 and national recognition for a number of community gardening projects. She is designed and coordinated including a therapeutic gardening program for young women working to overcome eating disorders and food growing projects addressing food insecurity and engaging marginalized community members. For this year she is coordinating a new native plant and butterfly garden on the waterfront in Ambleside. So I'm looking forward to hearing a bit more of that at a later date but today she's going to be talking about tomatoes. So Jane will speak and share her slides and then at the end she will answer questions so if you do have questions please just pop them into the Q&A at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Great okay so thank you Jane nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Yeah thanks for coming on such a beautiful day it really is a day for gardeners but I guess we can have a little break from that. Good afternoon everyone. Let's get going. So tomatoes have been grown as food crops since around the 1700 AD. They were grown by the Aztecs but they weren't introduced until the UK and Europe until the late 1500s. I'm sorry I have a croaky voice. Then for 200 years after this they were only really grown as an oddity. They were considered the devil's fruit principally because they were red and people thought that they turned man into werewolves if they ate them. Even when the people started to consume them in the 1700s many people still believed that they were poisonous because there was often lead in plates and the acid from the tomatoes caused the lead to leech out and this actually did poison people. Today they're very popular they're grown in 96% of all vegetable gardens and tomato breeders are re-establishing heirloom seed strains and crossing many of these to introduce tomatoes with a fascinating range of colors and flavors. Tomatoes grew in the wild and still grow in the wild in northern Peru and southern Ecuador. There are new genetic studies too that are suggesting that they may have co-evolved in Asia. There are 15 species of wild tomatoes and these are all huge sprawling plants with tiny fruit often just the size of a pea. So we don't commonly grow these in home gardeners because because of their size but if you want to grow them you can get seed from salt spring seeds. So we grew some in a school garden. I'm really sorry about my croaky voice. The plants we grew in the school garden grew five by five so we pulled all of them out about one and it plant produced tiny sort of pinky nail sized fruit that fell on the ground and then the skin cracked when they fell. So the project was lots of fun but you didn't get very many tomatoes to eat. When we dug the plant up at the end of the season it had about a five by five foot rule ball who's actually quite fascinating to see. So tomatoes have bigger in their genes and all their and really almost all tomatoes whether they're heirlooms or hybrids they need room for the roots to grow. If you're interested in growing a tomato that's close to its wild cousins but produces delicious small fruit you can try Matt's wild cherry. It's oh my goodness I'm sorry. Oh no. Whoops. I think you're pardon sorry. If you try Matt's wild cherry it's a delicious tomato. It's still a huge plant. Here is one that Julie Kaler grows and well basically we'd laugh all summer because it's I mean it's really it's as big as a Volkswagen. So tomato breeders if you look at this picture there's a picture of wild tomatoes up on the top left. Tomato breeders have moved from sort of wild tomatoes that had tiny fruit that weren't didn't grow in clusters to fruit like Matt's wild cherries. The cherries are bigger there's more and they're sort of in a cluster. And then we see fruit like sweet million sweet million pardon me. It's a very popular tomato. You get more than 20 tomatoes per truss. They ripen across time which is great. And they're disease resistant and delicious. So tomatoes for Vancouver. The best tomatoes in Vancouver ripen in under 65 days and are late light resistant. Our nurseries like Costco Walmart they often sell tomatoes plants that have been growing in California but California has a very long growing season with much more heat than we have. So varieties that will grow well there are very difficult for us to grow. We have cool springs and while our summers can be hot around the third week of August we get cooler nights. We see dew on the grass. And these conditions foster late blight. It's a fungus like disease that can stunt or kill tomatoes. So when we're growing tomatoes we want them ripe by the beginning of August. So they're ahead of late light and producing fruit hopefully and strong enough to stand up late light. Most of these tomatoes that ripen in 65 days or less are cherry tomatoes or tomatoes that are under three inches in diameter. I'm sorry I went ahead before I should. If you look at this diagram you can see May is still quite cool. If you plant tomatoes out in May you need to keep them protected. An easy way to do this is to plant a seedling, put a tomato cage over it and wrap it in plastic like a dry cleaner bag. Typically gardeners plant out June 1st. We plant transplants out. Then you have 30 growing days in June, 30 growing days in July. And so 50-day tomatoes are ripe at the end of July. But an 80-day tomato won't be ready until the end of August. So it's when late light strikes. Weather starts to cool down in September. September can be sunny but it doesn't have the heat of the summer sun. So we try and get all tomatoes ripe and starting to produce at the beginning of August. If you look at plant tags they'll tell you days to maturity. The days to maturity refers to the number of days it takes for a plant to produce ripe tomatoes after it's been planted in the ground as a seedling. The tomatoes tags will also often tell you height, planting distance and whether they're determinate or indeterminate. When you're choosing tomatoes to grow you can choose between determinate and indeterminate types. And 30 years ago this was used to be quite an important consideration because the indeterminates that were available then usually grew 8 or 10 feet tall and they suckered madly. So it took a lot of work to remove those suckers. But today there are many indeterminate tomatoes that are manageable size and that sucker only really minimally. So the reason you consider whether you're going to grow an indeterminate or determinate tomato today really has to do with tomato production. The indeterminates produce fruit over an extended period of time. So something like Sun Gold, that's one of my favorites, starts to produce tomatoes at the beginning of August and then produces them all the way through to early early November. Whereas determinate types that might ripen at the beginning of August you'll have concentrated fruit ripe fruit for about a three week period and your friends will love you if you give them homegrown tomatoes. It's important to choose plants with the size that suit your space. I included just these lists of determinants and indeterminates not to talk about them but just to show there are lots and lots of indeterminate and determinate types that are at a manageable height. It's helpful when you grow tomatoes to grow more than one kind. The weather is often variable here. I've lost a page of notes. I beg your pardon. Sorry, our weather is often quite variable these days. So if you're growing more than one kind, you may have one that does poorly but you'll always have one that does well. Here are some proven tomatoes for our area. For as long as I have grown tomatoes, early girl and celebrity have always been popular. They have about three inch sized fruit that are delicious. You commonly see these in nurseries too. When you see the pots of tomatoes that are out in front of fresh market in late May and early June, these are generally early girl celebrity and fantastic. They're usually around $5.99 and they have the fruit on them. I think they sell very well. Of note is going back to determinate and indeterminate. Fantastic and early girl or indeterminate. If you buy them at the beginning of June when they already have fruit on them, they'll continue to produce fruit into the fall. Celebrity though very popular is determinate and you'll get almost all your fruit then right in the next three weeks and then a minimal amount of fruit after that. Other red tomatoes that we love. Many of you have probably heard of Cherokee Purple. It's the best large heirloom tomato to grow here. You can almost really sort of tell by looking at it that it will be juicy and flavorful. Mountain Magic. I have a friend, Sandra, who's grown tomatoes for over 40 years. She's grown every kind and now she only grows Mountain Magic because she loves them. They're like a compari tomato like we can buy in the store, but they're better. Many of us love beef steak tomatoes, but traditional beef steak are too big and take too long to grow here. So a really good alternative is cosmonaut Boca. It's beef steak flavor, but it ripens here faster. Brandy Wine is probably the heirloom tomato that people like the most and it wins, consistently wins taste competition. But it again, it takes 90 days to ripen here. So it's too long, takes too long to ripen. So greeters took the pink brandy wine tomato and big dwarf tomato and crossed them to give them big brandy. It's sort of a pinky delicious tomato and it will ripen here. I always grow Roman tomatoes. They are they are straight tomato flavor, but I really like them. I grow Amish paste. Roman tomatoes, they're dense, less juicy, sort of straight tomato flavor. But they're really good for cooking because of that on flatbread. You don't get sort of soggy flatbread or pizza. People people really like them to sundry. I've never sundried them before, but apparently they sundry really easily well. Pardon me, they grow sundry really easily as well. Midnight Roma, I've mentioned this because as you start to grow tomatoes, sometimes it's exciting to look for new seeds and new seed sources. Midnight Roma is seeds are sold by row seven seeds. And I thought I'd mention them because they call himself a collaboration of chefs and breeders dedicated to deliciousness. And they probably only sell about 15 kinds of seeds for vegetables. And they're all quite wonderful and all quite different. We can order seeds from around the world without any customs or import impediments. So it's fun to look at other seed companies that offer other things. Most tomatoes need good soil consistent amounts of water. But some of us don't have good soil in our gardens. And, you know, we may travel or just not consistently water tomatoes. So two really great tomatoes that are fake flavorful and fabulous to grow are stupas and mountain magic. Mountain magic was the one my friend Sandra grows who grows nothing else. Stupas is a tomato that grows well and cool weather that we often have in the spring like this year, doesn't need soil that says fertile and it needs much less water. It's grown by many, many, many farm gate sales on the Fraser Valley and by CSA farms all over BC. Mountain magic is the most disease resistant tomato that we have was more than 11 years in coming to a market, bred the old fashioned way with strong plants that were resistant to blight. Seeds were safe from them were growing out again. It was introduced in 2008. It was a real breakthrough in for tomato growers because it has such strong blight resistance. Many gardeners in Vancouver only grow cherry tomatoes because they ripen in 42 to 65 days. gardeners delight is the most popular heirloom cherry tomatoes grown. I don't personally like it, I find it thick skinned, but lots of people love it. I grow sun gold. I think if I only grew two tomatoes, that would be one of them. It's a fabulous sweet tomato with what they say is tropical fruit flavor. It's an indeterminate so it grows, starts to produce fruit at the end of July, and will produce fruit all the way through to November. Lots of tomatoes in sort of September, October, November decline in flavor because we don't have the intensity of the sun that we do in the summer, but sun gold has sweetness in its genes and keeps on producing beautiful, three beautiful sweet fruit. Sweet million has been around for as long as I've grown tomatoes for certainly more than 40 years. You can see looking at this plant, they have huge trusses of tomatoes. And they're delicious. If you lack space, you just or perhaps you live in an apartment. There are tomatoes that you can grow quite easily. Tiny Tim is a little on the upper left side there. There's a little 12 inch plant. You can grow them in just a one gallon pot, produce about maybe five or six cups of fruit over the summer. Down below there's a picture. We grew tumbler trailing tomatoes and hanging baskets at the senior center. They can grow, you can grow them in a pot of sort of two or three gallons of soil or in a hanging basket. Big dwarf is one of the one I mentioned before that was bred with pink brandy one. It's a two inch plant, but it produces six inch tomatoes around 55 days. So we can grow it here to I'm sorry, I beg your pardon. Can we grow heirloom tomatoes here? Beginning gardeners don't. But heirloom tomatoes really have unmatched flavor. And so many of us really want to grow them. If we want to grow them, we still need not 80 or 90 days of hot summer sun to ripen them. So to grow them here, you need to find mature transplants and put them in the ground at the beginning of June. Most nursery cell these and those small market garden stores that are out on Greenway and Burnaby, sort of like Mandeville's Open Mandeville's Garden Center. Wing Wong's is out there, and they sell dozens of different types of heirloom tomatoes that you can get at the beginning of June. Often they already have their fruit then. So you get a three or four month old transplant to put in the garden. So you can set them out in June. It's helpful to grow them in hot areas of your garden against a wall say that holds and reflects heat or on concrete that holds heat. The key to key to growing them though really is to get them ripe by August so that they have there's enough heat to develop full flavor. I've grown brandy one and black cam and they're really delicious when they ripen in August. But if they ripen in September, the flavor and the texture of the tomatoes really declines. These colorful stripy tomatoes are very popular these days. The breeders who brought them to market have red old heirlooms, often with wild tomatoes to get faster ripening tomatoes with staggering flavor. The tomato that started it all was green zebra. It was bred by Tom Wagner in Washington in the mid eighties. And it's as you can see, it's a yellow tomato with green stripes. Inside it has green flesh, but it's quite extraordinary because it has what's described as sweet lemon lime flavor. It was popularized by not surprisingly a California restaurant and chef noted chef Alice Walker served it at shape and ease in Berkeley. And this really started a sort of boutique tomato breeding craze. This year, the two tomatoes that were tomato seeds sold out instantly for Berkeley tie dye and pink or these are more these stripy tomatoes that are juicy and flavorful. The breeders of these new tomatoes are also breeding strong plants that need less water and fewer nutrients. So you get quite wonderful plants that are easy to grow. Black tomatoes are very famous. Many of you have probably heard of indigo rose. It's described as having superb smoky flavors. We've always had black and purple tomatoes. Many of them came from the Crimean region. But they were very large tomatoes, as you can see in this picture. And they take a long time to mature. But they are very flavorful, juicy and generally very high yielding tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes we grow here were bred in Oregon and Washington because the climate is similar to ours and Jim Myers is a breeder in Oregon. And he took some of these two of these old Russian heirlooms and took two wild tomatoes from the Andes and crossed them to get indigo rose. It's a very popular tomato and it grows very well here. It is so tomatoes in the past may have been described as rank and stinking, not fit for hogs. But today we see the adjectives that really were just used for to describe one before but rich, smooth and savory with earthy notes, rich, highly aromatic, burgundy wine. The black beauty tomato that's shown here on the left is considered the most flavorable black, purpley black tomato. And people who are into tomato into tomatoes are really into tomatoes. And there are taste testing competitions and national taste test competitions and tomato expos and tomato weeks. But the black beauty tomato, the tomato expo in Portland two years ago. Apparently, when the judges taste them, one of them stood up and shouted this is the best tomato I've ever eaten. And it's apparently wonderful. It's hard to believe that the flavors of these tomatoes are distinctly different if you grow an only grocery or only grocery store tomatoes. But when one of my friend daughters, one of our daughters friends was over here, I gave him some whole tomatoes. And he was absolutely speechless. And his eyes went wide. And he just sort of muttered pineapple. These tomatoes do have distinctly different tastes. And they are certainly fun to grow. We can grow transplants from the nursery. Or we can expand the types of tomatoes we grow by ordering seeds online. Salt spring seeds sells 80% of the tomatoes that I've mentioned in the talks. They're a beautiful, lovely small farm. They grow all the seed they set sell, or they buy it from other local small farms, like two wings farms. When you buy seeds from these local growers, the tomatoes you get will or any vegetables you get will are better suited to our gardens. They've been grown in the same gardening conditions and plants adapt the environments they're in. So if you can buy locally grown seeds, it's always better. Full circle seeds in soup. This is not conventional agriculture. They don't overspray everything with herbicides to start to kill all the weeds, the weeds grow and attract beneficial insects. They don't use herbicides, pesticides, no synthetic fertilizers. Going further afield, Baker Creek seeds. You can tell they're you're in for something interesting and different. Their website is rareseeds.com. They have fabulous seeds, many of the same seeds actually as salt spring seeds plus more. They've been reintroducing seeds that have been found in South American Southeast Asian African markets and have been found in indigenous communities. You can see looking at this, their their webpage picture that sort of the trend in vegetables is colorful, colorful, phytochemical rich vegetables. I have about a dozen more slides. There was a lot of information online on growing tomatoes. So I've summarized some things that I think are most important. And so now we'll talk about getting out into the garden to grow our tomatoes. We planted tomatoes outside in early June. And in 60 days, they can put on four or five, six feet of growth and produce buckets of fruit. So they need nutrients in the soil. I funded very hard to believe this was a 2021 ad showing a woman pouring synthetic fertilizer into your vegetable gardens to start growing. I prefer not to use synthetic fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers are these bags, sort of a manufactured intergranate compounds like ammonium nitrate, ammonium phosphate. They supply only three main nutrients, NPK, don't supply nutrients. And they don't build healthy soil like organic. I mean, it's organic fertilizers do. They've been found to harm the bacteria and fungi and soil that help plants take up nutrients, and that help fight off disease. They're highly soluble. The directions on the bags push us to use much more than we need. And the excess has been running off into streams and quite significantly upcenting ecosystems. Synthetic fertilizers are unnecessary contrary to what a lot of the media and a lot of chemical companies say. I prefer to provide nutrients for my vegetable garden and tomatoes using composted manures or compost. If you top dress your garden beds with four inches of composted manure or good compost, you will have all the nutrients your tomatoes need. The nutrients in organic fertilizers or in compost aren't available for plants to use until the soil is warm and the microorganisms that started to act on them to break them down into nutrients and inform the plants can use. So when you top dress your bed, it's best to do it in the beginning of April. So the soil will warm up and the nutrients will become available. Four inches of compost will supply all the major nutrients you need MPK as well as calcium, magnesium, sulfur that the plants need for optic limb growth. It's a very big job to bring in four inches of soil amendments to a garden every year. So lots of gardeners will sort of they might bring in two inches of pop and they trust top dress their garden beds with two inches of organic amendments. And then they might use organic fertilizer. And then they'll usually often they'll mulch just the sort of chopped greens or yard waste. So you're using sort of the three of them to supply fertilizer or nutrients that your plants need. I vary the kinds of soil amendments that I use sort of between mushroom manure and the transfer station composted green waste or like composted pig or composted steer manure. I do this to sort of balance out the micronutrients that will be available in the soil. Once you prepared your beds, you can transplant your transplants. There are three pictures of three transplants here that are different size. On the left, don't buy the little 49 cent transplants. They take an extra two or three weeks to get to producing and we want tomatoes early, it's pushing it even to try and get them at the beginning of August. So it's better to buy the plants that are shown in the middle picture here, they do cost more, but they will produce buckets of tomatoes. You want to choose the healthier, taller plants. Because as well, when you plant tomatoes, you bury the stem underground. So the more stem you can bury, the more roots you'll get, more plant growth this will support. So it's worth buying these taller plants. You can buy tomatoes that already have fruit on them. And if you want to spend the money, it's great, you'll get tomatoes that are start to produce for you as soon as you plant them. When you plant tomatoes, they're very unusual. Most plants, if you put the stems underground, where they're exposed to moisture and bacteria, the stems will rot. Tomatoes interestingly enough will root all along the stems if you plant them underground. So the best way to plant them is to trench plant. You take the remove the lower leaves off the bottom of the tomato plant, lay the plant sideways covered with soil and at the end of the season, the picture on the right shows you get many more roots when you can do this and more roots means you can support stronger growth. This picture makes me laugh. I don't know why, but I think it's a picture of tomatoes lying on the ground waiting to be trench planted. Traditionally, we planted tomatoes all together in a row. It's made it easy to water. It's easy for crop rotation. Tomatoes actually self pollinate. They aren't like corn that needs to be grouped together to ensure pollination. So we can interplant tomatoes in the garden. Tomatoes actually aren't prone to any insect damage here. We don't have those orange four inch tomato worms. But sorry, people like to interplant and plant flowering plants in around their tomatoes because they'll attract beneficial insects. Though they find that interplanting isn't necessary to help keep pest numbers low on tomatoes. It's beneficial to other plants. It seems the smelly leaves of tomatoes seem to deter like the cabbage white moths from going to kale. Some people just think the smell sort of confuses insects, insect pests when they come into the garden. So interplanting. This is a garden bed that we planted at the senior center. And we planted tumbler tomatoes in the corner of the bed and a teepee with peas in the middle and out of chives and beans and parsley. So the old idea about plant them all in a row isn't something we have to buy by. Always when I plant vegetables, including tomatoes, I always sprinkle a package of seeds for a lissom. That's the scented white low annual hits. It covers the ground and so reduce his moisture loss. It's like sort of a green mulch. It stops weed seeds from germinating. And it provides same beautiful scent and nectar for bees and butterflies. After tomatoes are planted, most books recommend you mulch. I find after I bring soil amendment in, I have done my one big project in the garden. It's another big project to bring mulch in mulch is valuable, particularly for tomatoes because it stops soil being spattered up onto the tomato leaves when it's water. And that soil often has fungal spores in it that can cause disease. It's helpful to mulch because it slows moisture loss of soil. It moderates soil temperature, prevents weeds seed germination, and then of all, ultimately, it will break down to add organics to the soil. I don't do this though it's a very valuable practice, but instead I chop and drop mulch. Chop and drop is a practice where you just anytime you trim off any kind of greenery in your garden, you just drop it on the ground. It's this really does involve a big change in practice from this whole sort of notion of cleaning up and clean up your garden and putting bags of green waste out or clean up and put the green things into the compost. It involves a very significant change in aesthetics. Because most of us were sort of taught we clean up our garden beds, but we'll have a much healthier sort of overall ecosystem and healthier garden. If we don't clean up, we can leave fallen leaves at the end of the season, we can chop and drop. And you'll soon see that you'll see like little those little black ground beetles screwing along in the litter. And they are the ones that eat slug eggs. Our ecosystem gardens are an interconnected ecosystem. And if you, you know, encourage and support insects and bugs, you'll also then get more birds in your garden. There are two plants gardeners have grown forever, comfrey and borage. You can use these are great plants to grow and you can just chop and drop those into your garden. Um, most leaves, including comfrey and borage are sort of like two, one, two for their main nutrients. So they are a good, mild fertilizer and then they add organic materials to your soil. It's interesting old books on companion planting or old books that mention companion planting. You still always recommend planting borage and comfrey with tomatoes. Watering, you want to keep water off tomato leaves when you water, because they are prone to fungal diseases. So drip irrigation really is the best way or hand watering with a wand is the best way to water tomatoes. It's you want water to get down deep to the bottom of the roots. And sort of if you're a beginning gardener, it's helpful just to take a spade and dig down to see just how deep the water goes to make sure it gets deep. It's better to water less frequently and deep and infrequently and shallow. How much water is is a real challenge because soil heat, wind, they all different gardens. So soil dries out at different rates. It dries out at different rates of course different months. It's when you grow tomatoes a lot, you actually start to notice the leaves of tomatoes change color as they start to need water. So part of the joy of gardening really is slowing down to look and see what's going on in your garden. And to observe changes like this and you'll soon realize my tomatoes need water and you'll water accordingly. The picture on the right is a tomato that was growing on the beach down on Evergreen Beach where my husband and I go for coffee. It's seeded in there somehow it grew in sandy pretty awful soil grew without water. So a lot of people are realizing that tomatoes really don't need the water that traditionally we have suggested they receive. I mean, we don't the it's tomatoes need steady consistent water. Tomatoes that don't get enough water often get quite thick skinned, which I find most people find undesirable. But nonetheless, people are dry farming tomatoes. The early girl tomatoes that grow so well here. They're being grown in even in California where it's hot in dry farm conditions. If you if you want to read about a really great dry farming, dry farm, Google dirty girl farm. They grow the they grow early girls and they talk a lot about how you do this. I haven't done this so I can only comment and repeat what I've read. I'm going to fiddle this year and see what I get. But in dry farming healthy soil is really critical. Of course, tomatoes are planted early. So roots go deep to get the sort of spring rain water that's still in the soil. The soil health is key. You have to you have to maintain really healthy organic rich soil and mulch well. But then no supplementary water is added. To me, this is it's worth experimenting with water in our gardens or reduce water in our gardens. But you will see you get much reduced yield. These farms produce only about a third as many tomatoes as I think a farm with that's watered. And you do get thick skin tomatoes, but the flavor is apparently outstanding. I've missed this. This is oh, yeah, I'm really sorry. This has a I have sweaty palms that set off my this wasn't actually my last slide. This is from another tomato slide. I may not be able to get this. Oh, I'm really sorry. The last picture that's supposed to be in here is a picture that shows a garden that's been planted intensely with tomatoes, just one of many things. Sorry about this. I can't seem to find my well, we'll leave this here. The last picture that I had in the presentation was just a picture of heavily planted garden that has tomatoes interspersed between edible flowers and squash and pumpkins and beans and artichokes and amaranth was just a lovely picture that showed from from a very experienced gardener who has probably sat and watched how things grow. But I encourage everyone to think about changing practices a bit and interplanting trying new tomatoes and maybe dry gardening too. Thank you. If you if there are any questions. Hi, Jane. Yeah. I'm coming back on here. Great. There are quite a few questions. Yeah, if you'd like to stop your share screen screen sharing your screen, then yeah. Okay, so they're quite a few questions. So we'll just run through them. So one of the questions is about pruning. So you have any tips on pruning indeterminate tomatoes? Indeterminate tomatoes grow like a vine. So there's sort of a main stem. And then the branches come off, they'll be flowers and a cluster of fruit at the end. The indeterminates produce a sucker where in between where the main stem is and the branch comes off in old, old tomatoes that are indeterminates, those suckers often got five feet long. And we remove them just so the plant could focus on putting energy into producing fruit. It's very easy to remove suckers, you just look where the stem joins, pardon me, the branch effectively with the leaves joins the stem and you cut those out. Okay. Well, if you're growing sort of the five to six foot indeterminates like sunbold, I don't take I don't cut them out. They're not a problem they produce fruit. The plants produce bushels of fruit. So you don't need to worry about them in the smaller indeterminates. Okay, great. That's good. Thank you. And then another question about when you're doing that sort of no tilling approach, and you're just, you know, you're layering some compost or manure on the bed, do you you actually dig it in at all? Mix it in? Or you just literally lay it on top? It's very popular to talk about no till gardening and people want to do it. I, the reason people advocate for no till gardening is because the bacteria that you find in the soil surface is exposed to air and light. Whereas bacteria that's down deeper gets less light, less air. So the bacteria is sort of in different zones in your soil do differ. And if you till and dig it in, you're putting bacteria on the surface under the soil. In my experience, the recommended I found the recommendation to not till and just put compost on the surface is great in an in an established garden. There's soil underneath is good and loose and the worms come up and it just eventually works in. But if you're just starting a garden, often you're putting four inches of compost over sort of poor soil. And I, we garden really intensely, much more intensely than farms do. So sort of advocates for no till in a farming situation are talking about quite something quite different than a really intensely planted home garden. And I think that it's okay to till it in when you're starting a new garden and the soil underneath is poor. You want to start with organic material and or nutrients throughout everything going down, you know, two feet if you can. Okay, great. That's great. And so that whole business of the trench planting, I'd never heard about that. That was really interesting. So the question about that is when you trench plant, does the stem turn upwards on its own? No, you need to tomato stems by the time once your seedlings sort of six inches tall are quite, quite, they're not going to break. They're quite tough. So you just, it goes along and you tuck it up and you tuck some dirt here and here and okay. Right. So you don't stake it, you just kind of get the earth to kind of hold it up. You can stake it too. Sure. Yeah, okay. Often, it's probably a good idea to put the stakes in then because then you're not going to jam it in later through right through the stem. Yeah. Um, so someone has asked, how do I get tomatoes in June? Well, my husband would say go to Safeway. But in truth, I get tomatoes, ripe tomatoes the first week of June. It's, yeah, I was challenged by David Spears to do this and he taught me how to get tomatoes ripe in June. You need to start transplants early in February so that you're plant and then plant out in early April. And it's still very cool in April, but if you have a hot spot in your garden, you can put two month old transplants in at the beginning of April. I wrap I just put tomato cages around them and wrap them. They're well protected. They're against a wall, they're on concrete. And I get tomatoes at the beginning of June. It's necessary when you put tomatoes out that early to plant a parthenocarpite type. These are tomatoes that don't need pollination. Silits is the one I usually grow. It's tomatoes won't put won't pollinate in cool weather. But those tomatoes don't need pollination. So they produce fruit. You'll have fruit the first of June. The other way to get fruit early at the beginning of June is effectively to use your dining room table like a greenhouse. It's I start tumbler tomatoes because my grandson wants to pick them. I start them in a three gallon pot inside. I start them at the beginning of February. By the time I put them out in the beginning of June, they already have fruit. They're they're the small little tomatoes. So they're short season and I you know, I cheat. I just put them out with fruit on them. Wow. Well that actually that someone asked about that about starting tomato seedlings inside. So you said February. Normally you start tomato seedlings about two months before you put them out. So you start them around. I think it was lots of people start from around April 23rd. Then they're ready to go out at the beginning of June. Okay, okay. So when you're starting an inside, do you have grow lights overhead? I do. But lots of people don't. The key to I mean, the basics are the simplest tomato seeds germinate easily in warm conditions sort of 70 to 80 degrees. And then it's best to grow them in bright but cool conditions like 50 to 70 degrees. My friend Julie, she sent me a funny picture of her coach tomatoes. She puts her tomato seedlings along the back of her coach in the sun. And I mean, well, that Matt's tomato, Matt's tomato that we saw that's hers. She doesn't put them under grow lights. Just keep them in a warm window and they're healthy, healthy. Tomatoes are a bit unusual. If you don't have them under grow lights, they will get laggy a bit and they do. They're not as thick, stamped or as healthy as those you grow under grow lights. But you can bury the stem. So even though they're a bit laggy and tall, if they haven't been under her lights, you can bury that stem anyway, and you still will get healthy tomato plants. Okay, wow, it's great. Now someone was asked about greenhouses and you, you've never mentioned that which actually I'm fine with because I think most of us don't have a greenhouse. But do you know much about growing tomatoes in greenhouses? I don't. You can grow tomatoes all year with greenhouses and supplementary light. Greenhouse growing is actually, I think very sophisticated. In general, the challenges are all the biggest challenges moisture control, which relates to disease control. I bought a good book from the library on it. Great. Okay, good. Now, once someone we're going to go back to those suckers again on the plant. So this is around about sungoals, right, which you said was one of your favorites. Yeah, because of the flavor, you said they had really great flavor. Yeah, so the question is, how do you stake them so they don't end up on the ground? I grow, I only grow tomatoes that are sort of four to six feet. And I just use normal, I just use normal tomato cages. I actually turn them upside down. Because the wider normally tomato cages are like this, but turned upside down, the wider circle is down at the base. Then you've got three or four pieces of wire sticking up. I cut, I've cut those off and I've bent them in a U and I use them to peg the cage down. That's a daily ungrower's trick, but it works well for tomatoes. If I just use tomato cages. Wow, that's great. So another question was about the type of compost or manure you're using. So can you use that city compost? I mean, I don't know if they've got that in West Van But I know in Vancouver, you can buy compost from the city. And the question actually is really, can you just plant your, if you get that compost or a semi or can you plant your tomatoes directly into it? I'm not sure. Compost holds moisture very well. It's sort of balanced, moderate nutrients. Go on soil professors through Washington State University Extension. They discuss soil a lot more. I always thought more would be better, but more in terms of nutrients, whether they're organic or not, bacteria break them down and the extra ones run off into our streams. In the winter, you'll have very soggy soil if you only have compost. Garden professors would say no, that's the wrong thing to do. The soil is a balance of compost, sand, silt and clay. The clay is necessary to help keep nutrients in an ionic state in solutions so they can be absorbed. The sand and silt help with drainage. Pure compost doesn't drain that well. I mean, but our summers are dry, so you could water as you need. I think it will work, whether it's ideal. I mean, it's hard to say. I don't know if Laura Murray is in the group today. She plants in full compost, and she has a beautiful healthy garden, so it's done, and it's doable and can work very well. But maybe she could comment on that. Who is that? Laura Murray Newbert? Oh, yeah, yeah, she did that. She did a talk for you on permaculture and she talks about it. Don't think she's here, unless she's, yeah. No, I'm sorry, I can't talk to just growing in compost. A good place to look for information on soil will be the woman you're having who's coming to speak on soil because she's, I mean, arguably the best in North America as a speaker on soil. And the garden professor blogs will talk about compost. Okay, okay. I'm just going to move to the chat because there's a couple more questions in there. So if you can bear with me, two more questions. So someone is saying did you say that too much water makes a thick skin? Too little water, little water. Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that was interesting with those early girls that were dry. I don't, I didn't quite understand that because they need water to, to grow, you know, but, but maybe they're just, it's a moderate now, right? As you say, we tend to overwater sometimes. And it seems that we need that in. I haven't, I haven't practiced dry gardening with tomatoes. Because our summers are getting draw warmer and hotter and drier. And new tomato breeders are breeding, not only just delicious flavorable sort of heirloom flavored tomatoes, but they're also growing them to be breeding them to be strong, resilient and to need less water. Some of that's a response to a lot of tomato breeders are in agricultural areas, especially California where water is limited. The dry farming is part of the old French permaculture, not French permaculture, French intensive garden method. So you could read more about if you look up French, intensive gardening or horticulture, there'd be information there. The, the dirty girl farm is in Santa Cruz. They put their tomatoes in early. Well, it's, and so grow one that can grow when it's a bit cooler like early grow, we grow it up here for that reason. I'm not sure how well it is adapted to home gardens, because on farms, you have acres and acres. So 30% yield, you've still got lots of tomatoes. I, I, I hope to find a balance in using less water because I'm just conscious of the input that goes into my garden. But in truth, I want more tomatoes. So I don't see myself ever not watering. Yeah, no, I, I don't think it's your vibe, because we have really dry summers, relatively speaking. We do. Yeah. Yeah. Can you, I mean, you need really deep fertile soil to sustain a tomato over the summer without watering. I'm not sure it's possible here, but yeah, okay, I'm gonna experiment with mulching and see what I can do. Good. Can I just want to ask this one question about steaks versus tomato cages. So you mentioned using the tomato cage. Do you ever just stake your plants? I don't put you easily can. And there's people who stake or use ropes to grow, you know, the 10 foot indeterminates, it's, it's probably more suited to the indeterminate types that grow like a vine, but no staking is great for any tomato. Okay, great. Okay, and now I'm gonna, I'm gonna do one more question here before we wrap up. And it's, it's kind of a really big picture question, which I think is really interesting is about sort of genetic engineering in tomatoes. And so I guess a lot of people are concerned they don't want to be growing varieties that that have been genetically modified. So what's your, did you know much about that? I mean, you mentioned heirlooms that presumably they're not. None of the home vegetables, vegetables we can buy seed for transplant for genetically modified. It's an expensive process, and it's, it's limited to industrial agriculture. There are, there is tomato breeding that's being done using CRISPR to insert genes for both salt tolerance and less water. It's, we believe, or there are many breeders who believe that global warming is real, it's coming. And water is going to be a limited resource. If we can farm areas that have sandy soil, it would open up many areas to agriculture. So, you know, I think there is a place for the sort of engineering of tomatoes to be done, but not for home gardens. And in truth, tomato breeding is really still just being done the way it's always been done. These new introductions are real labor of love, like green zebra took 12 years of breeding to come to market. And what he did was just every year look for plants with qualities and traits he wanted, save the seed, save the seed from seed plants that were the strongest. And that's what dominates tomato breeding today. There are no new genes, there's no GM, there's no CRISPR. It's the new tomatoes we're seeing are, they really are a labor of love from these breeders and the breeders make no money out of them. They're usually just sort of, they're crazy. And now they're celebrities, but they're wonderful, wonderful stories. If you go read about Burke, Todd, I think Bore came from a California farm. I think it's called Wild War Farms. They're really wonderful stories to breed. Wow. Breed, breed. Who knew? It's incredible. I mean, I do also grow tomatoes, but I honestly know what you had. There were so many varieties. So exciting. Wow. Okay. That's great. Thank you so much, Jane. This has been so, so really interesting. I really appreciate all the lovely images that you shared. And one of them that somebody wanted to see again was the one where you had the diagram, the indeterminate and the determinant. So you don't have to put it up now, but we can send you that if you want to send it out. That would be great. And then I can share it with everybody because that says that was really... Sorry, I'm technologically challenged though. That's okay. Even doing powerpoint knowledge. And that's probably more important. You answered all the questions really well. Thank you so much. Thanks very much, everyone. Thank you for all of your help with all of these programs because we have quite an audience for these gardening programs in West Ban. And I want people to realize that Jane is my consultant, to find great speakers. So thank you for that as well as this talk because it's been a real part of the life. I'm delighted to be able to be involved with it. Thank you. That's great. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for coming. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. It's going to be absolutely stunning, but don't put out your tomatoes yet unless you've got a nice cover because it's cold. All right. Great. Okay. See you later. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.