so what do you say we spend a little time in the garden today all right all right all right
a couple videos ago we got our indeterminate tomatoes in the ground plus a row of peppers
and today it's time to get these pretty babies right here in the ground our determinate tomatoes
but before we do that let's check on how those indeterminate tomatoes are doing
so this is our night shade plot for where we're putting our tomatoes and peppers
this first row here is where we put our indeterminate tomato plants a few videos ago
we got a 60 foot long row here we put those plants in there about or not about but three feet apart
so end up with about 20 plants and these guys have already started growing pretty well here they're a
good bit bigger than they were when we put them in the ground just about a week a week and a half ago
i did come in here and inject a light dose of 20 20 20 in our micro boost through the drip system
there and they seem to have enjoyed it and they're starting to grow already even getting a few blooms
on some of these guys right here i think this is uh one of those grape tomato varieties we planted
you can see some blooms right there and uh happy with how these are coming along so far now when
we did that video planting these indeterminate tomatoes we had a lot of people asking where
are we going to prune them or why didn't we prune them before we put them in the ground
so the leaves weren't touching the ground and all that and i have pruned the indeterminates before
i've had years where i didn't prune them i really can't tell a huge difference in the performance
because like i told you on that video all the tomatoes are toast come mid july here
just because it's so hot so it's not like we have this long indeterminate tomato growing season
so i wasn't planning on pruning them but i got to talking to the breeder for one of these varieties
we planted here the purple boy tomato and he recommended that we prune that variety he said
to really get it to size it needs to be pruned so i figured well if i'm going to prune one
let's prune them all so i'm going to come in here and just get these bottom lateral stems right here
and just trim these up a little bit now i won't continue to do this as they grow and do a single
stem technique like you see some people do because like i said these things won't last that long once
it gets really hot around here but i will prune them a little bit early just to kind of get some
size on them as the breeder recommended so we got these puppies trimmed up a little bit and like i
said we'll probably do this one or two more times throw some soil to that main base of the plant
there to promote some more root development we'll just probably prune them one or two more times
and that should be good for us and then another reason i got to thinking what would be a good
idea to at least prune these guys at the bottom has to do with the cages we're going to be using
to support these plants so once those plants get a little bit taller and we're able to throw some
soil around the base of those plants then we'll put our cages in place and these are some awesome
tomato cages we used to sell them on our site quite a few of them but they don't necessarily
fit within ups ground shipping parameters anymore so unfortunately we had to discontinue them
thankfully they last forever so i've got about 20 of them that i can use on this row of
indeterminate tomatoes another thing to consider is once these cages are in the ground it can be
tough to kind of weed right there around the plant so i've got about three bales of wheat straw left
over from doing my thornless blackberries and i'll probably just put a little bit just a little ring
around each plant there before i put my cage in so i don't have to worry about reaching in
there and weeding around that cage and we can just use our wheel hoe here between the rows so
the pruning seems like it's going to come in handy at least since we're using these cages
here but we won't put those in place until we heal those plants a little bit more so now
back to the determinate varieties that we're actually going to be planting today
so when we planted those indeterminate tomatoes we planted them out of these four inch pots like
you see here we started them in these 162 trays and then we stepped them up to the four inch pots
just because i wanted to get a bigger plant in the ground because these guys aren't quite as hardy
as these guys are so once it starts to get hot the disease pressure ramps up in early summer these
guys won't be able to take that as much as these guys will so i wanted to give these a little bit
of a head start for our determinate tomatoes we'll plant those right out of this 162 tray here so
you can see there we got a nice little tomato plug there and you don't have to plant a massive tomato
plant in the ground this guy right here will amaze you how fast it'll take off and start growing
and catch up with those bigger transplants before you know it so we don't like to take the extra
effort with these no need to take up extra space in the greenhouse we just take these guys put them
right in the ground as we'll do here in a little bit and that's how you know when they're ready
to go in the ground when they got a nice root ball there and you can just grab one by the stem
lightly pull it right out of the tray they don't pull out and that root ball don't stay together
like that they're not ready to go on the ground but those guys are nice and ready you can see
those roots are trained to grow down instead of wrapping around which is what we want to see there
so we got several different varieties here we've got a bella rosa which has been a long favorite
of ours red snapper which is a new one we added last year a huge favorite for us and our customers
summer pick did really well for us last year and it ranked really high in our taste test we
did a few new ones i haven't ever grown but i've heard good things about florida 91 a good heat
set tomato roadster southern ripe another good heat set tomato tachi is a paste type tomato we
grew last year did really well and then we added a new paste type determinant called invincible
i'm looking forward to comparing to the tachy on the end here i've got another indeterminate
type a chef's choice pink that i'm going to find somewhere to put but i'm not going to put
in the same row as these determinants because we're going to use the florida weave to trellis
these guys so i've got one two three four five six seven eight varieties here based on
my road length putting these two feet apart i should be able to get four plants of each
variety and i have a nice little determinate tomato trowel out there so now we just need to
lay another line of drip tape in this plot we've got two lines already ran for those peppers
and indeterminate tomatoes and i've already got it staked off i did this when i did those first
two rows where these two roads in the middle are gonna be so right here where this steak is
we're gonna make a furrow put some of our complete organic fertilizer in that furrow lay some drip
tape in there cover it up and then we'll be ready to put these determinate tomatoes in the ground
so we got our row made there made us a furrow laid the drip tape in the furrow i went with
the 15 mil tape i had a roll i need to use and that's what i used on these other two rolls so
i just hand rolled it out there on a piece of rebar didn't use my drip tape layer attachment
for just this one row here got it amended with some of our complete organic fertilizer
and then got it covered up with our high arch wheel hoe there and i've got the water
running into those drip lines and i figured about as well go ahead and inject some good
fish emulsion in there feed those plants that are already been planted and feed the soil there
for where we're about to plant those plants so i just put some fish in motion
and my horse fertilizer injector there you can see that kind of brown liquid flowing through
that tube into our water hose out through our drip lines there to feed our soil and now we just wait
a few minutes for our water spots to start to develop where those emitters are because that's
going to tell us where we need to put our plants and while we're waiting on those water spots let's
talk a minute about determinate tomatoes and why i like them so much i mentioned on that last tomato
plant video that i'm not the biggest fan of indeterminate or heirloom tomatoes just because
they don't do as well down here for us they're not quite as hardy quite as disease resistant also
like i said they're done in july so we don't get that long extended harvest period that
some people up north get with these determinate ones and they just produce clusters and clusters
of tomatoes kind of all at one time within a two or three week period there so we get some really
good bumper harvest and we do a lot of tomato canning around here you know canned tomatoes to
make chili make pasta sauce all kind of good stuff and for that purpose it's really good to have
a bunch of tomatoes coming in at one time because you get all your canning equipment out you want
to have enough tomatoes to make it worthwhile to do you know at least eight or twenty jars at the
time so that's why we like the determinants i also really like them because the plants are short and
compact they're a lot easier to trellis i control some with my florida weave technique and it's just
a lot easier to manage these guys in my opinion a lot of people that live up north and do have that
extended tomato growing season what they'll do especially people that are selling tomatoes
for market or whatever is they'll succession plant these things so they'll plant around
wait a few weeks plant another round and then they have those really big bumper harvest continually
throughout their longer tomato growing season so that's a good option for you if you want
lots and lots of tomatoes just continually coming in but like i said these are my favorites i really
love the determinants and i just can't wait to see the production and compare some of these varieties
that we've never tried before so we can start to see some of our water spots popping up there
you see our buried tape there and there's an emitter right there where that water's
slowly dripping out and with these determinate tomatoes out of these 162 traces these guys are a
lot smaller obviously we can't plant them near as deep as we can those we had in a four inch pot but
we'll put them you know as deep as we can making sure we leave these leaves above the soil and
then we'll come back and heal them you know once they get up and going a little bit so we'll just
kind of put it right here beside this emitter stick it down in there and uh cover it up with
soil get it planted as deep as we can for these little five or six inch tall transplants here
all right all right all right we got them in yes they do look tiny
right now but these things will start growing pretty fast pretty soon we didn't quite get
four transplants from all eight varieties we did get four of each of the slicers
but on the end there i was only squeezing two tachis and two of the invincible paste tomatoes
which would be just fine that'll give us enough to do a fair comparison here with all these guys
so we got three of the four rows in that night shape plot planted the fourth row is just going
to be kind of a hodgepodge i got some peppers that i planted late some giant pepper varieties
we just added this year i got some tomatillos and maybe a few more uh tomato varieties stuff i've
planted late that we'll throw in there so just kind of a mixture of stuff in that fourth row
that'll go in the middle there now as far as these determinate tomatoes go don't prune these guys
even if you really like pruning tomatoes just kind of hold back and don't prune them if you have to
prune them you can cut a little bit off the bottom there so your leaves aren't touching the soil
but these things do better when they're not pruned you don't just maximize the foliage there
and at least for us down here in the south all that foliage really helps protect the fruits from
getting scalded by the sun and lets them hold a nice red color there so i don't touch these
determined tomatoes with a pair of pruners we just let them get as bushy and as dense foliage as we
can and when we're doing the florida weave we just kind of wrap all that up keep it contained there
and try to keep them fruit shaded from getting burnt by the sun so if you planted any of these
determinate varieties we planted today let me know what you think of them know a lot of you
guys planted bella rosa and red snapper maybe some of the others for the first time last year
let me know what you thought are you planting them again are you trying something different i'll put
some links below to all the varieties we planted today so you can head on over to our website and
check those out if you enjoyed this video make sure to give me a big thumbs up don't forget to
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we come out with a new video and if you did enjoy this one make sure to check out these
other two tomato videos right here i think you'll really enjoy those as well we'll see you next time