Don’t let garden centers dictate what fresh tomatoes you eat. Tomato plants are easy to grow from seed. There is an abundance of wonderfully tasty tomatoes available. Some are hybrids; others are great old timers with yummy flavors and colors.

The soils up north seem to have the right balance of nutrients to give a really good tasting tomato. Here in the South, I found that the tomatoes were a bit wimpy in the flavor department. Don’t get me wrong, they are still 100 times better than supermarket tomatoes, but they lacked that bit of strong zing with a sweet touch I came to expect in my tomatoes.

Last year I discovered that along with the composting and fertilizing, a handful of Epsom salts mixed in the planting holes worked wonders for flavor. Our tomatoes had the best flavor, even though they were mostly the same varieties I grow every year. If you are happy with the flavor of your home-grown tomatoes, skip this step!

If you have room, grow some of the old timers in your garden. Black tomatoes are my favorites for flavor. They take up the same space as modern hybrids, but they bear a much smaller harvest of fruit. Still, they are worth the space and wait, often taking much longer to mature than the newer varieties.

You can buy several packets of tomato seed and just plant a few of each. The seeds will keep quite well in a cool dry place. Seal the packets with tape and store the sealed packets in a tight fitting container somewhere cool indoors, not in a shed or garage, where it will get too hot. Seeds should remain viable for 3-4 years.

Sow the seeds according to the packet directions. Tomato seeds germinate best at around 59 degrees F. or above. Start the seeds indoors in cells or trays of sterile soilless mix. When the seedlings reach 3 inches tall, transplant them to 4-inch pots.

The transplants can go into your garden when there is no more danger of frost and nighttime temperatures stay above 45 degrees F.

Tomatoes are one of the few plants that can have their stems buried in the ground. They also like to have very warm roots.

Dig a short, shallow, inclined trench for each plant instead of a deep hole. Remove all but the top cluster of leaves. Lay the tomato plant in the trench. Bury the roots and stem in the upward-sloping trench with only the section of stem above ground that has leaves. Roots will grow all along the stem, giving it a good anchor.

You should be harvesting sweet, tangy fresh tomatoes 7-8 weeks after you move your plants outdoors.

---Posted by Anne K Moore, January 23, 2008---