Tomatoes are the queens of the summer garden, but they’re not problem free. Avoid these common tomato mistakes for a bountiful harvest this summer.

Not Planting Properly

Tomatoes are among the toughest transplants we grow, but proper planting technique is still essential to getting them off to a good start. 

Timing

Timing is critical for tomatoes. They’re sensitive to cold temperatures, so you need to wait to transplant until after all danger of frost has passed and the soil temperature is at least 60°. Waiting until the soil has reached 65° to 70° is ideal.

While not thought of as a succession crop, you can also plant a late batch of tomatoes. You’ll need to time these transplants so that they have plenty of time to mature before your first fall frost. 

In late summer and early fall, the short day length and cool temperature slow plant growth. When you’re planning your planting date for tomatoes, add 14 to 28 days to their days to maturity to account for this slow growth.

Spacing

Proper spacing is also an important consideration when planting tomatoes. It’s hard to picture those tiny transplants turning into the giant plants they grow into by the end of the season. However, your plants will produce better if they’re given the space they need. For good airflow, moisture, and nutrients, space tomato seedlings 12 to 18 inches apart in rows 3 to 4 feet apart.

Depth

You should also transplant your tomatoes to the proper depth. Tomatoes thrive when they’re buried deep. Pinch off your transplants bottom set of leaves and then transplant your tomato so that the next set of leaves is just an inch or two above the soil. The section of stem that you’ve buried will send out roots, helping your tomato plant to adapt quickly and taking adequate water and nutrients.

Pruning Incorrectly

Pruning tomatoes can be a great way to increase airflow and mitigate the risk of certain fungal diseases like late blight. However, improper pruning technique can set back growth and reduce your harvest.

Only prune indeterminate tomato varieties. Never prune determinate varieties. 

To prune your indeterminate tomatoes, look for spots where the main stem and a branch create a V-shape. In these V-shaped notches, you will notice new small branches growing. These new branches are called suckers.

Suckers will usually flower and produce fruit. However, they can make your tomato plant unruly and harder trellis. They also reduce airflow and can affect your harvest quality. Plants will spend energy producing new suckers and fruit. While that sounds great, it can reduce the overall size and quality of tomatoes as the plant’s energy is further divided. 

Inconsistent Watering

To grow a large harvest of high-quality tomatoes, your plants will need consistent watering. Tomatoes thrive with about one to 2 inches of water per week. This can be a combination of rain and irrigation or one of the two, depending on the weather.

Inconsistent watering with periods of heavy drought or high moisture can reduce yield and quality. Plants that receive inconsistent water are prone to issues like blossom and rot and splitting. 

Splitting in tomatoes is often caused by a relatively dry period, followed by a period of heavy moisture. When your plant goes through a dry period and then receives a ton of moisture from rain or irrigation, the fruit will rapidly swell and expand, creating cracks in the skin.

Blossom end rot is thought of as a fungal disease, but it’s actually caused by a lack of calcium as the fruit is developing. Calcium deficiencies in soil aren’t very common, but when your plant doesn’t have enough water, it cannot take up the calcium that it needs.

Over-fertilizing 

Tomatoes love having fertile soil, but you can’t have too much of a good thing. Get a soil test before fertilizing. If your garden already has adequate nutrients, adding fertilizer can do more harm than good.

When tomatoes receive excessive levels of nitrogen and other nutrients, they put on more foliar growth rather than fruit production. They can also be more prone to pest and disease issues.

Excessive fertilizer can runoff or leach from your bed into nearby ditches, streams, and other waterways. Once in these waterways, the high levels of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus can create toxic algae blooms, which are harmful for people and wildlife.

Finished compost can be a safer way to give beds a quick boost of nutrients. Learn more about when to fertilize your garden here.

Harvesting Late

We all get busy in the summer and it’s often tough to keep up with the garden when we’re balancing other family and work obligations. However, you’ll get the most from your tomatoes if you harvest often and at the right times. 

Ripe tomatoes should be the correct color for their variety and glossy. When you touch the tomato, it should be firm, but have a bit of give to it if you squeeze it gently. When you try to remove it from the stem, it should come off fairly easily.

If you wait too long to harvest tomatoes, they can over ripen split and rot, which can lead to pest and disease issues.

Growing tons of tomatoes is always a highlight of summer. Keeping these common mistakes in mind can help ensure you get a wonderful harvest.

Beets are the sweethearts of spring and fall. Their leaves and roots are stunningly colorful and deliciously sweet. Generally, beets are easy to grow, but there are a few ways to improve your production. If you struggle with beets or just want to ensure you’re getting the best harvest, here are a few tips for better beets. 

Plus, get information to save seed from your favorite beet varieties!

Get a Soil Test

The biggest issue we see with growing beets is soil pH. They don’t do well in acidic soil. Getting a soil test, or using an at home pH test, is worth it.

Beets thrive when soil pH is between 6.5 and 7.0. If your soil’s pH is below 6, it will decrease your harvest. If the pH is lower than 6, sprinkle wood ash or limestone in the row as you sow your seeds for a quick fix. 

Work on Soil Structure

Beets do best in light loamy soil. Outside of raised beds, this can be hard to find in many parts of the Mid-Atlantic, Appalachia, and Southeast. Adding a couple inches of finished compost to the bed can help beets thrive. 

You can also improve soil structure over time by using mulch, cover crops, and additional compost applications.

Grow Beets During the Right Times

Beets are best suited to spring and fall in the Southeast, because they become tough and stringy during hot weather. We recommend sowing from March through early June and again in early September. 

Sowing beets in deep summer heat is difficult – young seedlings wilt and disappear, and even thick sowings may have only spotty survival. 

For best germination, sow beet seeds 1/2 deep inch spring and then 3/4 inch deep in early fall. Sowing deeper may slow the germination a couple of days, but will keep the seeds cool and moist.

Thin Your Beet Seedlings

For best production, sow beets in rows 12 inches apart. Each beet seed is technically a berry and contains several seeds. When the seedlings have true leaves or reach 2 inches tall, thin them. Thin to 6 plants per foot for fresh beets, 3 plants per foot for beets used for winter storage. You can space plants more closely if you’re growing them exclusively as greens. 

Fun Fact: Until the 1800s, beets were referred to as blood turnips because of their red turnip-like roots. The round and flat-bottomed beets of today are an improved form.

Water Beets Consistently

Beets grow best with consistent irrigation or watering, particularly in hot dry spells. Drought can encourage scab, the same disease seen in potatoes, and brown spots internally from boron deficiency, which is exacerbated by lack of water.

Saving Beet Seeds

Beet seeds are not a crop we recommend for beginners as they are biennial, meaning that they don’t flower and produce seed until their second year. That said, it’s not that difficult to save beet seeds, the biggest hurdle is time.

After beets overwinter, they will bolt or send up a tall stalk to flower and set seed. At a glance, they look a bit like the pigweed or curly dock stalks you may see in your garden. The seeds will form about 6 to 10 weeks after you notice the flower stalk beginning to grow.

The seed will take another several weeks to mature. You can begin harvesting when about 75% of the seed appears brown and dry. You can strip the seeds from the plants by hand or thresh them by walking on a pile of plants.

Then you’ll need to separate the seed from the chaff or other bits of plant material. You can winnow the seed or use a screen like we use. For a small amount of seed, you could also pick them out by hand. 

Lay the seed out on a flat surface or screen for a couple of weeks to dry completely. When they’re fully dry, they should crack and crumble when crushed, not bend or flex. When dry, store them in an airtight container out of direct sunlight. 

Beets may cross with other beet varieties and Swiss chard. To avoid cross-pollination, isolate beets by 1/4 mile. Seed growers who want to produce pure seed should isolate beets by a minimum of 1/2 to 1 mile. 

Learn more about Saving Seed from Biennial Crops.

In the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, we enjoy a fairly long growing season, but fall always creeps up on us fast. In the zone 7a gardens at Southern Exposure, we’re already starting cauliflower for our fall garden. As you’re planning and planting fall crops, these are some things to consider.

Understand Your Timeline

A long growing season means that you can start multiple successions of quick summer crops throughout the summer like zucchini, bush beans, sweet corn, and zinnias. You can also plant cool season crops like cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, and spinach in spring and then again in fall. 

How late you can continue to plant these crops is determined by two factors: your first estimated frost date and the day length.

This first frost date is a hard cut off for frost-tender crops like summer squash, but you have a bit more flexibility with hardy crops like collards and beets. The shortening days in late summer and fall will affect each crop’s days to maturity. 

To calculate how late you can last a crop, you need to take both factors into account. To begin, find your variety’s days to maturity. Then add 14 days if you’re direct sowing or 14 to 28 days for transplanting. This addition accounts for slower growth during the shorter days of autumn. Last, take your total number and count backwards from your first frost date. This is your last possible planting date.

Many cold hardy crops will grow into winter in cold frames, high tunnels, or low tunnels. Just keep in mind that as the temperatures continue to drop and the days get even shorter, their growth will slow or stop. Young cold-hardy crops kept through the winter will begin growing in late winter in spring for and early harvest.

Bed Prep and Summer Cover Crops

If you want to maximize production from your garden, it’s important to pull spring and summer crops when they’re no longer productive. When lettuce bolts, the vine borers overtake the zucchini, and the bean production drops, pull the plants and prep the bed for a new crop or cover crop.

You should also remove any weed and other debris and pull back mulch. Add a couple of inches of finished compost to the bed. 

After preparing the bed, you can plant another crop or a cover crop. Summer cover crops like sunn hemp, buckwheat, and soybeans can revitalize the soil for another vegetable crop later or grow for the rest of the season to help build up organic matter. 

To choose a cover crop, read our post Summer Cover Crops. 

If you’re already plenty busy with summer garden crops like tomatoes and squash, it’s perfectly fine to put empty beds into cover crops for the rest of the season. Building soil for next season is more productive than planting more crops that you don’t have the time or energy to manage.

Selecting Crops

While ‘days to maturity’ is the key feature when selecting fall crops, it’s not the only thing to consider. Some crops have been bred to hand the hot days of summer, the dwindling light of autumn, or the cold snaps of approaching winter.

For example, lettuces like Capitan Bibb and Jericho Romaine lettuce, which were bred for heat tolerance, are a good choice for late summer. Some fall crops like Snowball Self-Blanching Fall Cauliflower will even say it in the name. This variety offers self-wrapping leaves that protect the white curds from heat and sunlight during late summer or early fall. 

Crops bred for cold hardiness like Champion Collards and Gigant Winter Kohlrabi will help you extend your growing season into winter. Quick growing crops like Cherry Belle Radishes allow you to squeeze in a last-minute harvest even with shorter days.

Direct Sowing Crops for Fall

In hot conditions, direct sowing can be tricky, especially with cool weather crops like lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and rutabagas. To have success, you want to keep the soil cool and moist. Here are a few quick tips when direct sowing:

• Use shade cloth.
• Lay boards of cardboard over the soil, but check every day and remove it as soon as they germinate. 
• Water consistently.
• Use overhead watering for crops like carrots, which are sensitive to soil crusting. 

Starting Transplants for Fall

Starting transplants can be easier than direct sowing, because you have more control over the environmental conditions, including moisture level and soil temperature. Cool weather crops like lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kohlrabi germinate well in relatively cool, moist soil. 

For example, most lettuce germinates best around 75°F but will germinate at temperatures as low as 40°F. Rather than direct sow them or sow them in flats outdoors, we start our fall lettuces indoors and place the flats into the refrigerator for 4 to 6 days. 

If you don’t have space in your fridge, you could try another area that stays cool, like a root cellar. Monitor them; they need light once they germinate!

Use Mulch

When planting and growing in the heat of summer, keeping the soil cool and moist is key for good growth and production. Placing a thick layer of mulch on the soil after watering will help hold the moisture in and insulate the soil. 

You can use wood chips, grass clippings, straw, or old leaves to mulch. Mulch as close to the base of plants as possible, but don’t cover them. Wait to mulch direct sown crops until they’re a couple of inches tall.