SEVEN Tomato Misconceptions Debunked

What's going on? Welcome everyone to another very exciting episode here on my Gardener channel. In today's episode, we're going to plant some

tomato

es. I thought it would be a great opportunity to do a lightning round addressing all the

tomato

misconceptions

I have. I've heard it over the years, so let's start with the misconception that if you put a copper penny near your tomato plants, the copper will prevent things like tomato blight in the future. This is not true because you first have to find a penny that is older. which in 1943, was when they took copper out of pennies to save copper for the war efforts with things like bullet casings and bullet casings, so now they get most of your pennies out of things like zinc, so You don't actually get much copper content in your pennies, but even if that were true, copper doesn't oxidize fast enough to release copper into the soil at a rate that even plants will notice, so it's a very common mistake that my grandfather used to bury the pennies by swearing.

It worked, unfortunately it doesn't work, but if you want to keep trying too, I mean, that's just my two cents, they won't hurt anything either, so the second most common mistake is that if you add sugar to your tomatoes, it will go away. to make your tomatoes sweeter, this is not true, in fact we made a whole video on why it is not true, but in short, adding sugar to your tomato plants will simply add sugar to the soil, which can attract things. like ants, which can then cause things like sugar from aphids cannot be absorbed by the roots of plants, the reason is that the sugar molecule is too large to enter the receptors in the roots see a molecule like, for example For example, a molecule of nitrogen, true, a molecule of nitrogen can get into plants because the molecule is small enough, but sugar, because it's such a big molecule, is like trying to fit a square peg into a hole. round, it's just not going to happen, it's actually not big enough to fit.

The third most common misconception about tomatoes is that you do prune the shoots. You will get more fruit now, this is simply not true and the reason is that eventually those shoots will produce fruit. The reason we prune them is because they temporarily steal energy from the plant, which may appear to be giving it to you. produces less, the reason we do this is to increase airflow, so overall we have a healthier plant. You see it when we grow them. Here we like to cut a single stem and remove the shoots to make a cleaner plant.

This allows us to plant closer together, which will give us more tomatoes, but if we had just one plant and simply allowed it to grow and grow as large as possible, we would have a much greater overabundance of tomatoes than a single plant with a single stem on a small stem. Again, this is a misconception due to the fact that people say those saplings will not bear fruit, the fact is that they will bear fruit in climates that allow the plant to grow long enough, that is the big difference in a plant. which is a determinate tomato that has a certain height and a certain yield, you let it grow bushy as it is and we don't even flinch, but with indeterminants those tomatoes grow all season long, as long as the season allows.

They continue to grow, flower and bear fruit, so in shorter climates like here in Michigan it is advantageous to pluck those suckers so that we can prioritize the growth of a single stem, keep it healthy and allow the fruit that forms to ripen, that is the real truth about why pruning suckers is important: you won't get much more yield; In fact, it may decrease your yield slightly, but in a shorter growing season you can apparently get more fruit because fruit is prioritized rather than the future. growth, I really want to make some clear distinctions between you know the truth and the misconception of why we prune tomato shoots.

The fourth misconception with tomatoes is that if you plant basil next to your tomatoes, it makes them. sweeter, this is simply not true at all, now basil and tomatoes go together very well and basil will, in fact, keep your tomatoes more pest free. We talk about this all the time when we talk about intercropping and the benefits of putting herbs alongside. Plants like tomatoes may encounter aphids or aphids during the growing season, but the idea that basil will make tomatoes sweeter is simply not true. There have been a lot of double-blind studies and there have been very extensive studies where a person has a tomato that was grown alongside basil and they have a tomato that was just grown on its own and they can't tell the difference.

Unequivocally, there have been many studies where even brick-level sugar content has been studied. with tomatoes that have been grown alongside basil and tomatoes that have not and many studies show exactly the same level of brickiness of both tomatoes, there is really no difference, the only thing we can really determine is that we believe tomatoes are sweeter because the aroma of basil is so strong and fragrant that it actually increases serotonin levels, which makes you happy, and sugar also makes you happy, so that chemical reaction in the mind makes us think that we are eating a tomato that is sweeter because a tomato that has been grown near basil still has a lot of those basal aromas attached and because it has such an overwhelmingly great flavor, it has a sweeter flavor that can make you think because what you taste is so much of what you smell. when you smell something that tastes sweet you can also trick your mind into believing it tastes sweeter, that's really what scientists have pointed out as the truth between planting basil and tomato next to each other is a myth, okay, the fifth more A common misconception surrounding tomatoes is that birds love to eat tomatoes.

This is not true now, in fact birds peck at tomatoes, but scientists have proven this to be false several times and the way they found out this was false was that they put a water feeder next to the tomatoes and discovered that the birds left the tomatoes alone, but they preferred water, the water bath, the bird bath, ten to one and that means that what they are looking for is the water found in the tomatoes, what you can simply do is put a water bath, birdbath nearby. your tomato plants or in your garden and your tomato plants will generally be free of birds again, there is one you know, a one in ten chance that the birds will prefer the tomato over the birdbath, but it will greatly decrease the chances because on a dry day, birds need water just like you and I, and birds are biologically honed to become moisture-rich fruits, that's the exact same reason they peck holes in things like peaches or tomatoes and don't.

Don't get me wrong, it's frustrating no matter what, but we really need to understand how and why it happens because if you can solve the problem with a birdbath you don't have to worry as much about telling your neighbors that the birds are eating all your tomatoes, it's It's just simply not true, and so it might be true in a small subset of facts, but in most studies that have been done, after all, it's just the water that's okay. The sixth most common tomato misconception is that you can only grow tomatoes once a year. For a year now we've made tons of videos debunking this myth and how it's simply not true, but that's because many gardeners feel like they plant tomatoes in the spring, let them grow all season, and then when they're done, they're done. and by the time they're done it's usually too late to grow another crop of tomatoes, but what if I told you that wasn't true?

The reason is because yes, we have a spring planting of tomatoes, you know, a late summer harvest. We're probably going to have some pretty finished tomatoes, I'd say early to mid-September before they start to fade a little bit, but in early July and late June we'll be planting seeds in containers. tomato seeds seeds in containers these will be determinate Roma tomatoes and what we are going to do is grow these determinate Roma tomatoes in containers so that when the time is right we can plant a new bed that we are transitioning or phasing out or if the tomatoes finish early, we can take those tomatoes and put them in the same spot where those other tomatoes were growing and grow them in the fall.

Tomato harvest now, planting time is going to end. You probably know that we are going to plant them in mid to late summer. Harvest time will be very late fall. We probably won't get tomatoes until, I would say, maybe early October or so, and again we'll do this. with the sole intention of getting all those tomatoes at once, for things like tomato sauce, tomato paste or even just having tomatoes in the freezer, we're growing a ton of tomatoes at once and that's why we're going a with a determinate tomato, if we were to grow an indeterminate tomato, I think it would be true that you might get some tomatoes, but because they are indeterminate, they will grow throughout the season and because they started late and they really intend. to grow, you know it's two, three, four months longer than that, they'll get to a point where the frost will come and kill them, whereas a certain tomato will put out all its fruit at once and stop. growing will focus on fruit ripening, we can harvest all the fruit and then be done with it, and that's one of the nice things about growing a determining factor for the fall harvest.

We've made videos, in fact, I'm going to try to post a link in the description box below that video of us harvesting our fall tomatoes because people were telling me nonstop you know again I'm fuming because what I'm saying is not true and I just say look I would never post something that is not true here because my goal is to help you grow more food and if you want to sit there and think that you can only grow one crop of tomatoes you know for your season and when that crop of tomatoes ends tomatoes. the growing season is over, you can go ahead and think that and that's totally fine, but you're missing out on another tomato season where you could grow another 50 to 100 pounds or even more of tomatoes in a single bed like this, like this Definitely not, it is definitely not true that you are only getting one crop of tomatoes per season.

Okay, so the

seven

th and final misconception about tomatoes is kind of what I want to consider a general misconception because we mentioned how adding sugar to tomatoes doesn't help. In fact, making them sweeter, but in doing this episode I realized that there were a lot of other

misconceptions

that had to do with making tomatoes sweeter, so I wanted to touch on all of them because if you use them in your garden not only you do. They don't work, but they could actually be causing damage not only to your tomato plants but also to your soil, so I want to address them and the first is to add things like Epsom salt or magnesium sulfate to your soil, there is an old myth of that if you add a little salt to your plants to make them sweeter and in fact, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Now magnesium may help with plant growth, it will help absorb nitrogen to make your plants greener, it may give you more flowers, but it will have no effect on the overall sweetness of the tomato. Now, the sulfate portion of Epsom salt will help lower the pH of the soil. It will increase the acidity, which can help the tomato if it is in a slightly alkaline environment, it can help the plant. absorb more nutrients and be a little healthier, but that will have no effect on the overall acidity of the tomato. The second type of misconception about sweetening tomatoes is adding something like baking soda.

Wives say they add a tablespoon of baking soda around the tomato plant and that idea comes around the misconception of adding an acid to a base. Well, what happens when you take something alkaline and mix it with something acidic? buffers, so if you take, for example, lemon juice at a pH of I don't know 4.5 and you add something like baking soda, the baking soda will remove the acidity due to the reaction, it will have a chemical reaction and you There will be a substance left that is a little bit less acidic, it will have an acidity of maybe like six, so the idea is that you made something less acidic and in your language we have a tendency to say that something that is less acidic is a little bit sweeter. , but that's not how the pH of a tomato actually works, that's how it works in the world of chemistry, but in soil chemistry that's not how it works and ultimately what you're going to do is you.

We're going to change the biology of the soil by making it more alkaline because that's what baking soda is more alkaline and what you're doing is essentially changing the PH of the soil, whichit will inevitably make your tomato plant thicker. You'll have a harder time absorbing nutrients and you'll ultimately be setting yourself up for failure by doing so, so while it may not kill your tomato plant, it certainly won't help it, so the third misconception about how to To make the tomato sweeter is to add something. like vinegar so I was told my grandma used this trick for a long time and once I found out it was just a myth and didn't really work I told her and she was hesitant to believe me because her grandparents did do it. that and that was adding a cup of vinegar to a gallon of water and watering the tomatoes now againsimply watering the tomatoes with vinegar water will temporarily acidify the soil but it won't make the tomatoes sweeter because if anything if you think about it Well, baking soda is alkaline and that doesn't make tomatoes sweeter.

What is the reason for making your soil even more acidic than it already was? Wouldn't that make your tomatoes more acidic? If logic were true in transferred logic, that would be further from the truth, but thank goodness that's simply not the case. It won't really do anything at all, if anything, it will just ruin your soil because what it will do is your soil, if it has a pH of

seven

, it will make your soil very acidic very quickly and it will give your tomato plants something like that. like what I call Whiplash right plant or pH Whiplash, where it will be seven and five, seven and five and the more you do it, they will keep whipping them back to five and then they will slowly dampen back down. seven and that is not good for the health of the plant, it is not good, it is as if you go from a really warm environment and then you enter air conditioning, it is what they call homeostasis, it is a very complex term in which your body He likes to be in an environment. that's very stable, that messed up my homeostasis anyway, so tomatoes are like your body, they don't want to grow in an environment that's seven, it's comfortable with seven, a pH of seven and all of a sudden you're like five and then grows at a pH of seven and five, it doesn't like that, so you're not going to make your tomatoes sweeter by doing that, and if anything, it's going to harm your tomato plants in general, so don't do it.

I can't do that either, the most important thing I can say is to add something like mulch, add like black weed cloth which can help warm the soil. Having a tomato plant that is in warm soil has been shown to create more sugars, which equals a sweeter tomato. By decreasing the amount of water you give your tomatoes in a warmer, drier environment, those tomatoes will condense more sugars in the fruits, producing a sweeter tomato. If there is more sunlight, if they are exposed to more sun, the plants will It generates more energy through photosynthesis and that energy is in the form of sugars which will make your tomatoes sweeter, so if you are growing in a very cloudy environment or with very little light, your tomatoes will also be more acidic and then Also simply change the color of the tomatoes if you are growing red tomatoes.

Red tomatoes have a higher acidity than a yellow or orange tomato, which will typically be a lower acid tomato, so I just know those things, those are things. you can actually control those things that will actually make your tomatoes sweeter, not some of those others, but I hope you enjoyed some of these tomato misconceptions, there are a lot of them, like I said, but these are probably the seven most common ones I wanted. to Rapid Fire via I hope you liked it, if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven't already and let me know in the comments box below what misconception you've heard and if you've tried it . your garden so as always guys, take care of it and grow more, goodbye