Customer Reviews

Grow the Best Tomatoes: Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletin A-189 (Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin, a-189)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A very direct sudy in cultivating one of the best loved crops; tomatoes. Advice is straightforward, as are illustrations. Tomatoes are easy to grow but only after a few seasons of experience. Well, this bulletin gives you all that "experience" in a clear, straightforward manner.

Great little pamphlet. Quick to read, a lot of helpful information that I didn't find elsewhere in larger gardening volumes. Highly recommended.

I'm brand new to gardening, but this book contained very little information that I didn't already know.

I was hoping for information about supporting the tomatoes. My plants are a monstrous 8 feet tall and I've had problems with some of the branches breaking before I tied them. I wanted more information on how to predict which branches would break -- some are obvious to me, but some aren't, and if I tied every branch, I'd spend hours every evening on that chore alone.

I also wanted to know how many branches can be trained to one stake after they outgrow the cage. Advice on thick branches growing horizontally? What should the angle be between the branches and the twine - I think the twine should be slightly overhead, but how much? I've been tying square knots because that's easy in a crowded bush -- what do experienced people do? In addition to tying branches, do I need to support the clusters of fruit themselves? (None of those have broken yet, no matter how heavy they look, so I haven't been supporting them.)

How about garden hygiene -- should I prune every branch that has a leaf with a tiny spot? That's what I've been doing so far, and while my neighbors have problems with Early Blight, so far my plants seem healthy and productive.

These are the questions of a newbie gardener, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
If the book can't answer the most essential questions of a brand new gardener, who on earth is this book meant for? Absolutely everything in this book can be found for free on the internet, or on seed packets, or seed cataogs. I buy tons of books and ordinarily don't mind spending the money, but I want to feel like I'm getting *something* for my money.

Info in this pamphlet can be found in any newspapar gardening section in the spring - Sunday edition. Truly mundane.

As with all of these Country Wisdom pamphlets, there is only so much space in which to cram all the information you can on the topic at hand. It's almost better to view these publications as a report being filed by the author.
Anyway, in this case, i feel the author was able to convey his experience as a tomato grower quite well. He gives quite a bit of coherent, well thought out advice along with the reasons behind it. I found this booklet to be quite useful in my own growing of tomatoes. I dont use all the information provided within, but i do pay attention to it.
The thing i have realized in growing tomatoes is that there are certain shared experiences, i.e. things that all growers might experience, and there are things that are specific to your own garden.
This booklet does a good job of identifying the common experiences, such as dealing with the health of the plants, how to transplant properly, soil conditions and spacing, etc...

For $4, if you grow tomatoes, you could do worse than to read this, and you will probably reference it repeatedly like i do.

Just great basic information in a relatively brief pamphlet. I only grow a few tomato plants each year, but this has made me braver, and my results so far are good!

I use the Storey series to help customers in my landscape design business.They are a concise and an inexpensive way to support my customers with landscape maintenance questions.