I Started My Tomatoes TOO Early...

It's finally the day to put the tomatoes out in the garden. The only problem is I have nowhere to put them. Got to get my new fan off for you guys. We put this in here, hung it up, and it's a fan that just circulates air. So we blew it basically at a wall and it ends up moving around all the air in here. So these beautiful, gorgeous tomatoes have gotten a lot of nice wind stress on them, which is exactly what you need. And we also have a new entrant into the world of Epic Totems. I carved this one for my carrots, which are out there. So let's talk about the Tommies that I've got. Before I show you the tomatoes, let me show you where I'm thinking about planting it. This is where we did it last year, but obviously this is growing peas right now and some pretty sizable ones at that. But I'm going to have to take them down. The changes we made to this trellis are very subtle. Last year we just buried down about three feet or so with no cement or no sort of fixing into the soil besides just the soil itself. That held up really well. These are nice and sturdy, but the top two by four, which we ran on the wider side across, didn't really work out too well. So we doubled it up and ran it on the narrower side and it's way more sturdy. The beauty of having these peas here, even though I would rather not cut them down, I just need to get these tomatoes in the ground. They're way too long. So I'm just going to chop these down. I'll throw some to the hens. I'll harvest what I can, but it's a legume. So I might just actually use the pea cuttings as the mulch for this first month or so of the tomato's life. Now we got to set the ground up, which is probably going to be a little dose of compost. I'll take a look at it. I actually want to run a soil test, which I'll show you in a second, but I also need to put on the hooks because I'm going to do basically a single ish leader style approach, kind of like I did last year. Okay, so check this out. Epic Soil Analysis Kit. I'm going to show you how to do it. I am very excited to launch it, but I'm also very curious what is in my tomato bed. So what I need to do is collect my soil, bag it up, send it, register. It's that easy. You just fill to this line here and you want to go down about six to eight inches or so. So I'll use Jacques' favorite tool actually. And I'll come down, I don't know, right about this far. Now I could get a representative sample if I wanted to, but I'm just kind of curious what's in this exact spot because I think it's relatively representative of the rest of this entire line that I'm trying to grow my tomatoes in. So let's get down a touch just so we avoid a ton of that compost that's sitting on the top. And in we go. The cool part about the test is it tests for your soil's pH, your organic matter percentage, your cation exchange capacity, which is sort of nutrient absorption by the plant. And then for all of these micro and macronutrients that I put on the screen right here. So I don't know, I don't know exactly what I'll see. The soil seems to do really well here, especially after all the amendment you've seen us do over the last few years. But in a future video, I will put the results from the Epic Soil Test up. This is live now in the store if you want to grab one and see what your soil is like this season. The weather has changed drastically in the last five minutes. I got a thunderstorm warning and it was like sunny enough. I could have been gardening out here with my shirt off, getting some good sun. I'm looking to the east. It said there might be hail. The weather is 100,000% changing guys. It is a very weird spring. Probably the weirdest in my memory, except for maybe last year. But the hail that's coming in San Diego, it's unheard of. I've never had a year where I got hail, let alone two times in a year, but two years in a row, super rare. So let's take a look at these tomatoes. These ones actually look terrible. So I've been letting these grow just a touch too long. It's one of those things where you try to time that season. And it would have been nice to have these maybe about here when I transplanted them. I think they're just a touch too tall, but I'll show you what we do to mitigate that. But first I have way more tomatoes growing than I can plant. So I need to figure out which ones I'm going to plant. And I'll show you that right now. So this is the great dilemma. Number one, you could tell these are too tall. They're not sickly or anything like that. There's just simply too tall without any supports. So I'll run you through every single one that we planted and I'll tell you what I think of them. And if I'm going to plant it in the section over there, I'm only going to plant eight tomatoes over there. I'm going to train them in a single liter style. So I want a nice blend of my beef steaks. I want some cherries over there. I want some sort of daily drivers. What I'm not going to do is plant any saucing tomatoes over there. The reason why is because I had great results putting my sauce tomatoes out in the front yard. And I want to expand my sauce garden this year. I want some sauce. And so I'm just going to completely separate my purposes for my tomatoes. So the first one I have here is a Costa Ludo Genovese. This is absolutely going to be going into the garden. And you can see just how tall it is. Let me show you how I would prune this up. So like I said, a little old, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to aim to plant to about here or so, which is quite deep. And I'm not actually doing that just because I want the roots to grow off the stem, although that is a benefit. It's simply just because this is too tall. And so I want to control for the height. What that means is I'm going to come down and just gently pull all these off. And I already know I'm going to be training this to a single liter system. So I can also make this pruning cut right here by taking away that little sucker. I can remove this one here and I can cut myself and then I can remove that guy up there. So I'm going to experiment this year with some double liter systems. Make sure you cut it all the way off. Otherwise you'll get a damage like I did just there, but that's okay. I'm going to experiment with some double liter systems, but in this particular case, this is how I'm going to prune every single one of these. Hopefully we get some nice root development there. This is so tall that without a stake it will fall over and I don't want to damage the stem. So I'm actually just going to lay these on their side over here while I collect my Premier 8 picks. Okay. The next one that is making my list is going to be Cherokee Carbon. Reason why is because it's basically a classic Cherokee purple tomato, but it's been hybridized. So some of the disease resistance has improved. Some of the vigor has improved, but the flavor remains mostly the same. The structure on this one, I would say it's pretty nice. So in this one's case, I don't need to remove too much because look it's standing up on its own. So I'll just plant it to about there or so. And I will also just pinch these suckers. You can see very tiny suckers here. So I'll just pinch those. I don't need to get too fancy there. If you can pinch it, it's all the better because then you don't have to worry about the plant developing these suckers further just for you to take them off. So the earlier you see them, the better off you're going to be. You can actually even see some early flowers here. So that's why I decided to pull the trigger and get these in the ground. When I mentioned I was growing this next pick, a lot of you mentioned how much you loved it and it's chocolate sprinkles. I've never grown this before. And historically I kind of don't like alternatively colored tomatoes. I had a phase where I was going through like the purples, the yellows, the oranges. And these days I kind of just like a classic big old red tomato. But enough of you said you liked it that I am going to go with the chocolate sprinkles. These two floppy boys, I've got ox heart tomatoes here. It's kind of hard to even choose what the right one is here. But I'm going to go for the one that's a little bit less developed maybe just cause of that floppiness. Ox heart tomatoes are total tanks. I mean, they are, they are massive. And that's kind of the mood I'm in this season, is to try to grow some big old classic huge tomatoes in my single liter, you know, long indeterminate trellis setup. And we'll let all the sort of saucing stuff and the determinate bush styles go up in the front yard probably. You know what? I am going to grow a Cherokee purple as well and I'll plant them right next to each other. And we'll just see how these do. Cause remember, Cherokee purple will be the heirloom version of the hybridized Cherokee carbon. So we'll just see. The wind is coming in guys. I can see the tomatoes rustling. I can hear it. It's actually kind of wild to think we might get hailed on while I'm planting my tomatoes for you guys. Oh my God. What is happening? Going in with a Moscovich now. Not much to say about this one, but a fun, fun variety nonetheless. Okay. This one here I've never grown. I'm very excited about it. It's called Artisan Stripes. It's kind of like a Roma-esque shape, but it's called a cherry. So we'll see how it goes. Rounding out our indeterminate pick, Golden Jubilee. Tall but standing on its own. Have some high hopes for this. So we have our eight. I'm going to slightly change the way I plant them this year. Not too many differences, but I'm actually of the mind that I want a nice delicious tomato harvest. So I'm probably going to be a little more active in my fertilizer and that includes what I do when I put them in the ground. So let's go. In we go my friends. I'm going in with the Castelluto Genovese first. That's the one I already sort of pruned off for you guys. So what I will do this year, and there's so many right ways to prune and to plant, you don't have to freak out about this too much. This is just what I'm doing. You don't have to do it exactly this way. And I'm just experimenting every year. I'm trying a little thing, changing it, seeing if I get an improvement, sharing it with you guys. But what I'm going to do is something that I tend to do, which would be use some sort of mycorrhizal and bacterial inoculant product like this mycos here. So I'm just going to sprinkle that on, be a little bit liberal. Remember if it gets on the ground, it's just a top dress that'll eventually make its way down into the soil. I've got nice root structure here. I'm not going to do too much to that. That looks pretty good to me. So I'm going to leave this to the side. I'm going to come out about a foot or so, go straight down with my power planter. Normally I would just use my hands and dig, but in this case I actually have to bury it pretty deep. So the power planter is handy for that. I'm going to smack these roots up a little bit. Now here's a big difference. I'm going to put a very healthy dose of fertilizer down in this hole and I'm going to mix it around a touch. That is because there's actually quite a bit of root matter. So if a lot of new root matter is going to develop, well, I better give it something to eat, right? So down we go. Probably the deepest I've ever planted a tomato, honestly. And then I'm going to backfill and each layer I'm just going to throw in a little bit extra. Backfill, toss in a touch extra, backfill. And there you go. So now I have a pretty well set up tomato. I can stake this no problem if I needed to, but I'm going to do that top line drop, come down and we'll be good to go. Now, I'm also going to knowing I'm going to cover this with mulch in a second, I'm going to throw a healthy amendment right there too. I'm going for size. I'm going for juice. I'm going for volume. I'm going for sliceability. I'm going to fertilize in this year and just see what happens. All right, the irrigation line is back on, but I'm actually going to hand water cause some of these longer guys are looking a little bit floppy. So we're going to give it about 15, 20 seconds of water each, let it soak in and then we'll top dress. So all I'm doing here is just tossing some compost on. Sometimes I find it helpful if you do use drip to bury the line cause it's dripping out either way. So the less sun on it, the better. Although this stuff is pretty, pretty UV stable. We're just going to go right down the center line here. Give this soil a little bit of protection, a little organic fertilizer. So if you run into a situation, it's hard to see here, but like this where I've got a leaf that was touching the ground already. This one as well. I had some problems with disease in this tomato area for the last couple of seasons actually, which is why I chose varieties less prone to disease, but why invite it by having a bunch of stuff touching the ground, especially when the weather's this weird. So I just want to try to avoid any issues because like I said, baby, I'm going for volume this year. Looks like the hens are fans of the peas. Look at this. We got a party out here. What's going on girls? Man, they've been kind of weird. We've been getting so many eggs. I have an entire frittata with a dozen eggs that I just made yesterday. And I have four dozen more eggs plus those four waiting. So I'm like really running out of things to do with the eggs. I might have to start like freeze drying them or dehydrating them or just giving them away. Real simple trellising setup guys. Eye hook. We've got some twine coming down, staked it into the ground right there and then you'll use tomato clips and just clip it right in. So we're looking pretty good. This is just one of the tomato zones that I am planting this season. I'm going to do an experiment over in the test garden where I'm going to see if it matters if you transplant deep versus shallow versus on its side. Comment down below. I feel like they're kind of all going to do the same thing, but that's why we do the experiment. And then in the front yard, like I mentioned, we're going to do a sauce garden and I might also do another experiment where we test if it matters to go from a single liter style trellis system to a double liter style trellises and with the exact same tomato. I don't really know what's going to happen there either. So let me know. The storm seems to be coming. I'm going to pull one carrot out of the ground. See what I get. Just my little, you know, meal for a hard day's work here. Ooh, not bad. Nice and sweet. Absolutely delicious. Good luck in the garden guys and keep on growing.