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Eric: My mouth is full. Sorry! Hey, everyone welcome to garden fork. I am eating a naturally raised angus beef burger from White Flower farm, in addition to being a plant nursery across the street, they have a bunch of big open fields where they raise angus beef. It is butchered locally and sold locally and it tastes amazing. So I will talk for one minute here.
We are here again at tomato mania and we are going to learn about planting tomatoes. We are talk to some of the experts they have here. There is Barb who is in charge of all the plants at White Flower Farm. There is Scott who brings tomato many here over here and it is just kind of amazing place.
They have a really beautiful catalog. I do not know if you may have seen it, it is like a coffee book and a catalog. It is full of all sorts of information, beautiful photographs. I learn a lot just from looking at the catalog. They have a really nice store here and here and they have a substantial website as well, whiteflowerfarm.com.
I was talking with Barb earlier and she is—oh, excuse me, I have to go check on 18,000 plants. That is amazing, I am happy that I can grow to six in my little land with grow lights and everything. So let us go talk to the experts, I am going to enjoy the rest of my burger here and enjoy the show.
So here we are—we are at White Flower Farm and tomato mania, once again with my friend Scott who is still from the west coast.
Scott: Still, exactly.
Eric: They asked for steamed milk in this decaf. And I wanted to talk to Scott more this year about the nuts and bolts of growing tomatoes. And especially in New England here, it is quite cold still but I want to get them in the ground. So what we would you suggest for that kind of thing?
Scott: And in California, it is like going to the beach and it is too cold to be at the beach. Now, you put up a little wind break and all of a sudden it is great and do the same thing for your tomatoes.
Eric: It is like a windbreak, you could maybe use that row cover that white row cover material.
Scott: You can use anything. No rules.
Eric: They are so easy.
Scott: No rules. Like whatever you got, come on. I mean we want to block the wind. I know people who use hay bales. Why not? Yes, I mean, whatever you got around. It should, it is just matter of changing the environment, it does not have to be pretty, it does not have to have a pricey tag on.
Eric: If you have five words to describe your heirloom tomatoes what would it be?
Male: The only thing I can say is basically I do not buy tomatoes in off season because ones that we grow, there is nothing compares to them, so off season we do without tomatoes.
Eric: We are here with Barb Pierson who is the head of production at White Flower Farm, in other words she is the person that makes all the plants happens so everything you see in the catalog, everything you see in the greenhouses, this is the lady that makes it all happen. And she an expert so, I thought we would come ask about growing tomatoes.
Barb: Yes, they are just great. It really is easy once you get the basics down. I like to grow them in the containers on my deck. It is a little bit easier than planting them in the ground. So I like container growing. Especially up here in Connecticut. I like them in containers because you can move them around and keep them in a full sun area. You know how the light sort of changes in the late part of the season, it is nice to have the ability to move the plants around.
Eric: So what about watering with the container tomato.
Barb: You have to water more often but if you take your potting mix and you amend it with some compost,, add some dried manure which is what I like to do. So take potting mix about 2/3 and then third of dried aged manure. Mix it together and that manure and the organics will help to hold the moisture. Really tomatoes like to be dry, especially as they are going into fruit.
Eric: Wow, I did not know that.
Barb: Yes, over watering is the biggest mistake that people make. So as the plant is growing, you do not really do not wan
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