Gardening 101: Planting tomatoes in early July

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - To garden is to try something new. The learning curve to a successful garden is a steep one (at least for me): some things work, some don't. I have long heard the rumor that you can plant tomatoes in early July and harvest a fall crop. But it just didn't make sense to me.

The few times I tried tomatoes IN THE SPRING I had the fruit show up on the plant in mid-spring and be ready for picking by mid-May. I would continue to get tomatoes until daytime highs started reaching into the mid 90s. Then the plant would stop flowering and production would end. The plant would turn brown and fall over. Too hot for tomatoes until Fall.

I had some success cutting them back severely and letting them limp along across summer. As soon as the first cool weather in September would show up, the plants would take off and I would have a HUGE crop by Thanksgiving and first frost. "Something to be learned there" I thought to myself.

But to put in the ground a young, tender transplant in early July, just as we are going into the hottest 60 days of the year? It just didn't make sense to me. So I traveled to Calloway's Nursery and talked to Jennifer Hatalski and got some advice on how to do this.

It all starts with a limited but proven line up of specific varieties. You must make sure you are planting the right ones. Thanks to the breeding program at Texas A&M, a couple of varieties of tomatoes were brought to market for exactly this purpose. You plant these heat-tolerant transplants in the first week of July and carefully nurse them through the heat of summer. It takes a tight regiment of watering, spraying and feeding to get them through the heat. But the reward comes in the fall when they'll suddenly flower and fruit. They'll provide a rather vigorous crop all the way to first freeze (sometimes that's not until December if you live in the heart o the Metroplex). In field studies done by Texas A&M, total plant yield was almost FOUR TIMES what the crop delivered in Spring.

I'm going to give it a try for the first time. All those cut-away shots of planting, watering and mulching where from me planting six tomato plants just after the 4th of July. I planted Celebrity, Sweet 100, Golden and Roma. I'll keep updating this page with pictures and comments as I go along.

I would like to add two other growing hints not covered in the story (but one of them shown at least). I would use tomato cages to keep your plants upright and easy to spray. I would also avoid any of the bigger tomato varieties, smaller ones do better here in North Texas. Trust me.