One of my favorite thing to enjoy during the warmer months is fresh vegetables and fruits from the garden or from the local Farmer’s Market. There are few food sensations that better mark the summer and early fall months than the sweet juiciness of a vine-ripened tomato.
Although tomatoes are available year-round across the U.S., some of the most delicious tomato flavors come from 
fresh tomatoes that have been planted in late spring or early summer and ripen from July through September. The tomato is a wonderfully popular and versatile food that comes in over a thousand different varieties that vary in shape, size, and color. There are literally hundreds of ways to prepare tomatoes for eating. But, not only do they taste good, they are healthy for you. Fresh tomatoes and tomato extracts have been shown to help lower total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.
Tomatoes are a treasure of riches when it comes to their antioxidant benefits. In terms of conventional antioxidants, tomatoes provide an excellent amount of vitamin C and beta-carotene; a very good amount of the mineral manganese; and a good amount of vitamin E.I have planted tomatoes for several years and several of my friends ask me to provide information on how I grow them. 
So here is a quick overview on how I do it. I realize there are other things you can do but these work well for me. First, I decide what varieties I want to plant. Usually I will plant a mixture of heirlooms and hybrids. All heirloom plants are open-pollinated plants meaning they are created by natural means – wind, insects, gravity, and birds. These plants look just like their parent plants. The garden shops that sell plants will have the heirlooms marked as such. The seeds from heirlooms can be stored and used again the following season to produce the exact same tomato.
Hybrids come from plant breeders who carefully selected the parent plants to develop a unique variety with improved traits. Seeds saved from a hybrid usually revert back to a distant ancestor that is not the same as the parent plant. Two of my favorite heirlooms are the German Johnson and the Cherokee Purple. They are delicious on sandwiches. My two favorite hybrids are Jet Star and Better Boy. 
They have good sizes, are excellent on BLT sandwiches, and have the right amount of acid content that is great for home canning. When planting, I bury about half the plant in the dirt. This gives you a stronger stem and more hardy plant later. I plant them in hills and after they are used to their home, I will take a double section of newspaper and tear it down the middle halfway down. Then I place it flat around the plant. Then I take leftover grass clippings and place those on top of the newspaper. By doing this, I will not have to weed around the plants for the rest of the season. Straw can be used also, but I like the grass clippings since they pack so well. I made my cages out of that concre
te wire that looks like wire fencing except stiffer. You can get that by the roll from Lowes or any other large store like that. A whole roll is in the $120.00 plus range but you can make a lot of cages with it that lasts for many years. (See Photo) I have had mine for at least 20 years. If it is too pricy…try getting another gardener to split the cost with you. It is not unusual to have tomato plants in these type of cages to get 6 or even 7 feet tall. Now, I don’t like having to do a lot of work except for harvesting after everything is planted. So I take more newspapers and line the rows with them and cover with straw. This does several things. It keeps weeds out, it helps keep moisture in, provides food for earthworms, and holds down tomato diseases such as wilt and brown spot. These occur when dirt comes in contact with the leaves after the plant grows. One other thing, I never spray insecticide on my garden.
The most common plant pest is the tomato hornworm. They can be picked off and disposed of. BUT, those hornworms with the little white capsules on their 
body, (See Photo) I leave alone. Those are actually the eggs of a parasitic wasp that bores into the hornworm and kill it in a few days. They will help control the hornworm population. Fruit with black sunken areas on the blossom end are a sign of blossom-end rot. Although it looks like a disease, blossom-end rot is caused by a calcium deficiency, usually aggravated by drought or uneven watering, root damage and/or excess nitrogen. Fortunately, blossom-end rot will usually occur on just a small number of fruit, especially at the beginning of the harvest season. A layer of straw mulch will help. Or you can save your eggshells through the year and crush them then spread them over the garden. These are just a few of the things I have learned that work well for me. Feel free to leave comments and please hit the “Like” button here on this post.
