Has this ever happened to you? You spend weeks tending your tomato plants, watering them, feeding them fertilizer, making sure they get enough sun, protecting them from raccoons and other tomato-loving critters.
Finally, the first tomato is ready. Plump, red, just waiting to be picked. You pick it, take a bite, and…feel cheated. It doesn’t taste like the tomatoes you remember from your childhood or your travels in Italy or your favorite good restaurant. It tastes like, well, one of those supermarket tomatoes that have all the culinary charm of a tennis ball.
In my long gardening experience, I’ve discovered only two “secrets” to growing juicy, flavorful, healthy tomatoes that far exceed anything you could ever buy in a supermarket: the variety you choose, and what you feed the tomato plant.
For varieties, I like many of the heirloom tomatoes, such as Brandywine, for their flavor. But plenty of the modern hybrids offer great flavor as well as improved disease resistance. Read the seed catalog (or nursery display) advertising copy carefully. Make sure the description emphasizes great flavor. Large size and abundant yields won’t mean much if the tomatoes taste just so-so.
As for what you feed tomatoes, that’s simple: compost. All vegetables thrive on well-made compost, but tomatoes really dig it. For tomatoes, compost is an all-you-can-eat gourmet buffet. If you’re not feeding your tomatoes a rich, well-made compost, you deserve to harvest those red ping pong balls. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
Why do tomatoes love compost so much?
- Nutrients like nitrogen and carbon. Tomatoes are heavy feeders.
- Less watering. Compost helps retain moisture in the soil so you can water less. Watering as little as possible tends to concentrate sugar in the fruit and prevent splitting.
- Drainage. Tomatoes prefer clay soils, but clay can get very hard and rocky without a good soil amendment like compost.
What is well-made compost? It’s the stuff you make yourself, from ingredients like manure and kitchen scraps and dead leaves. It’s not that crumbly, mulchy stuff that so many people label compost.
Despite the ads for composters, it’s not anything you can make in a couple of weeks. (You can make mulch in a couple of weeks, but genuine compost takes longer.)
There is an art and a science to making good compost, and Rod Taylor’s e-book, The World’s Best Compost, is one of the best explanations I’ve seen on the topic. Taylor has spent 25 years making compost and teaching other people how to make it. His passion for the topic comes through clearly. While compost may not seem like a very “sexy” topic, any gardener worth his or her salt knows how important compost is.
The compost that Taylor makes is true humus, a colloid. In other words, it’s a suspension of solids and liquids that holds together in a moist but not wet, rubbery ball.
Taylor teaches you, step by step, how to make the perfect compost pile—one that cooks nicely, but that you never have to turn.
To be sure, building a proper compost pile does take some work initially. You don’t just throw everything together. But once it’s built, you never have to turn it. With one day’s work, you can create a year’s worth of compost.
Don’t have the space for a big pile, or your community doesn’t allow open compost piles? No problem. Taylor includes step-by-step videos on the technique of “green manuring,” or growing crops that you till back into the soil to create compost on the spot.
Feed your tomatoes real compost and you’ll understand just how good a fresh-from-the-garden tomato can be. Juicy eating tomatoes with that perfect balance of acidity and sweetness. Paste tomatoes that cook down into the richest, thickest, best-tasting fresh tomato sauce you’ll get outside Italy.
Of course, other vegetables (and flowers) love good compost as well. When you feed them properly, you can grow vegetables that taste divine: corn that bursts with natural sugary flavor, melt-in-your-mouth fingerling potatoes, buttery-textured, sweet lettuce.
