Vegetable Gardening (24 page)

Luckily, many varieties of tomatoes now are resistant to some of these diseases. Use the guidelines in Chapter 17 to reduce the amount of disease in your garden.

Weather-related problems

Not all problems with tomatoes are related to insects or diseases. Too much or too little water, too much fertilizer, cold temperatures, and varietal differences can all contribute to deformed fruits. Here are a few of the more common problems and some solutions:

Blossom drop:
Your tomatoes are flowering beautifully, but the blossoms all seem to drop without forming any fruit. This condition, called
blossom drop,
is caused by air temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit or below 55 degrees Fahrenheit. At these temperatures, most tomato flowers will not set fruits. The solution is to grow varieties adapted to the heat (such as ‘Solar Fire') or cold (such as ‘Cold Set'). Or you can protect the plants during flowering with floating row covers.

Blossom-end rot:
With this condition, the bottom, or
blossom end,
of tomatoes turns brown and rots. Blossom-end rot is caused by fluctuating moisture conditions in the soil, so the best cure is to mulch the plants well, plant them in well-drained soil, and keep them evenly watered.

Fruit cracking:
Many types of fruit cracking affect tomatoes, but all involve fluctuating moisture conditions and exposure to cold temperatures early in the season. To avoid this problem, plant varieties that are less likely to crack (such as ‘Big Beef'), reduce nitrogen fertilization, mulch the plants to keep the soil moisture even, and protect flowering plants from cold nights with row covers (see Chapter 21).

Sunscald:
You'll know that your tomatoes have sunscald if the top surfaces of the fruit skins have lightly colored patches. These patches, which are caused by direct exposure to the sun, eventually rot. To avoid sunscald, grow indeterminate varieties that have lots of foliage to shade the fruits (such as ‘Better Boy'), avoid pruning the leaves, and provide afternoon shade with shade cloths. Or you can grow the plants in cages instead of staking them.

Harvesting tomatoes

Harvest tomatoes when they're fully colored and still firm to the touch. Tomatoes don't need direct sun to ripen, just warm temperatures. Tomatoes will continue to ripen indoors if they're picked too early, so it's better to err on the early side when harvesting. As long as they show some color when picked, they'll ripen indoors with that vine-ripened flavor.

If you want to push the harvest along, you can prune off some new branches and tiny fruits to redirect the plant's energy to the larger, maturing fruits. You also can root-prune the plant, cutting 6 inches into the soil in a circle one foot away from the stem of the plant. Root-pruning severs some of the roots, shocking the plant and forcing it to ripen its fruits faster. It will, however, stop the production of new fruits, so this technique is best used at the end of the season.

If you live in an area with bright sunshine, don't prune off tomato foliage. Removing too much foliage results in sunscald, a condition in which the tomato skin literally gets sunburned. Sunscald itself doesn't ruin the tomato crop, but it opens the door for other rot organisms to attack the fruit. (See the previous section for more details.)

Chapter 5: Meeting the Tomato's Cousins: Peppers and Eggplants

In This Chapter

Surveying sweet, hot, and ornamental pepper varieties

Examining eggplant varieties for all occasions

Growing peppers and eggplants in your garden

Peppers and eggplants, which are two tomato relatives (they're all in the nightshade, or
Solanaceae,
family), may not have the popularity of their big, red tomato cousins, but their varieties do have a similar diversity of tastes, colors, and shapes.

Peppers, in particular, are experiencing a resurgence of interest, and breeders have responded to that interest by creating new and improved varieties. Whether they be sweet or hot peppers, you have many new varieties to choose from. No longer simply green, yellow, or red, sweet pepper varieties come in a rainbow of colors, including orange, purple, and chocolate. The new varieties adapt better to cold and hot temperatures and have more ornamental qualities. With the popularity of salsa (which is now the number-one condiment in the United States, according to the U.S. government), nachos, and spicy foods in general, hot peppers are gaining heaps of attention as well. From the mildest jalapeño to the hottest 5-alarm habañero, varieties are available for all taste buds and heat tolerances.

Eggplants (named because some varieties have fruits the shape and color of hens' eggs), aren't as popular as peppers, but they have gained a lot of attention because of the discovery of varieties other than the traditional dark purple, teardrop shape. Long, thin, Oriental types make excellent grilled snacks, skin and all. Small, round, green, Asian eggplants are great in soups and casseroles. You can even find unusual round, orange, Turkish types that are used in specialty ethnic cooking.

Both peppers and eggplants are beautiful plants to grow in your garden, and they make excellent container plants if you have limited space. Some pepper varieties have purple stems, leaves, and fruits; eggplants have beautiful purple flowers, and the fruits can be a variety of colors, including white, purple, striped, green, and orange. So, reserve a spot in the vegetable or flower garden for these beautiful, edible fruits.

Producing Plenty of Peppers

An abundance of pepper varieties are available to home gardeners, including many new varieties of hot peppers. In the following sections, I classify peppers into four groups: sweet bell peppers, sweet nonbell peppers, hot peppers, and ornamental peppers. Most of these pepper plants grow to 2 to 3 feet tall unless otherwise noted.

Those sweet bells

Bell pepper fruits come in blocky, round, or elongated shapes. Most fruits start out green but mature through a variety of colors before ripening to their final color.

The days to maturity given in the following variety descriptions represent the time from transplant in the garden to full size. Add 2 weeks to this number to know when they'll mature to their final color. Sweet bells have the sweetest flavor when harvested at the mature color stage, but they still can be harvested green and taste good.

Variety descriptions for sweet peppers frequently use words such as lobes and blocky. No, I'm not talking about ear shapes. When you cut a pepper crosswise near the stem, you'll notice that the walls divide the pepper fruit into sections. Pepper experts call these sections
cells
or
lobes.
Well-defined lobes or cells make peppers blocky. Most bell peppers have three to four lobes. Blocky fruits are best used for stuffing or slicing into pepper rings. The thick-walled varieties are best for stuffed-pepper recipes.

Here are a few of my favorite varieties of sweet bells, all of which offer good disease resistance:

‘Ace':
This early, 3- to 4-inch-long hybrid bell matures within 50 days and grows well in cooler climates.

‘Bell Boy':
These four-lobed, thick-walled All-America Selections, or AAS, winners yield fruits that turn red on
compact
(smaller than usual) hybrid plants. They mature in 70 days.

‘Blushing Beauty':
This AAS winning hybrid features 4-inch-long-by-4-inch-wide blocky fruits that mature in 72 days. The fruit color is amazing. It starts out ivory white, turns to gold, turns to orange, and then finally turns to red. It tastes great at any stage.

‘California Wonder':
These classic, thick-walled, 4-inch-by-4-inch blocky hybrid bells mature to red in 75 days and are great for stuffing. They also come as a yellow-fruited variety called ‘Golden CalWonder'.

‘Chinese Giant':
These old-fashioned, thick-walled, huge (6 inches by 6 inches) heirloom bell peppers mature to red and are very sweet. They're good stuffing peppers and mature in 75 days.