Growing a Greener World Episode 1201 - Epic Tomatoes with Craig LeHoullier

i'm joe lample when i created growing a greener world i had one goal to tell stories of everyday people innovators entrepreneurs forward thinking leaders who are all in ways both big and small dedicated to organic gardening and farming lightening our footprint conserving vital resources protecting natural habitats making a tangible difference for us all they're real they're passionate they're all around us they're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same [Music] growing a greener world it's more than a movement it's our mission [Music] [Music] depending on your age you may remember a song from the 70s that said love will keep us together but for many it's the tomato that brings us together and for tomato lovers near raleigh north carolina there's no better place to get together in late summer than bree arthur's house you know brie is the design and foodscaping correspondent for us here at growing the greener world but you may not know her two other claims to fame one she throws an incredible garden party and two she's one of the premier tomato growers in the u.s those two things culminate each august with a massive tomato tasting party and fundraiser then there's craig lahoulier also a raleigh resident and one of the country's leading authorities on heirloom tomatoes he's been growing breeding and studying tomatoes for over 30 years and is the author of the best seller epic tomatoes craig and bree put countless hours into their gardens each year but for one day it's time to stop and toast another epic tomato growing season right tomatoes bring us together they bring all these people together it's amazing as i was saying to someone before if you were to have a parsnip party or a you know our party you may get five or ten really fanatical people about it but you throw a tomato party and you know everybody loves the gateway to gardening right and this is our responsibility as stewards of of the gardening industry to encourage everyone these fruits or vegetables have chosen us that's right to be part of their heritage and we're pretty happy to play that part i think also well all that hard work and planning all becomes worthwhile when you see and hear these happy people enjoying this experience it's a part craig la julia was seemingly born to play from his youngest days in his grandfather's garden then with his dad and ultimately with his wife susan through the process craig realizes his obsession with gardening and growing especially heirloom tomatoes was more about the story behind the plants their uniqueness historical relevance varietal characteristics and of course flavor through the years craig has come to be known as the north carolina tomato man but the truth is he's become known and loved around the world he's even the one who named the beloved and famous heirloom favorite cherokee purple in 1990 and as a scientist craig doesn't miss a single detail about what makes heirloom tomatoes so special the nuances makes them very much like wine or dark chocolate or other maybe foodie pursuits where you can taste real differences you've got the color you can use in different ways when you bite into it does your mouth just jump and get all excited and all your taste buds are tantalized there's a textural component is it creamy is it soft is it crunchy does it have give does it just melt in your mouth all tomatoes have quite a bit of acidity but they vary all over the map in all respects whether it's flavor intensity but mostly whether it's sugar and that's a major component of tomatoes and in fact that really tart tomato that you may have loved as a child just happened to have very very little sugar it just didn't produce much and it's the tomatoes jeans that dictated that whereas if you taste a german johnson if you taste a brandy wine there's just as much acidity but there is so much sugar in there sometimes it levels out and you say wow that tomato everything is in perfect balance sometimes the sugar is so high that it's like eating a piece of fruit you'll say wow that tomato tastes like a peach and then what happens is you learn this and you learn the different personalities of tomatoes acidity sweetness you start using them in different ways sweet tomatoes are my cheeseburger tomato the tart tomatoes are my salad tomato because when that sugar's low and the acidity pops you can use them in so many different ways that let the tomato shine through [Music] one other thing you need to know about craig besides the fact that he loves his tomatoes he grows a ton of them each year no really 2 000 pounds plus of tomatoes and if that weren't shocking enough what if i told you he grows them all in his driveway literally his driveway [Music] this will become my garden we get about six hours of direct sun we get the heat of the concrete the degree days are cranking at the end of the year with about 250 plants split between tomatoes eggplants and peppers will harvest about a ton of produce and it will be wonderful there are a lot of plants and what will happen the plan is many of these will end up in people's gardens many will be donated but essentially this is how i start things off each year i embark on experiments and projects and what i plant is a combination of what we love to eat what we love to save seed from new things that people have sent me they want to explore and creating new things for gardeners so talk about an adventure and it's just so gratifying to be able to take control of the quality and the variety of the food we eat many people that come to gardening do so because of a special family member or friend for craig a childhood introduction to gardening and growing tomatoes was just the beginning of a vocation he seemed destined for in fact in craig's words he believes that heirloom tomatoes chose him to help participate in their continued relevance [Music] [Music] i was very fortunate to have a grandfather walter on my mother's side and maybe every grandparent has a kid they particularly like and for some reason i was walter's favorite he had a great big wonderful garden at the back of this house and not many people i think in the family even knew about it but on nice days he would take me back there and walk me through and when you're a little kid three four years old you're up close and personal with water spigots and you can be close to the ground and smell the strawberries and you can you can come face to face with scary spiders but these things make an impression on you so about 15 to 20 years ago my wife and i first moved in and we started embarking on this gardening and growing our food the first thing that we want to do is have a garden and we had these extra seedlings we'd bring them to the farmers market and we'd set up and they'd be in dixie cups and the vendors would look at us walking with our dixie cups and be a little bit amused they're quite professional of course and so we were sitting there one beautiful saturday perfect weather just like this morning this elderly man just kind of hobbled up with this cane and he's just looking through our plants and reading and he had a thick southern accent he goes wenzel wenzel that's a variety that i thought was extinct i haven't seen that tomato since my granddad grew it and i was working on the farm with him and i loved my granddad and to be able to taste a winslow again would just be wonderful so i said well sir i'd like you to take these plants take them home and grow them so we didn't think much of that until the next year the man came back and he asked for wenzel's and he insisted on paying for them and he said they were incredible they reconnected me with memories of my granddad and i'm just so thankful for you and he went away and i turned to sue and i said that's why we do what we do it it's all very clear to me now and i'm not really sure where this is leading us all i know is a good place and we're just going to follow the road forward and see where it takes us where it's taken craig every year is back to his driveway and basement starting in mid-february that's where the annual ritual he loves so much begins with the planting of his current season's heirloom tomato seeds but like with everything craig does he's got a unique system for this too when i plant my seed i don't plant one seed per cell or two seeds per cell i'll plant 20 or 30 or 50 seeds per cell in a little square cell one inch one and a half inch square now where that gets me is in a footprint of one by two feet i can produce up to two thousand seedlings then what so when i plant them i found that by barely covering the seed placing them on a constant temperature very simple heat mat no temperature control providing some bottom warmth and what i found is quite an important step as i loosely drape just a sheet of plastic now a dome would work fine it's just i didn't have any domes and what i do each day is flip that because overnight condensation will form water will beads of water and if i flip it the sun will then shine dry the water off and i'm not at a risk for damping off disease and once the majority of the seeds germinate they're actually pushing that light saran wrap up and it's fine i'll remove it then once i would say 40 out of my 50 seeds cells germinate then they sit in front of the window they will exhibit phototropism they will go to the light they'll bend so each day i flip those 180 degrees so now we've got these seedlings and they're starting to bend to the light and i don't want them to get leggy so i will do something else that's somewhat unusual if we have a nice calm sunny day where it's in the mid 40s maybe mid 50s i may bring them out into filtered sun just for an hour and then they'll go under lights and i will lower those lights until the fluorescent tubes are maybe within an inch of the surface of the growing tip and by not having the dome over them which you don't need anymore because they've germinated you can get right down onto it and get really close but then it takes about it's that month from the seeding so you're about the month phase your plants maybe have true leaves which are not the little round cotyledon leaves but the toothy leaves are starting to come out then you're ready to go and then i like to crank up the music maybe open a beer and have a transplant party in my garage and it's very therapeutic and then i will sit them on my garage floor water them well because they're separated from their friends now they're maybe there were 50 of them all huddled together taking up water now they're in this big three and a half inch pot wow i got to figure this out i got to start taking up water again water them well sit them in the shade or the garage for a couple of days because what you don't want to do is those baby seedlings expose them to a stress condition bright midday sun those roots haven't figured out how to really rapidly take up water yet once they're kind of settled in they come out here they get sun all day it makes very tough seedlings over the years craig has been working to tweak his soil mix to come up with the perfect recipe and he's found it and now he uses it year after year and it's incredibly simple it's two part soilless mix to one part composted cow manure in a garden center it's one full bag of soilless mix to half a bag of composted manure you mix it together and it's that simple then you add it to your growing environment now in a normal garden you would typically mix that into your native soil but craig's garden is anything but normal it's his driveway and he uses these growing bags they're five gallon plastic bags that he buys online in bulk they're pretty inexpensive about 75 cents a piece he fills the bag with a soilless mix up to about two inches from the top and then he makes room for the plant in the middle tucks the plant in back fills the soil and that's all you need the soil drains really well there's holes already cut into the bottom of the bag it sits flat on the surface and he's got about 200 of these in his driveway but if you're a space challenge as well whether it's a deck or a driveway or a balcony this could work perfectly for you too and if you want more tips on growing the perfect tomato we have that on our website under the show notes for this episode the website address it's the same as our show name it's growingthegreenerworld.com craig has one more clever trick topping off his tomato plants with a free resource that most of us generate plenty of in the spring and summer but i'm going to come over here and get some untreated grass clippings okay and i love to use these as mulch because they slowly break down and feed the soil there's no there's no chemicals of any sort in them but what they do is they provide warmth and they also prevent any of the planting medium from affecting the bottom foliage and even though you can barely see the plant in there with the black bag absorbing the heat of the sun with the moisture being retained by that layer of mulch and i will replace that each time i mow the lawn this plant is going to take off like a rocket ship wow once craig has the plant safely tucked into the grow bags he makes sure to keep them watered at least once every day sometimes more the heat on a driveway especially in the carolinas in the summer can be brutal on plants craig also gives his plants a weak dilution of liquid fertilizer every week the frequency is because with so much watering the nutrients quickly leach out and need to be replaced a diluted formulation ensures his plants aren't overfed in the process and that routine leads to rapidly growing and very healthy productive plants just seven weeks later we're back for our mid-season visit and looking at a driveway full of tall thriving plants over 200 in fact all growing in about three gallons of soil yet still projected to yield over a ton of fruit before the season is over while that's a lot of tomatoes no matter how you slice it craig's goal is not to maximize his yield rather it's to produce several good tomato specimens from each plant that can be further studied and the seeds saved for future generations so keeping plants to a productive but manageable size is extra important to craig for me success is a few clusters of ripe food so i'm limiting the plants by pruning away all but two or three suckers early on to give me no more than three sometimes for growing okay so back to the suckers for a second sure those are kind of the thugs that's what really gives us more volume in this case than we really want so if we're trying to control that size out in up one of the things we want to do is take the suckers out right neither bad nor good they just they're there they provide shade for the fruits it doesn't get sun scale but every time that a stem meets leave you're going to shoot a sucker or a flower stem what you want to do is not remove the flower stems of course but you want to limit the number of suckers this plant has three growing stems it's all it needs so this stem for example i'm going to just snap off that sucker and that plant is now controlled but when you get to the height as indeterminate tomatoes are famous for doing they just keep going yes and we don't want that right we have a trick for controlling the height i do and it really is just looking at the last flower cluster that you think will ripen look keeping the two leaves hands above and then just making a cut right above if you're at three feet that stem will get no taller than three feet you remove any suckers that form below but that gives you a way of controlling the height and keeping everything in bounds and leaving the leaves above is just really to help shade off that's exactly right as you walk around craig's driveway garden you can't help but notice some of his unorthodox techniques at work here's one of my favorites and it's a trick i can't wait to use back at the garden farm some of those plants that started in tiny containers are now growing out of bales of straw there are several benefits from growing in straw bales to start any time you would normally plant something in a traditional way is the perfect time to plant in a straw bale and anywhere you can put a straw bill is a place you can grow your plants so no digging or prepping into impossible soil even a driveway or balcony will work if it can support the weight plants are also less susceptible to soil borne diseases in straw bills because there isn't any soil and of course simply based on their size and shape you have an instant raised bed garden so no need to bend over as much as you would if planting directly into the ground and at the end of the season you have plenty of organic material to add to your compost pile or spread as mulch around other parts of your garden [Music] one of the primary ways tomatoes have always been classified is by their growth habit and how and when they produce fruit the two classic types are determinate and indeterminate [Music] so typical indeterminate very tall growing suckers at each junction between a leaf and the main stem and it will set fruit about every 6 to 12 inches up the stem so your yield over the course of a season is going to be gradual but consistent determinant which is a type that didn't even exist until the 1920s has a very unusual structure and anyone who has purchased or grown roma will know what a determinant does the plant wants to be a ball of tomatoes it grows to a certain height and then it starts blossoming on the leaf stem it will set a boatload of tomatoes they'll ripen very quickly together and then the plant will go down so rome is a perfect example because you want a lot of sauce you want to harvest a lot of aromas then you make your sauce and then the plant's done and now there's a third type of tomato to work into the mix it's perhaps the best of all worlds especially for people wanting the smaller size but with the continuous fruit set and flavor options of the larger indeterminate tomatoes these are not determinate right these are truly dwarfs and this is new to a lot of people but i think it's the future of gardening tell me about these they're wonderfully attractive varieties you can see that the foliage has a bluish cast to them the it's crinkly it's vigorous the stems are nice and straight a short cage a short steak is perfect for them so what you've got is a tomato that a patio gardener a driveway gardener like me can put in a pot can put in a straw bale if you compare them to the traditional indeterminate types which are about four feet tall the dwarfs that were planted on the very same date are two feet tall and they will maintain that growth differential throughout the season wow so you get plants that can produce big colorful delicious tomatoes on plants that don't need to be pruned at all easy to maintain i'll be able to pick these eye level this is as tall as they'll get and we've been able to recreate the colors and the flavors and the varieties of heirlooms in these varieties they're open pollinated meaning you save seed they'll come exactly the same so in 50 or 100 years we're hoping many of these will become heirlooms themselves and really help bring gardening to more and more people seven weeks later and we're back for our third and final visit of the tomato growing season it's mid-august and most of the plants have been harvested for most tomato growers around here the season is over except for the celebration it's the perfect time to gather with friends and family to share the highs lows and challenges of another year nothing says summer better than the taste of homegrown tomatoes and bree's party is the perfect place to celebrate the eagerly anticipated harvest nine months of planning and the tomato tasting has finally arrived and we have a great show of friends and family that are here celebrating the ultimate taste of summer this right here is a cherokee purple which of course i i get to name this the jd green chose me to send this to and there's lots of them over there and they're absolutely delicious so it's a it's an honor to see my namesake tomato here but really you could taste 15 20 30 different types of tomatoes get all kinds of different impressions but you need to mix in people you need to mix in great food and with tomatoes you can actually have a party but the end of the season celebration of what works so deliciously means it's also time to look back at what maybe didn't go quite as well or could be improved for next season all part of the constant evaluation and re-evaluation of every garden even ones that happen in plastic bags in the driveway and as always at this time of the year i'm quite ready for things to wind down so i can take some time in cooler weather and really give a hard think about what worked well and what i need to do differently because that's really important part of a gardener's planning is not only doing it up front but then taking a good time to sit down at the end of it and just evaluate so you can do it even better next year so i think it's an important important for the gardener at the end of the year where it's easy to feel you're depressed you're tired you've done a lot of sweating you're seeing disease in your plants you're missing the tomatoes that you were harvesting a week earlier but then you look at the seed that you've saved and the pictures you've taken and the memories you've had and the results when i see my box of saved seed that really is the confirmation that i've had a successful season because i can now carry all of those varieties on share them with other gardeners and feel like i can be the living link to make sure these varieties stay forever [Music] the tomato easy to grow yet anything but simple when you look at how many people are so passionate about this perfect little fruit and if you're like the craigs of the world literally growing a ton of them in your driveway and documenting every detail about those organic heirlooms to pass them on for future generations or you're one of those people that just likes to have a few beef steaks on hand for that perfect blt there's a lot more to know than just growing a few tomatoes like bree says tomatoes are the gateway to gardening and i think she might just be right in fact i think this little guy right here just might be the key to growing a greener world i'm joe lampl thanks for joining us everybody and we'll see you back here next time for more growing a greener world [Music] [Music] continue the garden learning from growing a greener world joe lampl's online gardening academy offers classes designed to teach gardeners of all levels from the fundamentals to master skills you can take each class on your own schedule from anywhere plus opportunities to ask joe questions about your specific garden in real time courses are available online to enroll go to growinga greenerworld.com forward slash learn [Music]

Channel: Growing a Greener World

Views: 45,490

Keywords: tomatoes, growing tomatoes, epic tomatoes, growing epics tomatoes, tomato gardening, homegrown tomatoes, how to grow tomatoes, gardening television, gardening shows, gardening tv, craig LeHoullier, Joe Lamp'l

Id: 3IxMQdDhapw

Length: 25min 27sec (1527 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021