Completion of Planting and Foliar Spraying
After I finished the third row this morning, completing a total of 27 tomato plants, I photographed them. This evening I planted 4 more plants in another row and that finished the tomato planting for this year.

The mesh wire fencing in the back is nailed across the big double doors to keep my rascal of a puppy out of the hoop house when the doors are open. Cosmo is deliriously excited at the idea of digging and eagerly tries to help. He also regards plants as tug of war material. In short, he is totally unfit for the greenhouse at this time!

Once the plants were all in the ground, mulched, and on their strings, I filled my sprayer and applied the microbe tea to the plants. I also did a soil drench down each row with the tea.

It was terribly hot today, somewhere in the 80s, and the plants wilted a little in the afternoon. The hoop house was in the 90s, so they had every right to feel stressed. They probably will do that the next couple of days as they adjust to being in more direct sunlight. As soon as they get used to their new conditions, I expect serious growth. And, of course, those lovely red orbs that are the point of this whole exercise!

Related Articles: Growing Tomatoes in a Short Season Climate and Stages of Tomato Growth in Photos

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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I planted the tomato seeds March 14 or March 15, I have forgotten exactly which day. I photographed the first seedlings March 22. I should have gotten them out sooner, but was busy.

The first photo shown is a double. The top half shows the germinating flat with the dome lid removed. The bottom half of the picture shows the leggy seedlings planted into their pots so they do not have to go back into the dimly lit hot frame.

Initially the plants grow relatively slowly. April 6 was the day I potted them up into the taller pots. The photo above shows the plants with the right half in their new pots and the left half waiting to be potted, which I did immediately after photographing.

I discovered something was wrong with the first pack of Stupice, my favorite early tomato. Germination was poor, which is not typical. I tried a different packet and planted them along with a few other varieties about March 30. Germination was excellent.

Although I was annoyed at the delay, it provides a great example of the difference in two weeks growth in the plants. The middle flat shown above holding the shorter pots is the two week younger flat. This photo was taken April 21 immediately prior to potting them all up into larger pots. Notice the typical large leaves of the Stupice tomato plants.

On May 2 the younger plants were ready to be planted in the gallon containers like the older plants. I did not pot up the older plants as they are difficult to handle in the larger containers when planting. This photo shows the two sizes of the tomato plants with the younger ones on the right in the green pots.

Four days later on May 6 you can already see greatly increased growth in all the plants. The little plants in the front on the right are rose bushes started from seed that don’t really belong in the photo, but there they are.

The most definitive photo showing four days growth is this one. Click on the photo for a larger image if needed. The first tomato to form on one of the Stupice plants is shown here with my hand behind it in each of the two shots. On the left is May 2 and the one on the right is May 6.

As another comparison of interest, I had exactly two dozen little tomatoes formed on the four Stupice plants before the first tomato formed on an Early Girl. These plants were all from the first planting and therefore the same age. Stupice tastes much better too!

At this point I think I will manage a ripe tomato by June, which is not easy in this climate. We will see if all goes well with this project. I am impatiently tapping my foot, waiting for more growth and that lovely red color to appear!

If you are using any of my methods, let me know how it is working for you. And if you are using other methods, let’s hear about that too!

Related Articles: Growing Tomatoes in a Short Season Climate and Planting Tomatoes in Ground with Photos

The My Favorite Plant Carnival, featured this article along with some other articles of interest.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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I have evolved by trial and error a method that results in ripe tomatoes as early as June, which gives me a great summer crop of tomatoes. The first step in this solution was to get a greenhouse, which keeps the nighttime temperatures higher.

Mine is a 20’ by 40’ hoop house, so I have ample room to grow as many tomatoes as I could possibly want. I grow them directly in the ground as I found raised bins unsatisfactory. They dry out too fast and are hard to keep watered sufficiently, even after mulching. So, the plants now go directly in the ground, again with nice mulch to keep the watering more even. The mulch makes the angleworms happy too as they build soil quality.

Building a Hot Frame

Since I cannot afford to heat a rather drafty large hoop house in this climate, the next problem was how to raise the seedlings until frost danger is past. I first made a 4’ by 16’ foot hot frame by attaching a soil heating cable in evenly spaced loops to chicken wire.

The hot frame has sheets of Styrofoam insulation wrapped in plastic as a base enclosed with a box made from 1” by 4”boards to hold the next layers. I place a layer of sandy soil on top of the insulation, then lay the chicken wire with the heating cable, and to finish the sandwich, layer more sandy soil on top.

The current framework over the hot frame is a heavy wooden 4’ by 16’ bench with hardware cloth nailed over the top. I put uv treated 8 mil plastic over it draping down the sides to the ground. This still allowed enough light to make the oven effect dangerous, so I added a couple of old bed sheets on top of the plastic to filter the light better. In severe cold I can put old sleeping bags over it for additional protection.

Experimental Misadventures

Originally this hot frame was built in the hoop house. It had a metal framework with plastic over it and at night I put an incandescent light inside for additional heat. Covering the whole framework with the sleeping bags at night was the finishing touch. I figured it should keep the flats of plants alive even if it hit 20 below, which it can do here any time from October to March.

I was right. It went to 20 below for a few days and my min/max thermometer inside the hot frame showed it never fell below freezing. Unfortunately, I could not open the hot frame to water anything because it was so cold in the hoop house itself. All the nice warm plants dried up and died by the time it was safe to open the coverings.

The next effort involved lots of uv treated 8 mil plastic, my indoor show booth framework, plenty of 2” by 2”s, uv treated bubble wrap insulation, and countless rolls of electrical tape. I assembled an experimental and messy 8’ by 16’ tent like affair inside the hoop house. Then I moved the hot frame into the tent.

This meant I could have a heater in the tent section so I could water the plants in the hot frame during severe cold. This worked far better than I expected and the jerry-rigged tent lasted 4 years before the top gave way and started leaking so badly it became nearly impossible to heat.

The show booth contraption has been replaced with an 8’ by 16’ wood and insulated structure using double pane glass in the ceiling. I still use 8 mil plastic on the front and end so I can roll it up in the daytime to prevent overheating when the sun turns it into an oven. Keeping it inside the hoop house prevents damage from the nearly constant winds here.

Choosing Tomato Varieties

My choices after much testing for my growing conditions are Early Girl, which is mediocre in flavor but utterly reliable even in the cool fall, Park’s Whopper, similarly reliable but better tasting, Stupice, a Czechoslovakian tomato which is earlier than Early Girl and utterly delicious, a cherry tomato such as Sweet 100 or Sweet Million, and my most favorite tomato of all, Caspian Pink, a wonderful heirloom that is large and flavorful. Stupice and Caspian Pink do not do well in the fall when it is cooler in the hoop house but they are unbeatable in the summer.

Starting Seeds

Typically I start seeds 6 to 8 weeks before time to plant them in the ground. I use starting flats with dome lids for planting the seeds. I prefer the larger celled ones for tomatoes. The cells are filled with a mixture of 1/3 perlite, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 sphagnum moss which has been evenly wetted.

One seed per cell of fresh seed is plenty. When using older seed, I plant two seeds per cell. The seeds are buried shallowly and I label each kind of tomato so I can identify them as they sprout.

After I have adjusted the controls in the hot frame so it is maintaining 70 degrees, the flats go into the hot frame, sitting on the warm sandy soil. As soon as the seedlings sprout, I immediately pot them up.

Potting Up

This is not standard practice for most people, but not enough light is entering my hot frame to actually grow stocky seedlings. I also do not want any damping off problems which those dome lids encourage. Each morning I transplant every new seedling into a little pot filled with Visser’s ph balanced potting mix.

I have tried all the brands of potting mixes available around here and hate all of them except Visser’s. I have almost 100% success with Visser’s but disturbingly more dead plants with anything else. I particularly despise the Miracle Grow mix.

I built two 2’ by 8’ benches that also go inside the insulated section. The heater, a small one from Charlies Greenhouse Supply, sits low to the ground at one end of these benches. I place the flats of transplanted tomato seedlings on the top of the bench near the heater. The hardware cloth top on the bench lets them heat nicely and they happily grow like crazy.

Desired Temperatures

I try to keep the temperature no lower than 50 degrees at night and no hotter than 80 degrees in the daytime. A min/max thermometer helps one to know what is happening to the temperatures when one is not in the greenhouse.

Watering

The baby plants need to be kept watered, which is best accomplished by bottom watering. Once a week I set each flat of transplants in a shallow plastic storage container which has water in the bottom and let it soak up into the pots until I see the top of the potting mix show dampness. Between the weekly bottom waterings, I mist them daily with a hand pump sprayer which does not damage the seedlings.

As the plants are tender babies, I never use cold water so I do not shock them. I keep buckets of water sitting in the heated section so I have a supply of greenhouse temperature water for the bottom watering, and I fill the misting sprayer with warm water in the house.

I have been using the Soil Moist crystals to hold water in the pots after the second repotting, which reduces my watering needs. I am careful not to use too many as per the directions on the can.

Making Root Balls

Once my tomatoes are in their first pots my entire focus is to help them make a big root ball. If a tomato plant has a big root ball it will easily become a large plant that will be a great tomato factory.

After the plant has grown enough to fill the pot with roots, I pot it up into a taller pot, but about the same diameter. I drop the whole root ball to the bottom of the new pot and bury the stem with additional potting mix. I remove leaves if they are going to be buried leaving some leaves and the growing tip coming out the top.

The wonderful thing about tomatoes is the stem sends out new roots wherever it touches the soil, so I now have a little plant busy making a lot more roots. Even though it visually looks smaller than before transplanting, it will shortly be displaying exponential growth so patience is quickly rewarded in this process.

After they have filled their new pots with roots I pot them up into larger round pots that let me lay the root ball sideways in the bottom. This lets me bury a lot of stem in this potting. One has to be very careful not to snap the stem in this stage, they have to be gently eased into place, and carefully buried with more potting mix and Soil Moist crystals. The stem may not flex far enough to come up in the center of the pot, but as long as it has a little potting mix between it and the pot wall, it will happily grow more roots.

Sucker Removal

All of the tomatoes I grow are indeterminate, which means they will keep growing more and more leaves and stems. This can get out of hand in a greenhouse. Looking between the leaf and the main stem, one can find the new little shoots called suckers growing as the plant is getting larger. I leave one at the bottom of the plant that becomes a major main stem in its own right, so each plant has two main stems as the little shoot quickly grows.

I pinch off all the others. Otherwise, the plant puts too much energy into making more foliage instead of blossoms and tomatoes. It is surprising how many of these suckers one plant can make over a season. The dense tangle that can result also hinders air circulation in a greenhouse.

Feeding the Plants

The seedlings start with two leaves that aren’t true leaves but are cotyledons. Initially the seedlings are best nourished from the seed itself. Never fertilize seedlings at this stage as it weakens the plants.

The next leaves are true leaves and look like normal tomato leaves. Once the plants have these first true leaves I have found Algoflash for tomatoes to be incredibly useful. This is a supplement that is composed of minerals, not the damaging salts that are found in commercial fertilizers.

The stems of tomatoes grown with Algoflash are extra sturdy and the leaves a rich healthy green. The plants grow rapidly but with great strength. This sturdiness is vital because I am growing much larger plants than usually are being planted into gardens and they can be difficult to handle without damage.

If I wish to add any other fertilizer I may also use a fish emulsion even though the smell is not appealing. Planet Natural in Bozeman has a good offering of such supplies.

Planting in the Ground

By mid May I can usually safely start planting the tomatoes in the ground in the hoop house. I use a propane heater when I need to protect them from cold nights.

I dig a deep hole in the well prepared soil. I have been adding manure and other amendments to the soil each year. Green manure will burn the plants so I use only aged or composted manure. I have also added rock phosphate and compost. The grass clippings used for mulch also decay into the soil, further enriching it.

I remove the plant from the pot, which is the most difficult step as the plant is large and breaking the main stems lethal. I lay the root ball sideways in the hole, once again burying as much stem as possible, removing any leaves that would get buried.

I mix some bone meal with the soil that goes back in the hole to prevent blossom end rot. Blossom end rot is mostly caused by too much nitrogen in the soil, and all that manure adds nitrogen. I then fill the planting hole with the soil mixture.

The tomato plant takes a few days adjusting to the new conditions, quietly growing additional roots. Then it abruptly begins growing above ground in startling fashion.

I have permanently attached two nylon cords per plant to the framework of the hoop house above each plant. As the plant grows, I twine each main stem around a nylon cord until they are supported by it. I keep some slack in the cord because the tomato plant will use it as it grows upward.

I continue removing the suckers and soon the avalanche of delicious tomatoes is underway. Some of the Caspian Pinks grow so large one slice is bigger than a slice of bread, making wonderful tomato sandwiches. I can hardly wait to begin again this year!

Note: Photos of some of the stages of tomato growth can be found here.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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My old greenhouse had been utterly destroyed by wind and my husband kept promising to build a new one in wood and glass. He hated the old one anyway as it was an unpleasant structure made of aluminum tubing and fiberglass. The fiberglass had aged to a yellowish color so he called it the giant Madison Valley maggot.

While I agreed it was not at all attractive, it meant I could grow tomatoes in a climate where it can snow any month of the year. Those deliciously ripened red orbs allowed me to overlook the surrounding aesthetic shortcomings. However, after the wind mangled the greenhouse into a depressing pretzel three years passed without those wonderful tomatoes, or a new greenhouse being built. Every time the weather was good, my husband instead went fishing, his great passion in life.

This pattern was interrupted when we opened our own art gallery, RiverStone Gallery. I found myself in Ennis most of the time rather than driving thirty to forty thousand miles a year working the high end juried art and craft shows. I decided I could properly tend tomatoes again and I announced it was time to build a new greenhouse.

Bern could tell I had reached my limit and said he would see to it that summer. Almost immediately he was in the hospital with heart rhythm problems, apparently from the stresses of getting the gallery space remodeled and open. I realized even if he really wanted to build a greenhouse (doubtful indeed) he was in no shape to do so.

I decided to find a temporary secondhand greenhouse I could somehow get onto the property without him having to do anything. I wanted at least half the size of my ruined 8 by 16 foot one. I looked and looked with no success.

Eventually I found an ad for a greenhouse framework and a greenhouse cover. It did not sound like an actual greenhouse. I called the number and they surprised me by saying it not only was complete, but it was standing and I could come look at it.

To my thrilled delight, it was a whopping 20′ by 40’ and in good shape. The original owners had lived in it 6 months while they built their cabin in Colorado. They sold it to this couple who thought the world was ending in 2000. Since it did not, and he was unemployed, they were selling all their survival stuff.

I promptly bought it. For $1500 he took it down, brought it to my place, and installed it while also building new wooden end walls with glass windows, doors, and 4x4s set in concrete. Every steel cross brace of the framework had big screw anchors at each end to hold it firmly in the ground. This structure was going to stand solidly in spite of our winds here.

My husband was quite dismayed at first. He objected that it was nearly as big as our house. I smiled widely and said, “Isn’t that wonderful? That is why we have the second lot!” I told him we could sell it again when he built the new one.

As it progressed he realized it did not look plug ugly like the old one and he ventured to ask if maybe I really liked it, he would not have to build one. I assured him I would be perfectly happy to keep it and thought it would be a good solution for both of us.

His only other question was how much it was going to cost per tomato for the crop I was going to grow in there. I told him I had no idea, but I would figure it out for him if he wanted. And while I was at it, I would figure out all the expenses per trout that he releases back in the river. The subject never came up again.

Once the hoop house was installed, I began to paint the end walls white. I only had about an hour at dawn each morning because the gallery was busy. One morning I was trotting happily out to the hoop house with my paint roller and I was stopped in my tracks by the garden. The poppies had just opened into bloom and the dawn light falling across them left me transfixed.

I abandoned painting the greenhouse for the time being and started painting poppies, huge paintings four feet by five feet. I had not planned to be painting flowers, but it quickly became the major focus of my art. Fortunately my husband does like it when I disconcert him with unexpected art explosions.

Since then I have redesigned the gardens and filled both lots with flowers, all laid out to catch the dawn light. These provide most of the inspiration for my paintings these days. And you would not believe how good the tomatoes taste!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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