One of the SMARTEST Ways to Grow Tomatoes in 2026

Good morning, everybody. How you doing today? My name's Andrew. I'm Matt. I'm Daniel. I'm Pawpaw. I'm Callie. I'm Aiden. I'm Matt. And we're some of the Veggie Boys. Hey, girls. And we'd like to thank you for stopping by. If you're new here, please consider subscribing because we can grow a lot of stuff on the farm. But one thing we can't grow is this channel without your help. It's so cool to see the slight color change from onions to leeks and then back to onions. Looks like Grammy's making that roll. And a lot of it. Good morning, you big babies. Hey, everyone. Welcome back. We have got a very sloppy day on the farm on our hands. That's probably due to the storms that rolled through last night. We got hit with some pretty heavy rain. I even heard a few booms of thunder. I mean, it rained so hard that it kept the kids up last night. Thankfully, everything seems to be in order on the farm today. No issues, no plastic ripped up anywhere. Everything seems to be where we put it last, which after a crazy storm like that is appreciated. We've already got all the animals fed. We got the eggs collected. We've got a few more jobs to take care of right away this morning, but I wanted to go for a quick walk through the greenhouse. Temperature feels good in here and the plants, they're looking good as well. Really quickly, before we finish off morning chores, I wanted to touch on something interesting that we've got going on in the greenhouse. Now, a lot of you know, we plant so many different types of peppers and hot peppers are very popular. We started two specific varieties this year very, very early. That would be our ghost peppers and our habaneros. We did that for two reasons. One, germination rates are always the best, so if we do have a bad germination, we can always seed again. And the other thing is that the peppers, they take a lot longer to grow. So I just wanted to show everyone. Right here, we've got some habaneros. These are gonna be for sales. Here are some red habaneros we're gonna be planting for ourselves. And down here, they do look very, very similar, but these right here are ghost peppers. Very exciting. We've got some hot cherry here. We've got some poblano, but those two varieties I specifically wanted to talk about. If you're gonna start your habaneros and your ghost chilies yourself, I would suggest you do it a little bit earlier than your other crops. They take a long time to get started. Out of the way. Come on, guys. Out, out. What did you call her? Fat heifer. Fat heifer, okay. I'll tell you what, dad, I wouldn't want to be a straw bale in there. No. They'd really get you. They'd beat you up pretty bad. Before we head up to the greenhouses for the day, we got an entire box of eggs grated, ready to be sold. It's been so nice the last couple of days, and this cold front is moving in on top. It is getting cold out here. Super Tunia Mini Vista, which is my personally favorite white. Matt's personally favorite. You know, usually it's pretty easy to hang these things on, but in front of some of the fans, we have to hang them on hooks, and that just makes it a little difficult. While dad and I were working on animals, Matthew was hanging a bulk of this top line. I just got it finished off for him, so now we don't have to worry about hanging anything up there. The girls are working on planting all different types of things over there, but right here, we're actually planting Tumbling Tom yellow tomatoes. Now, these are really cool, and Tumbling Toms are one of my favorite varieties. Normally, tomatoes will grow upright and then fall over, but these Tumbling Toms naturally, like, cascade over the side of the pot. They're super productive. They're incredibly sweet. They're great for snacking, putting in salads. They're just a beautiful tomato. Just a few things I want to mention about these for if you're trying them at home. We put them in a well-drained basket, so these do not hold water. We have got quality soil in here. Well, this is a soilless medium, so we're making sure that we're giving these plants the best opportunities to grow. And probably the most important ingredient for these is sunlight. We're gonna be putting these in an area in the greenhouse where it gets maximum sunlight. They're gonna be decorative, they're gonna be delicious, and they're gonna be pretty hard to beat with that beautiful yellow color. Now, the Tumbling Tom yellows are very, very popular. In here, we have something similar to a Tumbling Tom red. This is called a Fantastico. It's very difficult to find good Tumbling Tom tomato seed. We tried doing it in the past. We didn't have success, so we've moved on to this variety called Fantastico, and we really like it. If you're growing tomatoes in containers or in small spaces, Fantastico is the tomato for you to try. With our hanging baskets that we're doing, it's very similar to the Tumbling Tom reds. They cascade over the side. They give us a beautiful fruit that has great flavor. Now, because these stay so nice and are manageable, they're perfect for growing on patios and containers, your front porch, your back porch. It doesn't matter. These are the way to grow tomatoes in 2026. Same with the Tumbling Tom yellows. We're using a pot that drains really, really well. We have a great potting mix, and we're gonna be giving these plenty of sunshine and keeping them watered consistently. And with just a little care, these are very low maintenance, but I promise you, with a little bit of care, we are gonna have unbelievable tomatoes, not only for ourselves, but for the people in the local area. We sell out of these every single year, and it's not like we're planting less. We plant more and more of them every single year, and same problem. We always sell out. So if you wanna try growing tomatoes, or if you have kids that wanna try growing tomatoes, pick up these Fantastico, or pick up the Tumbling Tom yellows, or any small cherry and grom in a container like this, where you can hang on your front porch, back porch. It doesn't matter. It doesn't take up a lot of space, and you'll feel like a professional grower when you see how well these tomatoes do. With this last group of pots that we've just ran through our filler, that's 1,100 green hanging baskets on the air. Pretty cool. Now some of you may be thinking, you should probably put another tomato plant in those pots so that they fill out. We don't have to. Believe me, these things, they get plenty full. As a matter of fact, if we added another tomato into that pot, it would overcrowd it, and the plants wouldn't do as well as we need them to do. Because we're only putting one in there, it gives it plenty of space for its roots, and plenty of space for it to push out. When it comes to the cherry tomato hanging baskets, the last thing we're gonna add is a tag. Just has some basic information on it. Says red cherry tomato grown by Oaks Farm Market, and it says water regularly and have sun at least six plus hours a day. Those are just some of the minimum requirements. You need to have some sunshine for these tomatoes. We also do add the price onto it, but not many people look at that. When they see these plants, when they get to the size that people want them, they just fly out of here. I say, do you wanna know how much it is? They say, nope, just give them to me. Couple baskets. I can't get them from this side. On top of trying to keep pots filled for ourselves for planting tomatoes, we also have to keep pots filled for the girls as they are planting the hanging baskets of all the flowers, all the different types of flowers. Kind of the same process when it comes to our hanging baskets that are full flowers and our hanging baskets that have tomatoes in them. I'll say the only difference really is that we're not adding the time-release fertilizer to our tomatoes. And some of you may be wondering why we're doing that, but the reason for that is because we don't want the plant to just shoot up and for the plant to just be all plant. We want it to push more tomatoes. And if we add our time-release fertilizer now, it'll kind of add to the plant just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we're gonna want the plant to be focusing on blossoms as it starts to mature a little bit more. So by not adding the time-release fertilizer, we're kind of mitigating the amount of fertilizer that these plants are getting. But every single time we water, these tomatoes will be getting fertilizer added too. And you heard me say that they were low maintenance earlier on. And I really mean that. When we take our hanging baskets, our hanging basket cherry tomatoes, we put them all the way at the top of the greenhouse. And we do that for two reasons. One, they get the most amount of sunlight up there. Two, nobody can get them down. Because if the customers knew they were up there, they would hunt them. They'd hunt them down. And once these hanging tomatoes are put up there, they are not touched again until they are sold. And Matthew is using that long pipe that we have, and he's putting them all the way up there. So it's pretty low maintenance. I think that's about as low maintenance as it gets. We fill the pots, plant the tomato, we give them some water, and we hang them up. We're gonna check in on Aunt Bonnie. What have you been planting, Bonnie? Baskets. Baskets, lots of flowers. How many different types did you do so far? She probably lost count. She lost count. And then over here we've got Mama Ange. Mama Ange is a grandmother now. Big, big excitement. How's little baby Aurora? Oh, amazing. We'll just get her down here, planting here very, very soon. And what are you working on? Pansies. Pansies? You know they're pretty tough. Yeah. So being called a pansy is a compliment. Well, anyway, that's what I tell myself when Aunt Rhonda calls me a pansy. I just say, well, I'm a tough flower. We just got the call that it is lunchtime. We made a lot of progress this morning. Got a lot of baskets filled. We got a lot of tomatoes planted. One of my favorite things is that we're starting to get all this space above us filled in. That is a big job to get taken care of. All finished off with lunch, we're gonna be making our way back down into the greenhouse. For the afternoon, all we're gonna be doing is putting baskets up into the top of the greenhouse, making a lot more space that ultimately is gonna need to be filled. One thing I will say, temperatures are gonna continue to drop throughout the day and into the upcoming week. It's not gonna be a fun week, especially when it comes to the weather. Well, everyone, I am now home. Mommy made us a spectacular dinner. We've got a great dinner and Mommy made us fresh bread. How's the fresh bread, Lily? Good! But now that we're home and eating dinner, that means this is where we're gonna end the video today. Thank you everyone for watching. Buh-bye!