The journal

Growing notes

Practical guides to choosing and growing tomatoes, with the facts traced to extension sources.

• How to Save Tomato Seeds From Your Best PlantsSeed saving happens now, at peak ripeness, on fruit you were about to eat. The ferment, the crossing question, and why hybrid seed will not give you the same tomato.
• Buried in Tomatoes? What to Do With a Mid-Summer GlutThe pile on the counter is growing faster than you can eat it. How to triage it, what to freeze, what to dry, and the one canning rule you cannot skip.
• When Are Tomatoes Ripe? A Variety-by-Variety GuideRipe does not mean red for every tomato. How to read color, feel, and detachment across heirlooms, paste types, and cherries.
• Blossom Drop: Why Heat Stops Fruit SetHeat, not calcium and not missing bees, is why tomato flowers dry up and fall. The extension thresholds, what actually helps, and the heat-set varieties.
• Why the Supreme Court Called a Tomato a VegetableIn 1893 the Supreme Court ruled tomatoes are vegetables, not fruit, for a reason that had nothing to do with botany, plus the myths that grew up around it.
• Common Tomato Problems, and the Varieties That Dodge ThemLate blight, cracking, and blossom-end rot ruin more tomatoes than anything else. Here is what causes each and which varieties resist them.
• Growing Tomatoes in ContainersYou do not need a garden bed. Here is how to pick the pot, the variety, and the routine for a productive container tomato.
• What "Days to Maturity" Really MeansThe days-to-maturity number on a tomato is more slippery than it looks. Here is what it counts, what it does not, and how to use it.
• Open-Pollinated Alternatives to Your Favorite HybridsLove a hybrid but want to save seed? Here are open-pollinated and heirloom tomatoes that scratch the same itch, hybrid by hybrid.
• Starting Tomatoes From Seed in a Cold ClimateWhen to start tomato seeds indoors, how to harden them off, and when it is actually safe to plant out in a short, cool season like New England's.