The National Gardening Association has found that, among vegetable gardeners, tomatoes are their favorite plant to grow. One in three Americans have a vegetable garden, and 9 out of 10 of those gardens have tomatoes in them. Tomatoes range in size from gigantic beefsteak tomatoes that can weigh up to a half-pound, to the smallest cherry tomato about the size of a marble. You can grow heavy-yielding hybrids or open-pollinated heirloom varieties in different colors, shades, and sizes. You can choose early varieties that set fruit when it's cool outside, mid-season varieties, and late-maturing varieties that will give you the biggest fruits but take 80 to 90 days to do it. Sometimes you'll need about 120 days to get a decent harvest, but hey, at least you get tomatoes! Tomatoes are so versatile and so good. You can cook them a million different ways or you can eat them, sun-warmed and delicious, straight off the vine. Some people grab a cherry tomato, a leaf of basil, and a slice of mozzarella cheese, and eat them like that. Welcome to the world of tomato gardening. There's nothing as sweet and good as a sun-warmed tomato fresh from the garden on a hot summer afternoon. It's no wonder that tomatoes are the most popular vegetable in America (though botanically, tomatoes are a fruit). Cordell's book walks you through the steps in raising tomatoes - through starting tomato seeds, planting (and tricks for planting tomatoes early), and staking and caging tomatoes. Readers learn how to fight off diseases and insect pests, decipher the mysterious letters on a tomato tag, how to harvest tomatoes, and how to dry, can, or freeze tomatoes for next year. With plenty of information for advanced gardeners, ready help for beginning gardeners, lots of expert knowledge, and a smidgeon of wit, If You're a Tomato will guide you in the ways of the vegetable garden with a minimum of fuss and feathers. And also with a minimum of weeding. Nobody likes weeding.Table of Contents: Tomato Varieties Determinate vs. Indeterminate Starting Tomatoes from Seed Planting Tomatoes! Planting Early BECAUSE YOU JUST CAN'T WAIT Growing Tomatoes in Containers Location, Location, Location Soil Building - Make Your Dirt Work For You Staking, Caging, Propping 'Em Up A Rogue's Gallery of Garden Pests Whiteflies Spider Mites Flea Beetles Stink Bugs Tomato Hornworms Aphids Kaolin Clay for Pest Control Diseases and General Afflictions The Mysterious Letters On the Tag Sunscald Tobacco Mosaic Blossom End Rot Late Blight and Early Blight Fusarium Wilt Heat Will Stop Tomato Production Harvesting Tomatoes Food Pantry Plea Getting Tomatoes Ready for Harvest The Truth About Green Tomatoes Canning and Preserving Canning Tomatoes Freezing Tomatoes How to Sun-Dry Tomatoes How to Save Seeds From Tomatoe
About the Author: Melinda R. Cordell worked as a municipal horticulturist, as well as in nurseries, greenhouses, and in landscaping for over 20 years. She's written gardening articles for national magazines such as Organic Gardening (now Rodale's Organic Life), Heirloom Gardener, Grit, Birds and Blooms, and others. These days she has a bit of a trick back but still types fast enough. Her other Easy-Growing Gardening Guides include Don't Throw in the Trowel: Vegetable Gardening Month by Month, and Rose to the Occasion: An Easy-Growing Guide to Rose Gardening. Up next: Perennials. She also has written several novels for young readers, and a nonfiction book about women solders, spies, nurses, and vivandieres in the Civil War.