Growing the tomato in Las Vegas: In terrible dirt and desert heat

desertlzbn · February 12, 2010

Has anyone read this book? I was wondering if it was worth purchasing. I cannot find it in the library, or any previews other than her website.
I wonder what type of tomatoes she is growing?

**mdvpc** · February 12, 2010

Iread it-its a small paperback. I think I still have it-if you want it, pm me and I will look to see if its still around. If so, I will send it to you. There is a book by an organic master gardener in Phoenix that is ok also.

brokenbar · February 12, 2010

I grew up on a ranch in the California desert, in the corner where Arizona, Calif and Mexico meet. It is true that the desert presents challenges for growing but a lot of California's commercial tomato crop is grown there.

The biggest hurdle to overcome, beyond the lack of good soil is water retention...sand dries out incredibly fast. Large amounts of compost, top soil, fertilizer, chopped straw, etc are needed to supply the plants with nutrients and hold moisture...you literally cannot add too many loads of compost.

The other hurdle is sunburn...My mother had a large garden and she erected shade cloth over those veggies most susceptible to sun scald. She used to joke that when it was 120 (and I have seen it hotter than that...) She could "pick" cooked spaghetti sauce right off the vine. That kind of heat can turn tomatoes to tomato's sauce...

I also lived for a short time in Northern California near Lake Shasta...routinely got over 120 there and the ground was very nearly all volcanic rock. I had to erect a sun shade over tomato's and peppers there..it just was too darn hot and cooked the heck out of everything. We paid 3500.00 to have a large garden excavated (they hauled out more granite and volcanic rock than you can even imagine) Had to use backhoes, jackhammers and large tractor with a chain to lift out some of the rock...you had to want to garden REALLY BAD....We then filled the excavated area with goat and horse manure and we paid to have top-soil brought in...I could have grown veggies there until I was 150 years old and probably never re-couped the cost, however, it added 10,000 to the value of our acreage and house when we sold it.

That sounds like an interesting book. No matter where you live and garden, it's ALWAYS SOMETHING...

dustdevil · February 13, 2010

Check out different kinds of raised bed growing. You can make a premium soil mix and then use cemment block, wood, stone, etc. retaining walls.

amideutch · February 13, 2010

Mittleider was an expert on raised bed gardening and could grow crops in his raised beds set in a parking lot! Ami

AZRuss · February 13, 2010

Howdy. Bought the book a a while back. It's an interesting, fun read but I didn't have much luck with the Leslie Doyle's techniques. She is a fan of dense planting (me too) but lets the plants sprawl over raised beds mulched with silvered plastic which without question does reduce soil temps. I don't have room for this. Also, her chief variety is an obscure hybrid named Hawaiian Tropic. I grew these last year and found them to be tasteless and not particularly any more heat tolerant than other varieties. Her secondary variety is Heartland--just as tasteless for me as the other one. (Very pretty plant, though.) She doesn't set out plants until late April or May and swears she gets a huge harvest all summer long, and she claims that, to her, Hawaiian Tropic is better than Brandywine. I have no reason to believe she's lying, but I'd really like to see this. Maybe if you follow her system 100% without variation it could work. I don't have the time or the money to do things her way.

kerino1 · February 13, 2010

Hi desertblzn -
I purchased the "Growing Tomatoes in Las Vegas" book to give my mom as a gift last year, and after seeing it in person, didn't think enough of it to pass along.

I *did* get the following book for her at Christmas, and after reading through it myself last week, found it to be a wealth of information for dealing with all sorts of issues unique to our locale:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0970501609

desertlzbn · February 14, 2010

I do have that book Kerino1 and have followed may things that he has written. I think my plants do pretty good until about late July. Then I don't get new blooms or fruit then. This year I am going to be trying to put misters on the gardens in the evening so they can cool down. One thing I may do is get some of that cheap heat retention emergency blankets from walmart and see if that can be used for shad cloth. I don't know if it would work, but it can't hurt to try can it?
Russ, I am potting up, I have almost 240 plants, I have no earthly idea what I am going to do with all of them, put a sign up by my house: HEIRLOOM TOMATO PLANTS FOR SALE!!

kerino1 · February 14, 2010

desertlzbn,

I think AZRuss summed up the "Las Vegas" book really well - you shouldn't feel that there is some secret that you're missing out on...

she's big on foliar feeding with kelp, raised beds, reflective mulch, drip irrigation, letting plants sprawl, staying away from 'Miracle Grow' -and not fertilizing soil - except for 6 to 8 weeks before transplanting, planting away from structures that retain heat, NOT shading plants - but shading fruit, and using the right varieties - which according to her are:

Hawaiian Tropic
Heartland
Stupice
Juliet
Green Grape
Black Cherry

Last year was especially brutal - and I had all kinds of plant stress and loss - even in my hummingbird garden. Let's hope for a better year with some real monsoons!! I'm gonna try the old cut the plant back by 50% and baby it through the summer with hopes of a decent fall crop thing....

cordially,
Kerino

AZRuss · February 14, 2010

I tried all of L.D.'s varieties except Juliet. Every single one of them shut down production by early July and Green Grape actually croaked--burnt to a crisp and dead as a door nail. My most heat tolerant variety was Gardener's Delight, but not by much.

Kerino, I'm cutting mine back more than 50%, and that's going to be my only attempt at a fall crop.

Sammie: advertise on craigslist and I bet you'll have a killer sale!! Go for it! $2 a plant, 6 for $10--cheaper than any nursery in town.

desertlzbn · February 14, 2010

I did plan to do that after I got mine planted out. Maybe the first of March. I would love to plant out now, but am afraid with as many as I am planting there will be a frost and I will lose them. The weather has been so screwy this year.

kerino1 · February 14, 2010

AZRuss - have you tried the 50% cutback before?

I'm a little worried, as by July - the bottom half of my plants are sometimes kind of bare. I'm still so new to this. On a few plants, I'm going to try pinching pretty hard for the first few weeks after transplant to try to encourage a lower growing plant - and all suckers are staying on the plants this year!!

desertlzbn - at least with having a few extra 'soldiers' it might be possible start feathering in your transplants? If something really bad happened, it wouldn't be a total loss ......I know this sounds silly, but I've already read a report of a Rufous hummingbird in northern CA - since they're migrating from Mexico, I'm taking that as a sign as the freezes are over for the lower western states.
http://www.network54.com/Forum/43974...+rufous+report

Kerino

AZRuss · February 14, 2010

Kerino, no I have not. Tom (ChalstonSC here) did this last year and had very good results. Granted, Charleston gets cooler faster than Southern AZ--we're not below 90 degrees until October much of the time, in Tucson anyway. But I'm willing to try just about anything. I'm growing only 15 plants this spring

so maybe I'll experiment with cutting some 50% on down to a nub sticking out of the ground. I do not have the patience for fall season seedlings anymore. Last fall/winter, nothing ripened on the vine before frost, and I picked everything green and ripened them inside. Actually, the Moretons and Black Krims were pretty good this way, but getting those seedlings hardened off and in the ground took plenty of effort. No more. At least with the cut-back method the mature root systems are already there. The trick will be to get them through summer alive.

Sammie, I too have this feeling in my bones that frost is pretty much gone for this season. You never know, though. I'm keeping a couple of Break O' Day seedlings inside just in case....

kerino1 · February 14, 2010

AZRuss - thanks for the reply.

I'll be sure to share my results - good or bad....

Kerino

chalstonsc · February 15, 2010

Kerino,
You don't have to worry about the lack of foliage low down on the plant in July. Most of the plants I cut back, which were semi-determinate and indeterminate, had no foliage on any of the main stems after I cut them back in mid July. The ones with no foliage grew new foliage as well as the ones with only a little foliage.

When AZRUSS says "very good results", I want to explain. I've tried Fall seedling plants for years, some years better than others, and Fall seedlings I transplant end of June to mid-July do better than those transplanted any later, I believe because they have stronger root systems. The cut back plants did as well as the best of any of the Fall seedlings I've planted in prior years, and better than most, but they did not produce as well as Spring plants. It stays pretty toasty and very humid around here through September, but as the sun sinks south my plants get less and less sun in my yard, which doesn't ever get a full day's sun, even on the longest days. So my plants are going to produce less in the Fall, due to less sunlight.

I tried the cut back last year after I had a terrible Spring crop, with more disease than ever and a vicious attack of flea beetles....so I figured what did I have to lose? While waiting for my Fall seedlings to grow some more, I was surprised by the vigor with which the cut back plants regrew the foliage and I let the best of them continue through the Fall. A grower in Florida also did this, and with much better sun than I have, had much better production.

I think cutting the plants back relieves a lot of the stress on the them, and it seems that may help them survive, with their fully developed root systems. Smaller plants seem like they ought to be less stressed, especially in containers which is how I grow. So this year, I'm growing more semi-determinates and fewer indeterminates, for more smaller plants. I'm also trying smaller determinates for my Fall seedlings to test the smaller plant in container theory some more.

Good luck in your more brutal sun, think it's worth a try. Unless my Fall determinate seedlings do much better than my cut backs this year, I may well end up just cutting plants back and forgetting the extra trouble of Fall seedlings. Cutting back is comparatively simple!

February 12, 2010	#1
desertlzbn Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Tucson Posts: 659	Growing the tomato in Las Vegas: In terrible dirt and desert heat Has anyone read this book? I was wondering if it was worth purchasing. I cannot find it in the library, or any previews other than her website. I wonder what type of tomatoes she is growing?

February 12, 2010	#2
mdvpc Tomatoville® Moderator Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: San Antonio, Texas Posts: 4,386	Iread it-its a small paperback. I think I still have it-if you want it, pm me and I will look to see if its still around. If so, I will send it to you. There is a book by an organic master gardener in Phoenix that is ok also. __________________ Michael

February 12, 2010	#3
brokenbar Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: South Of The Border Posts: 1,169	I grew up on a ranch in the California desert, in the corner where Arizona, Calif and Mexico meet. It is true that the desert presents challenges for growing but a lot of California's commercial tomato crop is grown there. The biggest hurdle to overcome, beyond the lack of good soil is water retention...sand dries out incredibly fast. Large amounts of compost, top soil, fertilizer, chopped straw, etc are needed to supply the plants with nutrients and hold moisture...you literally cannot add too many loads of compost. The other hurdle is sunburn...My mother had a large garden and she erected shade cloth over those veggies most susceptible to sun scald. She used to joke that when it was 120 (and I have seen it hotter than that...) She could "pick" cooked spaghetti sauce right off the vine. That kind of heat can turn tomatoes to tomato's sauce... I also lived for a short time in Northern California near Lake Shasta...routinely got over 120 there and the ground was very nearly all volcanic rock. I had to erect a sun shade over tomato's and peppers there..it just was too darn hot and cooked the heck out of everything. We paid 3500.00 to have a large garden excavated (they hauled out more granite and volcanic rock than you can even imagine) Had to use backhoes, jackhammers and large tractor with a chain to lift out some of the rock...you had to want to garden REALLY BAD....We then filled the excavated area with goat and horse manure and we paid to have top-soil brought in...I could have grown veggies there until I was 150 years old and probably never re-couped the cost, however, it added 10,000 to the value of our acreage and house when we sold it. That sounds like an interesting book. No matter where you live and garden, it's ALWAYS SOMETHING... __________________ "If I'm not getting dirty, I'm not having a good time."

February 13, 2010	#5
amideutch Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Germany 49°26"N 07°36"E Posts: 5,041	Mittleider was an expert on raised bed gardening and could grow crops in his raised beds set in a parking lot! Ami __________________ Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘...Holy Crap .....What a ride!'

February 13, 2010	#4
dustdevil Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: WI, USA Zone4 Posts: 1,887	Check out different kinds of raised bed growing. You can make a premium soil mix and then use cemment block, wood, stone, etc. retaining walls.

February 13, 2010	#6
AZRuss Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Tucson, AZ Posts: 171	Howdy. Bought the book a a while back. It's an interesting, fun read but I didn't have much luck with the Leslie Doyle's techniques. She is a fan of dense planting (me too) but lets the plants sprawl over raised beds mulched with silvered plastic which without question does reduce soil temps. I don't have room for this. Also, her chief variety is an obscure hybrid named Hawaiian Tropic. I grew these last year and found them to be tasteless and not particularly any more heat tolerant than other varieties. Her secondary variety is Heartland--just as tasteless for me as the other one. (Very pretty plant, though.) She doesn't set out plants until late April or May and swears she gets a huge harvest all summer long, and she claims that, to her, Hawaiian Tropic is better than Brandywine. I have no reason to believe she's lying, but I'd really like to see this. Maybe if you follow her system 100% without variation it could work. I don't have the time or the money to do things her way.

February 13, 2010	#7
kerino1 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Southern, AZ (9b) Posts: 14	Hi desertblzn - I purchased the "Growing Tomatoes in Las Vegas" book to give my mom as a gift last year, and after seeing it in person, didn't think enough of it to pass along. I did get the following book for her at Christmas, and after reading through it myself last week, found it to be a wealth of information for dealing with all sorts of issues unique to our locale: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0970501609

February 14, 2010	#8
desertlzbn Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Tucson Posts: 659	I do have that book Kerino1 and have followed may things that he has written. I think my plants do pretty good until about late July. Then I don't get new blooms or fruit then. This year I am going to be trying to put misters on the gardens in the evening so they can cool down. One thing I may do is get some of that cheap heat retention emergency blankets from walmart and see if that can be used for shad cloth. I don't know if it would work, but it can't hurt to try can it? Russ, I am potting up, I have almost 240 plants, I have no earthly idea what I am going to do with all of them, put a sign up by my house: HEIRLOOM TOMATO PLANTS FOR SALE!!

February 15, 2010	#15
chalstonsc Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: sc Posts: 339	Kerino, You don't have to worry about the lack of foliage low down on the plant in July. Most of the plants I cut back, which were semi-determinate and indeterminate, had no foliage on any of the main stems after I cut them back in mid July. The ones with no foliage grew new foliage as well as the ones with only a little foliage. When AZRUSS says "very good results", I want to explain. I've tried Fall seedling plants for years, some years better than others, and Fall seedlings I transplant end of June to mid-July do better than those transplanted any later, I believe because they have stronger root systems. The cut back plants did as well as the best of any of the Fall seedlings I've planted in prior years, and better than most, but they did not produce as well as Spring plants. It stays pretty toasty and very humid around here through September, but as the sun sinks south my plants get less and less sun in my yard, which doesn't ever get a full day's sun, even on the longest days. So my plants are going to produce less in the Fall, due to less sunlight. I tried the cut back last year after I had a terrible Spring crop, with more disease than ever and a vicious attack of flea beetles....so I figured what did I have to lose? While waiting for my Fall seedlings to grow some more, I was surprised by the vigor with which the cut back plants regrew the foliage and I let the best of them continue through the Fall. A grower in Florida also did this, and with much better sun than I have, had much better production. I think cutting the plants back relieves a lot of the stress on the them, and it seems that may help them survive, with their fully developed root systems. Smaller plants seem like they ought to be less stressed, especially in containers which is how I grow. So this year, I'm growing more semi-determinates and fewer indeterminates, for more smaller plants. I'm also trying smaller determinates for my Fall seedlings to test the smaller plant in container theory some more. Good luck in your more brutal sun, think it's worth a try. Unless my Fall determinate seedlings do much better than my cut backs this year, I may well end up just cutting plants back and forgetting the extra trouble of Fall seedlings. Cutting back is comparatively simple!