How to grow tomatoes and lettuce | GET GROWING!
Channel: WTOL11
Date: 01/08/2020

We have a lot of die-hard tomato growers out there and I want to grow some of your favorites. To get the ball rolling, I found a few favorites I would like to toss into the ring.

PICKING THE FAVORITES

How about Brandywine? Oh, yep. There go all of the hands up in the air. My friend says this is a favorite because it just has that old world flavor and tastes like a good old-fashioned tomato. They are easy to grow and are perfect for slicers on the dinner table and will hold up if they are tossed into a salsa or a sauce.
Another good slicer is Rutgers. Veteran tomato growers say they are really easy to grow in almost any soil type and don’t need a lot of extra TLC.
If you are looking for some of the biggies, you can always stick with Beefsteak.
Brandywine is also popular in this category as well as Big Boy. How about trying Mortgage Lifter. If nothing else, try it because of its fun and unusual name!
More and more families are adding to their tomato patch so they can make salsa or sauce. Not all tomatoes work well for this. Roma’s are one of the popular tomatoes grown for canning, Amish Paste, San Marzano are also prolific growers with a good track record when they cook down.
If you have limited garden space, keep some pots of essential things on your deck in a sunny spot. One of my favorite centerpieces on the patio table is the huge bowl of fresh lettuce. Not only are they beautiful, but they are also tasty and easy to grow. It is packed with Bibb, leaf lettuce, red leaf, and tall romaine. It is a nice combination of gourmet lettuce. Other varieties like a salad bowl and Great Lakes are good choices. It is also nice to add in a little spinach for a change of pace.
Don’t forget about the herbs like basil and mint. They are easy to grow and can handle life in a pot.

SNIP AND SERVE

Small sprouts of lettuce will keep producing more leaves if you clip them. Let the small sprouts mature into robust leaves, then harvest the bundle. Don’t worry. They will be back!
I did an experiment with my pot of fresh lettuce. I cut half of the plants down and used the leaves for a big salad and ingredients for bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. I left the other half for another day. It took the harvested plants just about eight days to produce more leaves and I was ready for more BLTs.
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