MICRO FARMING HOW-TO — SEEDS/ANIMAL SOURCES: The urban, backyard and small scale farming of heirloom tomatoes continues to be profitable for many involved in micro eco-farming. Different varieties grow best in different regions, making the crop of heirloom tomatoes in your tomato garden unique. And if desired, the value-added possibilities with crops from a tomato garden are almost endless and very adaptable to food trends.
Below are some great heirloom tomato varieties available in 2010 and a favorite resource for learning the deeper specifics on growing very large amounts of organic heirloom tomatoes in a small market tomato garden. (About 1.3 billion tons of tomatoes are imported to the USA just from Mexico alone. Those grown in our country are trucked for thousands of miles to neighborhoods, cities and rural areas which could easily be nurturing their own market tomato gardens and selling them locally.)
One of our favorite producers of heirloom seeds is Baker Creek Seed Company out of Missouri, with a recent new store in California. They have both an online catalogue and a beautiful print catalogue. Here are some new heirloom tomatoes from them: Monomakh’s Hat from Siberia — described as honey-sweet and so delicious you almost can’t stop eating them. Beduin – described as meaty and rich. And Gypsy, a purple tomato with one of the best colors of all those in this color category. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Peruse Baker Creek’s and other heirloom seed catalogs and start enticing your customers with late winter farm newsletters or blogs on new tomato varieties you’ll be trying for the upcoming season.
The favorite book on growing literally hundreds of pounds of tomatoes organically from one plant is How to Grow World Record Tomatoes. (This link leads to our Amazon affiliate for it. Don’t forget to shop locally, though, and check your library). One of our editors bought this book for her dad who was an avid tomato grower. I think the title can be deceptive. “World Record” to many means individual tomatoes grow very big, maybe winning blue ribbons. By “World Record” in this case, the author of the book means amounts: sometimes more than 300 pounds of tomatoes from one plant, whereas commercial tomato plants grow only about 8 pounds. The author has a slight Christian slant to his writing which even those who aren’t Christian don’t seem to find offensive, though some might a little. His growing region is a relatively hot area, though, so more northern small scale farming tomato garden efforts may get less than his record of about 340 pounds per plant, but even 200 as compared to 8 is a huge advantage.
Also see our full length article overviewing heirloom tomatoes in our “Crop Library” on the first home page of the Micro Eco-Farming Center, and we always suggest that micro eco-farmers go even deeper with how they farm the soil than what even some organic book methods suggest. Use their above ground spacing and pruning ideas, but add the goal of creating deep, live, humus-rich soil with the full spectrum of trace minerals from the sea or from very deep rooted cover crops, and see just how much more productive you can be. Our article at the Center on nurturing the soil is a good starter for small scale farming of any crop, including a first market tomato garden: – www.MicroEcoFarming.com