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Experienced gardeners are well aware of this reality and have even come to enjoy the ephemeral nature of their outdoor spaces.
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A rite of passage for most beginner gardeners is growing cherry tomatoes. It can kickstart the love of gardening! Our tips make it easy. Growing cherry tomatoes is a great place to start growing all sorts of tomatoes. Most gardeners have tomatoes growing at some point. There’s much to choose from, with over 100 established varieties of cherry tomatoes. In the scheme of all tomato varieties cherries are easy to grow. Cherry tomatoes or Solanum lycopersicum were cultivated for centuries from wild tomato fruits grown in the Andes. Inca peoples selected them for their sweet taste and snacking ability. Anyone with the privilege of eating a ripe cherry tomato right off the plant knows why this happened. When you’re stocking up on tomato seeds for spring, consider growing cherry tomatoes. We like Chadwick’s cherry tomatoes from San Diego Seed Co. Whether you’re interested in heirloom seeds, black cherry tomatoes, determinate, or indeterminate seeds, cherry tomatoes make it easy to produce something worthwhile throughout the growing season. Grow them, eat them fresh, can them, and have sweet flavor infused with the sun year-round! Forget other tomatoes; let’s grow cherry tomatoes! All About Cherry Tomatoes Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme is also known as cherry tomato, as well as a wide selection of varietal names ranging from tomaccio to Sungold to Dances With Smurfs. They originate from wild tomatoes cultivated in the Andes by Inca peoples about 80,000 years ago. Tomato plants have trichome-covered leaves and fruits that cluster. The difference between cherry tomato plants and other tomato plants is that cherry tomato fruits and seeds are smaller. These tomatoes grow from flowers blooming on branches covered with green serrated leaves which connect to a central stem. External pollination occurs on tomatoes, but they are self-pollinators. The yellow tomato plant flower has five petals. After flowers die, fruit forms. The edible part of a tomato plant is the fruit. Leaves can be eaten, but they are poisonous to humans in large quantities. Like other nightshade plants, tomato leaves contain alkaloids solanine and tomatine that are hard to digest. Still, there is a lot of debate as to whether tomato leaves can be cooked. There are tons of cherry tomato varieties to choose from. I’m currently growing Cherokee purple cherry tomatoes, an indeterminate variety that exploded since spring moved into summer. They have purple skin, a red interior, and great flavor. Traditional red varieties are a great way to start your tomato journey. If a red tomato bores you, there are many types of tomatoes to choose from, including yellow and orange varieties. Planting Cherry Tomatoes Determinate varieties are easier to grow in containers (like the Air Pots stocked in our online store) or raised beds. Indeterminate varieties go wild in the garden and require a lot of space and care. Plant them in prepared ground. Leave at least four feet between each row of these plants. But choosing the right variety will have bearing on how to plant your tomatoes. Transplant summer varieties after the last frost. If you’re starting your tomatoes from seed, start those tomato seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost. Plant fall varieties a few months before the first frost. Tomato plants need deep holes, at least 10 inches down. Plant your tomatoes in deep holes to allow solid root growth and nutrient uptake. Add a tomato trellis early on instead of a tomato cage which cherry tomatoes quickly outgrow. The trellises or stakes (instead of cages) give you vertical room to work within your garden. This also prevents heirloom tomatoes from contracting diseases. Cages and stakes are great supports for your plants but due to clustering, consider a trellis for your tomatoes. Cages are a no-go here unless you have extremely tall cages that can handle indeterminate growth. Caring for Cherry Tomatoes Caring for a cherry tomato plant is easy if the right conditions are met and maintained every day. Here are key aspects to pay attention to.
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Learning how to grow peas is one of the best things you can do. These versatile, delicious veggies are huge producers and extremely healthy. Have you ever wondered how to grow peas? Green peas are one of those tastes that embody spring: bright green, crisp and sweet. Knowing how to grow peas in the vegetable garden gives us a never ending supply, and everyone should devote some garden space to this cool-season crop. But peas have an interesting history, too! Before humans developed agriculture, sweet peas were an abundant crop and a staple food that hunter-gatherer peoples would forage regularly. Interestingly, the Romans believed that freshly picked peas were poisonous, so they dried all peas before consumption. This was the common practice until a French gardener under the reign of King Louis XIV developed a pea hybrid called petits pois. These smaller, delicious fresh peas exploded in popularity with the king and thus spread to worldwide appeal. Now people all over grow peas. While we think of peas as a vegetable nowadays, the pod is biologically considered a fruit, and the sweet-tasting peas are seeds. All peas are considered part of the legume family, along with beans and other podded produce. Let’s dive into the world of growing Pisum sativum, the pea plant. We’ll go over how to grow peas, what environments are optimal, and even how to store them for eating later! Planting Peas Peas are a cool-season crop. Most people plant peas in the early spring as soon as the soil is workable, as they can tolerate light frosts. Plant six weeks before the last frost date if the ground is warm year-round. Planting peas in fall is also an option. Plant 8-10 weeks before the first frost for best growth and the largest fall harvest. In California or the gulf states, many people grow peas from seed all winter and early spring. Cooler temperatures are preferred by the plants. Gardeners in the south typically sow peas as a mid or late fall crop. The seeds go dormant throughout the winter and sprout as soon as possible in the spring. This ensures an early spring harvest. Unlike many other plant types, plant your entire cool-season crop of peas at once, whether early-season or late-season plants. This gives your plants the maximum time to produce before it becomes too warm or too cold. Planting peas like this ensures you’ll have an abundant crop with a steady harvest over a few weeks rather than a large crop all at once. As peas are tolerant of partially-shaded conditions, plant your peas in beds that receive anywhere between 4-8 hours of sun or a mix of dappled shade and sun. This means that peas can go in areas that other vegetables can’t! When choosing how to grow peas, they can be planted nearly anywhere if you’re planting self-supporting or dwarf varieties. However, vining varieties need to be trellised or staked to offer support as they grow. Larger pea plants require more support. If you’re planting a variety that is anticipated to reach 5-6’ in height, have your trellis in place when you plant so that the peas can climb. Avoid planting in areas with high winds, as pea vines are sensitive and can be damaged if blown off their supports.
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Did you know that what we call a banana tree is not a tree at all? Or that a banana is actually an herb AND a berry? Learn more bizarre botanical facts about this misunderstood tropical perennial plant, which can actually be cold-hardy down to zone 5 if you choose the right variety for your climate. I’m not much of a banana person (unless it’s cooked in rum and butter, though that combo will make anything taste divine), but I loved having banana trees around when I used to live in zone 10b. Among the many trees that grew in my Southern California garden years ago, there was an abundance of bananas flourishing year-round, all in different stages of ripeness. A few of them even grew over my hammocks and infused such a balmy and tropical feel to the setting, it was easy to forget that we lived in the city with foghorns blowing from the Port of Los Angeles every day. Even though I call them “trees,” they’re actually plants—and to be more specific, banana plants are herbaceous perennials. In other words, herbs. They’re one of those things in life that aren’t what they seem to be, the way tomatoes are technically fruits (not vegetables) and dandelions are herbs (not weeds). Bizarre botanical fact #1: A banana is an herb. That’s right—a banana plant is technically a large herb, distantly related to another garden rhizome, ginger. While most people think of basil, parsley, or rosemary when they think of herbs, it’s easier to see how a banana can be an herb if we look at more “exotic” herbs like lemongrass, horseradish, and wasabi. A banana is considered an herb in botanical terms because it never forms a woody stem (or trunk) the way a tree does. Rather, it forms a succulent stalk, or pseudostem. The pseudostem begins as a small shoot from an underground rhizome called a corm. It grows upward as a single stalk with a tight spiral of leaf sheaths wrapped around it. Banana leaves are simply extensions of the sheaths. Bizarre botanical fact #2: A banana is also a berry. During the flowering stage, an inflorescence (also called a banana heart, as it emerges from the heart of the plant) appears on the end of the stem. It is usually a long, tapered, tightly wrapped, deep purple bud. Bizarre botanical fact #3: Banana anatomy was coined by slave traders. A hanging cluster of hands on a banana plant is called a bunch, with each bunch holding 7 to 14 hands of bananas. As you likely guessed, individual bananas on a hand are called fingers. Bizarre botanical fact #4: Modern bananas have been bred to be sterile… but they DID have seeds at one point. A plant produces a single crop of bananas and then dies, propagated only by new shoots from the corm. Each of these shoots (pseudostems) goes on to live for only two to three years, but because the corm can survive for many years, the banana plant’s reproductive process is unique for a fruit. Bananas are bred as parthenocarpic plants and don’t require any pollination to produce fruit.
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If you grow banana trees at home, you may have noticed your bananas splitting open on the bunch. Why does this happen and how can you stop it? The answer is simpler than you think—and it’s the same for store-bought bananas where the peel may crack by themselves. Banana trees are one of my favorite additions to an edible landscape, an exotic visual that I certainly miss from my old garden in Southern California. The large leaves provide shade and the stalks produce delicious fruit (otherwise known as banana “fingers”) year-round. In fact, the word banana comes from the Arabic banan, meaning finger. (The earliest banana was only the size of a man’s finger!) And while they’re usually referred to as trees, bananas are technically plants—or more accurately, herbaceous perennials. Yes, a banana plant is an herb! In a home garden, banana plants are very low-maintenance, attracting few pests and requiring no pruning (just remove the stalk after you harvest the entire banana bunch). But one issue occasionally comes up: cracked skin on bananas. Why does this happen and how you can stop it? Why bananas split and get cracked skin The reason your homegrown bananas are splitting open on the bunch is usually because they’re overripe. Bananas should be harvested when they’re still green, and then left to ripen on the counter at room temperature. How do you know when it’s time to harvest? Check the fingers (the individual bananas): As the fruits mature, the fingers get fatter but stay green. About four weeks after the fingers stop growing, they should be ready for harvest. The bananas should be plump and firm, and the little flowers on the end should be completely dry or rubbed off easily. When at least 75 percent of the bunch has reached this point, cut off the entire bunch and let the bananas ripen off the tree. There may be a few bananas that are already turning yellow, and that’s okay. As long as the majority of the bunch is still green, the chances of those bananas splitting (before you’re ready to eat them) is slim. If you let the bananas continue ripening on the tree, they’re more prone to splitting open (and becoming kind of dry and cottony in consistency). The fruits can be eaten when they’re partially green, though most people wait until they’re yellow or even mottled with brown spots. During the ripening process, the skin changes from dark green to light green to yellow as the starch in the fruit is converted to sugar. Bananas that are fully brown on the outside are actually at peak sweetness—though this is when they’re usually composted, cooked, or frozen to cook with later. Another reason banana skin may crack open is temperature. While banana trees like consistently warm, humid weather, they suffer under temperature extremes. The peel may split when exposed to high temperatures combined with high relative humidity. This physiological disorder affects certain varieties of bananas and can occur if there’s a sudden heat spell in your garden, or if you get lots of rain in a short period of time, or if you leave your bananas in a sealed plastic bag in a warm room (creating a greenhouse effect). This study points to the sugars in the flesh pulling moisture from the peel, causing bananas to split at high relative humidity. The peel-splitting phenomenon also affects store-bought bananas. Though they’re usually stored on the cooler side of room temperature to ripen, the peel may start to crack if the bananas were exposed to higher temperatures during transit or processing.
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