With the traditional planting date of Good Friday behind us, the home tomato gardening season in the Panhandle is in full swing. While tomatoes are the most persnickety veggie we grow, there are several practices you can adopt to help you succeed: selecting an adapted variety; regularly scouting for insects and disease; and watering and fertilizing appropriately. However, the most overlooked practice for success gardeners can adopt is proper pruning.
‘Big Beef’ Tomato with lower leaves removed. This is an excellent disease reduction practice. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
Correct pruning does a couple of positive things for tomatoes. First, it reduces the incidence of disease by preventing leaf contact with the soil, opening the interior of the plant, and allowing better airflow. This is important as many plant pathogens reside in the soil and only need a splash of water to travel onto plant leaves. Also, densely foliaged plants trap warm, moist air in their canopies, creating a perfect environment for disease to flourish. Letting the plant canopy “breathe” through pruning prevents that negative environment from forming! Second, correct pruning of “suckers” (extra growth points that can develop into shoots) helps tomato plants develop optimum yield and fruit quality. By removing suckers, more water, nutrients, airflow, and light are directed to the main stems, where the majority of tomato fruit production occurs. Failing to remove suckers (especially on indeterminate varieties) can result in reduced yields, increased disease, and generally messy plants!
With the reasons for pruning tomatoes established, the next step is learning exactly what to prune and how to do it in a sanitary matter.
Get rid of any foliage that could encounter the soil, generally all leaves occurring on the lower 12-16″ of the plant. All kinds of nasty tomato destroying diseases, like Early Blight and Bacterial Leaf Spot, reside in the soil and are just waiting to be splashed onto your plants – don’t let that happen.
Determine how many primary shoots you want your plant to have. Leave enough lower suckers to achieve that number (generally just one, two, or three as more than 3 primary stems gets hard to manage), and prune or pinch out all the rest. To prevent stress from pruning, be diligent in removing suckers when they are still small, 2” or less.
Always clean and disinfect your pruners before making a cut on a tomato plant. This is best accomplished by rinsing the blades with warm soapy water, drying, and following with by a quick alcohol spray. A 10% bleach solution will also work, but if not thoroughly rinsed after, bleach can corrode pruner blades and other working parts. If you make cuts on a plant that appears diseased, repeat the sanitizing process before you begin pruning another plant as “dirty” pruners are an easy way to spread pathogens in the garden.
Developing vegetative “sucker” that will need to be removed. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
While tomatoes are indeed a difficult vegetable to grow, learning to prune them correctly will greatly help to make this a successful season. If you just keep leaves off the ground, suckers pinched, and pruners cleaned, you’ll be well on your way to less disease, prettier plants, and more tomatoes to pick. For more information on growing tomatoes and any other horticultural topic, please contact your local UF/IFAS County Extension office. Happy Gardening!
The weather is warmer and plans and planting for spring vegetable gardens are in full swing. Last week many vegetable gardening topics were addressed in our Gardening in the Panhandle LIVE program. Here are all the links for all the topics we discussed. A recording of last week’s webinar can be found at: https://youtu.be/oJRM3g4lM78
Home grown Squash. Gardening, vegetables. UF/IFAS Photo by Tom Wright.
Our moderators talked about some of their favorite tomato varieties. Josh Freeman is partial to Amelia, a good slicing tomato. Matt Lollar shared some of the best tomato varieties for sauce: Plum/Roma types like BHN 685, Daytona, Mariana, Picus, Supremo and Tachi. For cherry tomatoes, Sheila Dunning recommended Sweet 100 and Juliette.
Whatever variety you choose, Josh says to pick when it starts changing color at the blossom end and bring it indoors to ripen away from pests.
Garden Pest Management
Let’s start with an underground pest. For those of you gardening in the native soil, very tiny roundworms can be a problem. Nematode Management in the Vegetable Garden can get you started: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/NG/NG00500.pdf
There are beneficial creatures helping to control the pest insects. Learn to recognize and conserve them and make for a healthier environment. Natural Enemies and Biological Control: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/IN/IN12000.pdf
If the beneficials are not numerous enough to control your pests, maybe a natural approach to pest control can help. Natural Products for Managing Landscape and Garden Pests in Florida: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in197
Companion planting is a strategy that has been around for ages and for good reason: https://www.almanac.com/companion-planting-chart-vegetables Some good flowering additions to the garden that Sheila talked about are bee balm, calendula, marigold, nasturtiums, chives, and parsley.
Carrots are synonymous with a few things: Bugs Bunny, old wives’ tales about improving eyesight, and the color orange. For centuries, orange colored carrot varieties have been the industry standard and still dominate store shelves. These days though, choices for consumers are ever expanding and thankfully home garden carrot variety selection has participated in this phenomenon! With a little searching, gardeners can now source and plant any color and/or type of carrot they desire. For instance, this winter, I planted carrots of various types in various shades of orange, purple, and red. Through this experience, I also found that not all colored carrots look, cook, or perform the same. The following is a quick primer on carrot types followed by my review of the four varieties ‘Bolero’, ‘Red Sun’, ‘Deep Purple’, and ‘Malbec’ after a season of growing.
There are three main types of carrots regardless of color: Imperator, Nantes, and Chantenay. Imperator types are the extra-long, durable, sweet tasting carrots most often found in stores and are suited best to deep, loose soils. Nantes type carrots are medium length and cylindrically shaped, often with a blunt tip. Sometimes called “storage” carrots, Nantes types are easy to grow and tend to store well for long periods of time after harvest and retain their flavor well. Finally, Chantenay type carrots are excellent performers in shallower beds or soils as they are a bit shorter, possessing a conical shape with roots wider at the top and tapering to the tip, making a deep soil bed a bit less critical. I primarily grow Imperator and Nantes types as I find they give you a little more bang for the buck if you have a deeper (>6”) raised bed. Now, on to the variety reviews.
‘Bolero’ – I always have this carrot in my garden. An extremely versatile Nantes type carrot that has been a consistently high yielder for me whether I grow it in pots or in a traditional raised bed. Typical for a Nantes type, ‘Bolero’ stores very well in the refrigerator and will change your culinary life if you’ve only ever eaten carrots purchased from a store. They are excellent either fresh or cooked, with a complex, sweet taste. If I could only grow one carrot, it would be this one.
‘Malbec’ – Colored carrots have a poor reputation as far as flavor is concerned. ‘Malbec’ is the first non-orange carrot that changed my mind. This Imperator type is as flavorful as they come, deep red throughout, and is easy to grow. For some reason, ‘Malbec’ has been hard to come by the last two years, but if you spot seeds in a catalogue, online, or on a store shelf, it is well worth a purchase!
‘Red Sun’ – Winter 2020 was my first experience with ‘Red Sun’, a brand-new Nantes type carrot from Bejo Seeds. I only planted this variety because I initially could not source ‘Malbec’. Having said that, I was very pleased with ‘Red Sun’. The carrots were extremely vigorous, had excellent top and root growth and mostly held their own with ‘Malbec’ flavor-wise in the kitchen also. I would purchase ‘Red Sun’ again!
‘Deep Purple’ – Wow, they weren’t kidding when they named this variety! Most purple carrots are colored on the exterior but fade to a “normal” orange at their core. Not ‘Deep Purple’! This Imperator type is strikingly dark purple, almost black. Even the tops have a purple hue to them! Cooking them was also an interesting experience. Most colored veggies, peppers, carrots, and others lose their hue when cooked. Not this variety. Not only did ‘Deep Purple’ retain its color after cooking, my hands and cutting board turned a shade of indigo when preparing and, once put in a pan to sautee with other veggies, the juice from ‘Deep Purple’ dyed all the other veggies a deep violet! While I wouldn’t grow ‘Deep Purple’ as my main crop carrot, it definitely has a place in the garden as a tasty novelty.
Carrots are among the easiest to grow, most rewarding vegetables in the winter garden. Next fall, plant a variety of carrots in your home garden and enjoy the many types, colors and flavors that this tasty veggie has to offer! For more information on the above mentioned varieties, home carrot gardening in general, or any other horticultural topic, contact your local UF/IFAS County Extension office. Happy Gardening!
Grow your own horseradish in your home garden. You can then harvest roots to make a delicious, spicy sauce for your favorite dish. Learn outdoor care and kitchen prep with UF IFAS Extension Escambia County. #gardentotable #homegrown #homegardening
Who doesn’t like strawberries, right? Backyard gardeners grow these low-growing herbs throughout the state and there is a significant commercial industry too, as Florida’s climate is ideal for cool season production.
Strawberries like well-drained sandy soils, so they’re a perfect fit for many areas in the Panhandle. Strawberries should be planted in the months of October or November as the plants are quite cold hardy. Shorter days and temperatures between 50°F and 80°F are ideal for fruit development.
Photo Credit: Cristina Carriz, UF/IFAS
Strawberries are also very versatile. You can plant them in the ground, in raised beds or even containers. Transplants should be planted 12” to 18” apart, with 12” row spacing. For best results, use a rich soil balanced with compost and sandy soil and both fertilize and water regularly. Mixing in 2 ½ pounds of 10-10-10 fertilizer into a 10’ x 10’ bed space should be sufficient to start. A sprinkle of fertilizer applied monthly throughout the growing season should also help ensure a solid yield.
Berry production begins to ramp up roughly 90 days after planting, but plants will continue to produce throughout the spring. When the weather gets warmer, the plants start to expend energy into producing runners instead of fruit. These runners will be new fruit producing plants for next season.
Transplants can be purchased from most garden centers. There are many varieties on the market, but “Florida-Friendly” cultivars include “Sweet Charlie”, “Camarosa”, “Chandler”, “Oso Grande”, “Selva”, and “Festival”. “Camarosa” has proven to be the most productive variety in North Florida. Any of these varieties are capable of producing two pints of fruit per plant.
As stated earlier, Florida has a significant strawberry industry and UF/IFAS has a supporting role. The UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC) is home to the Strawberry Breeding Program. Cultivars are developed by traditional means, for the Florida commercial industry on an 11,000+ acres research site. Appearance, shelf life, sweet flavor and disease resistance are just some of the areas of selected breading research that is conducted on site. There is also a white strawberry soon to be released!
Photo Credit: Cristina Carriz, UF/IFAS
For more information, contact your local county extension office.
