How to Grow (Late-Season) Tomatoes
For most of the rest of the country, June is the season to plant tomatoes for that first crop of juicy, home-grown flavor. Here in North Florida, it’s the time to wrap up the harvest of early tomatoes and sow seeds indoors to prepare for the second crop of tomatoes.
TIP 1: It generally takes eight weeks from planting seed to transplanting tomato seedlings, so planting seeds indoors in flats or seed-starting pots in June means they’ll be ready to move outdoors into the garden in late August or early September. Make sure to select determinate, early ripening varieties for your late crop.
TIP 2: Start your transplants indoors under grow lights, then move them outdoors to a shady area once they have two sets of true leaves. Move them into a sunny area for several hours a day to get them used to outdoor growing conditions for a couple of weeks.
TIP 3: Transplant them into the garden in late August or early September, covering the planting bed with shade cloth or old umbrellas for a few days while the plants adjust to outdoor conditions. Use tomato stakes or cages to keep the plants off the ground. Remove the shade protection after three or four days.
TIP 4: Be prepared to protect your late-season tomatoes in case of an early frost. You can toss old bedsheets over the plants, then cover the sheets with plastic. Make sure the cover goes all the way to the ground and the plastic isn’t touching the plants; contact can damage the leaves.
‘Mater Menace Bagging Hornworms
Tomato hornworms attack tomatoes as well as eggplants, peppers and potatoes, all warm weather crops that are members of the nightshade family. The caterpillars are green, three to six inches long with a horn-like tail that gives the pest its name. They feed on the leaves of the plants they attack, leaving dark green or black droppings. Left unchecked, they can destroy the fruit as well as the leaves. Hand-picking is the best way to manage tomato hornworms, dropping them into a container of soapy water to kill them. You can also drop them into a plastic newspaper bag — after removing the newspaper, of course — smothering them by tying a knot in the top of the bag. Checking your plants after getting your paper out of the driveway each morning makes for an easy-to-follow routine. Natural enemies include braconid wasps, which lay eggs that form white projections on the top of the tomato hornworms. If you see these projections, leave the caterpillars alone and let nature take its course.
Your Monthly Garden Chores
- Now is the time to plant palms. Saw palmetto, bush palmetto, European fan palm and windmill palm do well in our area.
- Fertilize bulbs that have finished blooming. Leave the dying foliage until it has died back completely; it is storing food for next year’s flowers.
Mulch planting beds 2 to 3 inches deep to keep soil temperature cooler and discourage weeds. Make sure the mulch doesn’t touch the base of the plants and trees. Use whatever is readily available to you: pine straw, pine bark or leaves.
- Remove the spent blossoms from cannas, black-eyed susans and other early-summer perennials to encourage late summer and fall bloom.
- Watch your lawn for spittlebugs in centipede grass or gray leaf spot fungus in St. Augustine grass, common problems in mid-summer turf grasses.
- Plant eggplant, peppers, green beans and heat-tolerant tomatoes toward the end of the month for a fall harvest.
- Root cuttings from hydrangeas and other woody ornamentals now.
©2016 PostScript Publishing, all rights reserved. Audrey Post is a certified Advanced Master Gardener volunteer with the University of Florida/IFAS Extension in Leon County. Email her at email@example.com or visit her website at msgrowitall.com. Ms. Grow-It-All® is a registered trademark of PostScript Publishing.