May 18, 2016
Most of the tomatoes that Curtis grows fall into the cherry and
saladette category - the smaller tomatoes. These types of
tomatoes offer several advantages - they are pretty vigorous, they
have a relatively short DTM, and because chef's like them.
And when much of your sales are for restaurants, you grow what they
want to buy.
Over the years Curtis has evolved his system for tomato
culture. And he now looks at them as a bit of a bonus crop
given the way that he grows them.
Many home gardeners dedicate full rows to tomatoes and give the
plants wide spacing’s.
Curtis does the opposite. He interplants his tomatoes;
dedicating most of his bed space to another crop, while squeezing
his tomatoes into the out 2 edges of each bed.
This strategy works for several reasons. It takes advantage
of more of the soil strata. The tomatoes are planted deep, so
their roots occupy the deeper layers of soil. While the main
greens crops in the beds have shallow root systems. So while
the plants are planted in the same space competition is
minimized. Another reason why the competition is minimized is
that the tomatoes occupy more of the vertical space. If you
time the plants strategically during the year plant growth and sun
angles allow you to get more plants in the same space with no
shading.
Overall, inter-planting has been huge for Curtis's farm. It's
what's allowed him to hundreds of pounds of greens and hundreds of
pounds of tomato, in same relative space.
Not a bad bonus yield in a situation where most farmers would
simply leave the tomatoes out.
Look around your garden at the extra space and think about that
next time you plant your tomatoes.
It's currently May 4, 2016.
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