Garden Peach Tomato

Famous for being one of the first vegetables most gardeners try growing, tomatoes are truly the perfect beginners crop. They produce a reliable yield even when given less than ideal conditions and as one gains experience with time, their tomato crops are bound to get even more bountiful! It is also a known fact that home-grown tomatoes, specifically heirloom varieties, taste far better than anything you can find in a market (which mostly taste like water.) This is why vegetable gardeners always have a tomato plant growing in their yards. 

Garden peach is an amazing garden plant. Its aesthetic yellow fruits, with a unique soft, fuzzy skin are charming additions to any garden. The unparalleled taste of the fruit is perfect for salads, chutneys, sauces and curries. Adding even a fruit or two of this variety, along with regular market tomatoes is bound to enhance the flavor greatly!

Heirloom tomatoes are products with a high market demand and value and very low supply. Commercial farmers often ignore them because they are slightly less productive than hybrids and are less responsive to chemical fertilizers. Anyone who tastes an heirloom tomato is bound to become a fan. Older audiences often get teary eyed as the flavor reminds them of the types of tomatoes they got to consume while growing up. Unfortunately, over time these were replaced with the flavorless and nutritionally devoid hybrid tomatoes that flood markets today.

Aside from their value in their fresh state, tomatoes can be processed into flavorful jams, pasta sauces, ketchups or sun dried to make value added products with a high demand and market rate.

Tomato flowers are a good source of nectar and pollen for bees. Their dense foliage can provide refuge for beneficial insects like ladybugs. Tomato plants secrete pheromones in the air when attacked by insects, which can alert other plants to their presence. This allows neighboring plants to amp up their natural defenses and become more immune to those pests. They also stimulate the release of smells that attract natural predators like ladybugs and wasps. This makes tomatoes a useful component of any plant guild. Birds and small animals like feasting on the occasional tomato, they are useful agents for spreading the seeds of tomatoes via their dropping. In the following season you may spot tomato plants growing vigorously where you had never planted them!

Tomatoes do demand a fair share of nutrients from their soils so it is advised to amend the soil with organic compost before planting. In our experience it is a great host of mycorrhizal fungi, so inoculation before transplanting with mycorrhizae (Sold as VAM in the market). Seaweed fertilizer and other organic supplements throughout the year can increase productivity significantly, as well as improve the taste of the tomatoes. Over time, these amendments will also help the general health and fertility of the soil. Tomatoes benefit from crop rotation to prevent the accumulation of soil pests that can affect tomatoes. To prevent root nematodes, its best to companion plant tomatoes with marigolds.

At the end of the season, tomato plants should be composted in aerobic compost piles (high temperatures) to kill diseases, while allowing the stored nutrients to return to the soil. Following tomatoes with a cover crop like sunnhemp, buckwheat, etc is an excellent way to replenish the soil and accumulate more organic matter in the soil.