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There's an epidemic this summer: a rash of tomato truancy.- Yeah, the red ones are shirking their responsibility, showing up late or not at all. The final bell for summer is about to ring, and we've still got more green than red on the vine.
What the heck is going on? And what can we do about it this late in the game?
It's time for direct action, tough love and some homegrown tomato tips.
Michael Stucky of Millennium Farms of Vancouver, Wash., has been growing tomatoes for 30-plus years, so he knows a thing or two about this fickle fruit. Stucky says the first thing we have to do is withhold. This method might put the kibosh on interpersonal communication in a relationship, but it does wonders with tomatoes.
Step 1: Stop watering. Withhold water completely for plants in the ground. Tomatoes growing in containers will need a little water, but be stingy.
Step 2: Prune the plant. Cut off any leaf or branch that's covering the fruit. Take off every branch that doesn't already have a tomato growing on it. Every single one. We don't want the plant to flower any more. Nada. Leaving leaves saps the energy away from ripening what you've got and puts it into tomorrow (and tomorrow might never come!).
Step 3: Cut the top 6 inches off the tomato vine. Just hold your breath and cut. This tells the tomato in no uncertain terms to stop growing up vertically and put its effort into ripening what's left.
Stucky says this cuts to the heart of the mistakes most of us make with tomatoes late in the season: "We're afraid to cut tomato plants back significantly. We don't want to admit summer is almost over."
Step 4: Spear a toothpick through the thickest part of the tomato vine. You'll usually find the stem is widest about 3 to 4 inches up from the ground. Just run your toothpick sword clean through the plant, and leave it there.
Stucky calls this "graduate-level" tomato science. He employs the toothpick trick when the end is near and it's time to get seriously serious: It cuts two weeks off the ripening time. Our attempt at medieval torture tricks the plant into believing it's dying.
But back to the beginning. Why is there such a problem getting our tomatoes to ripen this summer, anyway? Blame it on the weather. Stucky says extremely hot temperatures, anything over 95 degrees, send tomato plants into a tailspin: "We had too many hot days that pushed them into full-blown survival mode."
In response, the tomato drops its flowers and stops fruit growth completely, which sets the plant back 10 to 14 days. Two full weeks we could have used right about now.
The cool nights have complicated things even more. Did you know tomatoes actually grow at night? Stucky points out that the plant stores energy by day and uses it at night. The sugar factory hits high gear on night shift. So if the soil is cooler than 60 degrees, it's too cold to get any work done and the factory closes down for the night.
Tomatoes have had a hard summer. Too many days were too hot, and too few nights held the heat. Now it's time to pull out all the stops; the countdown is on. My advice? Pull that toothpick out of your teeth and get busy.
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