4 LIES You Believe About Determinate Tomatoes: Everything You Know Is WRONG

what's going on gardeners it is saturday august 6th and it is a scorcher of a summer day here on the southeastern coast of north carolina today's video is going to be all about tomatoes determinate tomatoes and i'm going to share with you four lies that you've been told about the terminate tomatoes that just aren't true and why you should be growing more of them in your garden if you're new to the channel please consider subscribing and hitting the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our amazon storefront and spreadshop in the video description for a list of the gardening products i use and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated last year i made a video all about growing determinate tomatoes and i titled it five reasons why determinate tomatoes are better than indeterminate tomatoes and boy oh boy let me tell you i could have made a video all about politics and there would have been less controversy in the comments section and i read through a lot of those comments and i learned something the majority of people that do not grow determinate tomatoes and don't want to grow determinate tomatoes appear to have never have grown them before and the reasons why are because of things that they've heard that make them sound very unattractive and this video is to dispel a lot of those myths because the myth that people are repeating just aren't true and this video is going to prove that the first lie that you've been told is the one that we have to address right out of the gate and that is that determinate tomatoes don't taste as good as indeterminate tomatoes and i'm here to tell you that that just isn't true indeterminate tomatoes just have a longer history of being grown so the really good tasting varieties are simply better known and easier to find if you go on any seed website and you search through all the different varieties of tomatoes you're going to find that 80 to 90 percent of the seeds that they sell are of indeterminate varieties indeterminate varieties are far more common and available than determinate varieties and because of that there are simply a lot more great tasting indeterminate varieties out there because they outnumber determinants so much however that being said there are far more mediocre or downright poor indeterminate varieties out there as well every single year i take you on a tomato tour of my garden and i've grown over a hundred different varieties of indeterminate since i moved down here in north carolina and in my tomato tours you see a lot of varieties never get repeated and that's for a good reason they just don't cut it here they don't perform well they're super disease susceptible they don't taste very good so there are a lot of really mediocre indeterminate varieties out there too so what you have to do is you have to treat determinate varieties just like you would an indeterminate it is up to you as the gardener to try many different varieties and see what does well in your climate and what you think tastes good you have to put in the legwork for the determinants just like you would the indeterminates now i'm here to give you a few varieties that i have had great success with that i think taste fantastic variety number one is sillettes and select is a very early season variety developed in the pacific northwest and grows very well in cool temperatures and sets very early silence is one of the best tasting tomatoes i have ever had bar none it is up there with any of your heirloom indeterminants that are fabled and go down as really great tasting varieties you will want to grow it very early in the year because it does not handle heat well but it is absolutely delicious and super productive a second variety is marglobe marglobe is a very well-known heirloom determinate variety if you like growing heirlooms try the mar globe determinant it is again early it's a medium-sized slicer and it has very good flavor then my favorite two hybrids are bella rosa and celebrity these are two of the most disease resistant split resistant perfect looking tomatoes you will ever grow if you love growing better boys or big beef boy you really want to grow a celebrity and you want to grow bella rosa because the fruits are huge the plants are virtually impervious to disease the yields are incredible and they are fantastic delicious tomatoes so i really recommend you look into those four to start the second lie that i want to dispel in this video is that indeterminates produce a whole lot longer throughout the season than the determinate varieties there is a long-standing myth that says once you plant an indeterminate tomato they will produce all the way until frost and a determinate tomato will not it will grow to a predetermined height and then it will ripen all the fruits and the plant will die and that's not really true that is true in the classic sense when everything happens perfectly in the ideal conditions however very few of us live in the ideal conditions let me explain i grew up my entire life living in new jersey and pennsylvania which is one of the easiest places in the entire country to grow tomatoes from basically southern new england to the mid-atlantic corridor that region very closely during the summer mimics the tomatoes natural habitat from the subtropical highlands you get the average days that are about 85 degrees and average nights that are about 65 degrees with moderate levels of humidity and tomatoes tend to really just grow themselves there so if you live in that region it's not very difficult to grow tomatoes and many of your plants will survive deep into september and october if you start them in april or may the problem is if you live outside of that region or you're having a bad year in that region and it's just really hot or really cool you're not going to have that level of success and i learned that the hard way when i moved down here to the southeast where it is way too hot and humid in the middle of the summer for the tomatoes to live out their natural lifespan so if you live here down in the south if you live out in the midwest where you can see 30 degree temperature fluctuations in a week if you live in the southwest where it's way too hot if you live in the upper northwest where it's way too cool the tomatoes just don't grow like they're supposed to and your indeterminate tomatoes aren't going to last throughout the year in most cases let me show you back on may 31st i took you on a complete tomato tour of all 33 varieties of tomatoes i was growing in my garden and these exact beds right here were populated with beautiful gorgeous indeterminate tomato plants they have all since been killed except for this one lone sun sugar plant here that is producing well now but probably will be on its way out soon all the rest have been killed by various diseases like this sun gold right here that will have to be ripped out so the point that i'm trying to make is that indeterminants only produce until frost in ideal conditions if you have a relatively long growing season and you see rain and you see humidity chances are by mid-summer this is what your plants will look like and they will have to be ripped out so unless you're under idyllic conditions if you're growing indeterminate tomato plants because you think you're going to get a really long growing season well that's only in theory not necessarily in practice this is what your tomato plants may look like in much of the country come mid-summer now here we are under my retractable hoop house and this is where all of my determinate varieties were planted and believe it or not these determinate varieties were planted at the same time as all of my indeterminate varieties all of my indeterminate varieties except for that one sun sugar are dead whereas all of my determinate varieties for the most part are still alive and producing most of the leaves are lush and relatively disease-free they are still forming new fruits they are still flowering all over the place and a handful of plants are even still ripening red tomatoes so these are the only plants right here that i'm still harvesting fresh tomatoes off of so how is this possible how is it possible that all of my indeterminate tomatoes which are supposed to grow all season long and last until frost are all dead except for one whereas almost all of my determinate varieties which are supposed to have quit on me long ago and stopped producing and died back are still producing fruit and that's because well these are broad sweeping generalizations that we hear on the internet that aren't actually true and don't pan out in real life in real life the determinate tomatoes while they do grow to a predetermined height and they do tend to set most of their crop all at once they will still content continue to grow throughout the season while your indeterminate varieties are largely succumbing to disease and for whatever reason the determinant varieties just tend to be a lot less disease prone than the indeterminate varieties if you live in a perfect climate where disease really isn't an issue this may not happen to you but if you have rain and you have humidity and disease and pests are a problem i have found the determinate varieties not only are far less maintenance but they produce more food for a longer period of time in most cases check out all of these determinate tomatoes still in here they are still doing great there is really no disease on these leaves they're still flowering pretty aggressively and while some are beating up and dying back they are the only thing in my garden still alive and producing tomatoes the third lie that we must dispel about determinate tomatoes is this myth that persists that determinate tomatoes ripen their fruit all at once i don't know how this myth got started but it couldn't be further from the truth here are the facts the root system of a tomato plant can only provide so much energy to the overall plant and that energy has to be split between vegetative growth more root growth flowering fruiting and ripening of the fruits when you are growing indeterminate varieties they are a vine that will grow as long as they are healthy so there is always a substantial amount of energy being put into the vining process of the plant i would argue that indeterminate tomatoes put more energy into growing new vines and suckers and leaves than they do the actual fruits and ripening of the fruits themselves so indeterminate tomatoes are simply inefficient at ripening fruits because they put so much of their energy into other life processes determinate tomatoes are not like that because they generally grow to a predetermined height while they will still continue to grow for a long period of time they put an overall small amount of energy into growing new leaves and suckers once they tend to reach their maximum mature height so all of the rest of the energy can go into ripening those fruits so it's not that your determinant tomatoes ripen their fruit all at once they are just more efficient at doing so determinate tomatoes are just better at pumping out tomatoes than indeterminate varieties are however the initial heavy crop that they set will not ripen for you all at once they tend to ripen over a period of about three to six weeks so it will still stagger the harvest it just doesn't take months and months like an indeterminate variety will and as you can see my determinate plants are still putting on new fruit this is a bella rosa plant that has new fruits forming right here proving that they do not ripen all at once same thing with my margarita plum tomatoes they are still putting on new fruits and they are still ripening their fruits they have been doing this over a period of months so they do not ripen all at once that is a myth that is not true it's just that determinate tomatoes are more efficient at ripening the fruits than indeterminates once they set those fruits and the fourth lie that you've been told about growing determinate tomatoes is that you have to prune off the suckers this is one of the biggest mistakes that gardeners make when they grow determinate tomatoes and i think that's why some people that have tried growing them didn't have success they tried to prune them like they prune indeterminate tomatoes with indeterminate tomatoes they will trellis up a steak or a string or some type of support so you generally want to remove suckers with determinate tomatoes you don't want to prune them at all they grow as a bush so if you remove the suckers you will remove the plant's ability to fruit i have done literally nothing to any of the tomatoes under here except for my initial florida weave that i did with these strings right here so i'll make sure to link to a video above so you know what florida weave is but after that initial support and staking i haven't done anything my indeterminate tomatoes on the other hand you have to put a couple hours a week when you grow dozens of plants like i do to prune off suckers to make sure that they're staked up right or else they'll fall over they are a lot of work these have been completely neglected so tell me how my completely neglected determinate tomatoes that i've done nothing with are still growing are still flowering are still fruiting when all of my indeterminate tomatoes that i put all that effort into are all dead except for one and let me tell you that one will probably die pretty soon too and it's just because a lot of these myths aren't true that's why you owe it to yourself as a gardener to try all of these different things and not to believe in these preconceived notions because these are so much less work to grow and they tend to be so much more productive so not only are determinate tomatoes easier to grow far less maintenance they tend to be more disease resistant and they're much more efficient at ripening their crop they also have another big advantage over indeterminate tomatoes and that is they require a far smaller footprint if you're into square foot gardening where i like to give an indeterminate tomato a two foot by two foot square to grow in which is four square feet you can get away with about an 18 inch by 18 inch square which is only 2.25 square feet they are almost twice as space efficient as an indeterminate because they are smaller plants so you can plant a lot more of them they also are great at being succession planted because they have a smaller footprint i recommend taking your determinate tomatoes and planting them out in waves so start transplants that are about six weeks behind your initial crop that you put out so you can have another determinate tomato bed because your determinate tomato bed while it will produce for a long period of time it will start to get tired after it ripens its main crop so when you stretch out your harvest like that new succession plant you can have a much more productive growing season by timing out your crops so you get larger harvests scattered throughout different periods of the calendar year now look i know i'm a realist here i know many of you feel that the only way to grow a tomato is to grow a vine up a long steak because that's the way your father did it or that's the way your grandfather did it and i'm not going to be able to change your mind and that's okay i'm not trying to change everybody's mind here i'm just trying to dispel a few myths and for the people out there that are avoiding determinate tomatoes because they've heard these stories about them that make them sound unattractive i want you to understand that they're not true and hopefully you will try to put some of these determinate varieties into your garden to extend your growing season make your harvest larger and make things a lot easier on you because i think you'll find that once you find determinate varieties that you enjoy the taste of you're going to realize how much easier they are to grow i'm not telling you not to grow indeterminate tomatoes not at all the majority of the tomatoes that i still grow are indeterminate because i really like growing them they're fun to grow and there is more selection what i'm telling you to do is to grow both keep an open mind search through both indeterminate and determinate varieties find out what you enjoy and what grows best in your climate because that is how you will minimize work and maximize your harvest so everybody i sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and ring that notification bell so you're notified when we release more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that i use for real in my garden they are all linked down below on my amazon storefront in the video description so check that out to see what i use in real life and while you're there check out my spreadshop link in the video description for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video every morning dale and i do our morning perimeter check we make sure that there are no invaders right dale we had a bunny in the yard the other day we had a big old rat in the yard the other day that we found underneath my wood pile so dale has been on high alert doing his patrols every morning and every day before bed it pays to have a dale the ultimate security hey dale say hi

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 112,802

Keywords: determinate tomatoes, growing tomatoes, how to grow tomatoes, tomato, tomatoes, tomato plants, indeterminate tomatoes, determinate tomato, grow tomatoes, tomato tips, growing determinate tomatoes, tomato garden, tomato diseases, garden, gardening, fruit tree, fruit trees, gardening tips, garden tips, vegetable garden, organic gardening, raised bed, gardening tips and tricks, garden hacks, food forest, edible landscaping, grow, growing, organic, how to, diy, millennial gardener

Id: 6QCIXkuVBCk

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 08 2022