If you enjoyed this video, please “Like” and share to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching!😀TIMESTAMPS for convenience: 0:00 Introduction 1:24 Everyone Is Wrong About Growing Tomatoes 3:58 Wild Tomatoes VS Modern Tomatoes 5:58 The Real Reason Why Tomato Plants Get Sick 10:06 Stop Tomato Diseases Without Sprays 11:42 3 Secrets For Healthy Tomato Plants 12:10 When To Install Shade Cloth 13:03 Avoid Shade Planting Tomatoes 13:58 This Works For Nearly ALL Crops 14:41 Lessons Learned From Last Year 18:12 Adventures With Dale
This is so logical and informative. Thank you for making these videos. It is so nice to learn from other's experiences to know what to do and what to avoid. I also absolutely love seeing Dale as well. He is a true ham, so handsome.
WOW... I have been organic gardening for over 50 years and I am so impressed with your pursuit of gardening knowledge! I have incredible gardens every year, but I always learn something from you. You are a model for humanity in these trying times. thank you
Thank you! I really appreciate it. It is a tough climate down here. It’s been a fun journey cracking the tomato growing code in a place they don’t want to grow.
I used to be jealous of your warm climate. Not anymore. I remove 50% of the tomato leaves, cucumber leaves and pole beans, to improve air circulation and to expose the fruit to pollinators and to the sun, so it would ripen before the frost comes. I grow strictly indeterminate tomatoes. Half of my veggies are grown vertically on a trellis, with other veggies in between. I also employ successive planting to minimize the loss of plants due to bad weather conditions, or infestation. This way, I extend the harvest season. I have never had to use sprays on my plants. The most annoying insects in my veggie garden are earwigs and slugs. They love to eat Romaine lettuce. I stopped growing Romaine and started growing other varieties of lettuces that are not bothered by insects. For example, red leaf lettuce and oak leaf lettuce. I also manage to get healthy Boston lettuce heads if I plant the seeds early enough in my cold frame. This way, they mature before the heat comes and before the earwigs reach adulthood.
I always say if you're jealous of my climate, you've never lived here. Too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, too much rain, too many bugs. I can't really complain, because as a human, we get well over 300 usable days a year, and I'll take the climate here any day over where I used to live in NJ and PA. *But,* it is really tough to grow food here for the reasons mentioned above. It's a beautiful place for people, but a terrible place for most plants. Shade cloth has turned my NC summers into something manageable. It's really incredible how it's changed how my tomatoes respond.
Can understand the slug issues .. we've quit growing lettuce altogether for precisely that reason. In a wet summer, you can walk up the driveway in the morning and there'll be 4-6 slugs PER SQUARE FOOT just on the exposed gravel!
@@EducatedSkeptic Is it possible to grow salads in structures the snails and slugs can't crawl into? I think of hanging baskets or tower planters with some unpassable slug traps underneath...
Lemme tell you, you have saved us SO MUCH MONEY w/ your research. I live in Hampton Roads, VA and shade cloth has proven to be an outright necessity for our climates. I appreciate the primo gardening knowledge.
This makes a lot of sense to me! Last year I had tomatoes in a full sun bed and also in a part sun bed. My full sun plants got massive, but ultimately got sick and died. My part sun beds yielded smaller plants, but they produced until mid fall. Ultimately, I actually got more fruit from my part shade plants.
They do enjoy the full sun in the spring, at first. They take off like rockets. But then, spring turns into summer, the days get too long, UV index gets too high and the plants get scorched, just like if a person sunbathed on the beach for 12 hours straight. Those conditions would be deadly to humans, so it's fair to say it's also deadly to many plants. That's why I love shade cloth. You can plant them in full sun until the sun gets too strong, put up the shade cloth until the sun cools back down in fall, then take it off again. It's a no-compromise solution.
Our shadecloth here in Arizona has saved our tomatoes the last few years. We can get upwards of 115 in the hottest part of summer. Doing this has helped so much!
True. I live in Bulgaria, as soon as May comes, the sun starts killing everything. In the summer time, it is usual to see 55C or above at ground level, which is normal, but let's just imagine how difficult it is to survive it day after day for pretty fragile plants. Keeping tomatoes, peppers and aubergines in the shade is common practice here.
The form of pest control you described is called Integrated Pest Management (aka IPM). It’s an organic/sustainable practice used to strengthen crops immune system in order to make them more resistant to pests. I have a bachelors in wildlife sustainability and we were taught to use this practice, it’s very interesting to me that through experience and error you were able to come to your own conclusions and naturally integrated IPM into your system. Amazing work! I live in Texas and have struggled to find a gardening page that grows in hot temperate regions, looking forward to more of your videos!
An amazing thing happens when we run real, honest trials and evaluate them: we learn stuff 😅 I don't know about you, but I love finding out I was doing things the wrong way, because that means there is a better way, and I can get better results for less work.
I accidently discovered this same thing. We had that massive heatwave in early June a couple of years back, and we built a canopy for the garden. We continued to use it through the summer, and got massive, gorgeous, healthy plants! It really does work, and it does prevent most pests, too. P.S, I sub a lot of garden channels, but you are by far my favorite!! Keep up the great work, and thank you!
You are such a hard worker. It’s amazing all the great information you provide. I take notes on all your videos. I have learned so much from you. Thank you so much!
Back in the day when our grandpas told us to grow them in full sun, the sun wasn’t this darn hot! Last year I grew my cherry tomatoes under a 60% shaded area. They are the only ones that lasted.
@@freedomliberty7611 Ya I am in Texas and I remember it was way hotter when I was younger. Have not seen hot weather like when I was a kid in years. But I suppose location means everything.
@@ragnar9886 Summers here aren't really warmer either. We still haven't seen anything near as hot as the 1936 heat wave in my area (Great Lakes). Winter has definitely gotten warmer, and spring and fall have gotten warmer too, but summer hasn't really changed. The exception is in the big cities where it's gotten warmer due to larger urban heat islands. Toronto summers are probably 4-5F warmer due to all the pavement. But in the surrounding countryside, it's basically the same.
I live in the deep South and same heat as always. However, what has changed is the sky. Weather being man.ipulated with chem.trails. The s.k.y used to be beautiful🔵 90% during summer, and now 🌥️☁️😢
I live near Atlanta and share your humid woes regarding tomatoes. I moved from Wisconsin where my parents still live. Although I can brag because of my warmer climate, they always have tons more tomatoes than me. I bought a shade cloth end of last season because of your videos and am looking forward to competing with my parents who will get a better tomato harvest. P.s. I share your videos with everyone who loves gardening since our climates are so similar. Thank you!
Running a clothesline through the grommets ties them down really well. I show how to do it on the video I linked in the video description. It held it in place all season with minimal shifting.
We just had a freak storm come through here on Tuesday, it dropped 2" of rain and 2" of hail that ranged from pencil eraser size up to almost golf ball size. It was crazy. I must admit I'm glad we didn't have our shadecloth up yet. 😅
That confirms what I’ve been observing the last couple seasons. I live in ARKANSAS, close to the Tennessee/Mississippi borders. Wicked hot and humid. I grow 15-18 indeterminates in a 4’-8’ grow bed. Rough 24” between rows and 12”-14” between plants.. they are tall and bushy by the time it’s gets blazing inJuly. I’ve observed that all the leaves and shading kept each other alive as compared to my in ground plants that are 30” apart and 32” between rows… just an observation.. the grow bed plants were still producing into Oct/Nov… the in ground were cooked by August/Sept Everyone around me said they’ll never make it due to over crowding… they have been amazing! Tons of fruit and most are large!
I did this last year, i used the 30% clothshade and i did not spray a single thing in my garden. Acrually when i was searching youtube about shade cloth in summer, your video is what gave me confidence that it's okay to donthis. My zucchinis and cucumbers were healthy, no disease, my tomatoes were great. Only mistake I did was i put the shade cloth on too early. I will have to watch the weather app. Thank you so much for your wisdomatic content 🙏
Fantastic video! You did crack the code! All these years, we have been abusing our tomatoes with full sun locations! Thanks for sharing your epiphany! John McHatton
It's true! But, planting in shade doesn't work well, either, in most places. This has been my solution. It blew my mind last year. I'd never grown such healthy tomatoes down here.
They don’t need to. Tomatoes are wind pollinated. The male and female sex organs are enclosed in a flower, and when the wind vibrates the flower, it shakes up the pollen inside. That’s how tomatoes are pollinated. Bees don’t really matter, and it’s why most commercial tomatoes are grown inside greenhouses.
Man, these are the BEST gardening videos on RUclips! My tomato harvest last year was phenomenal thanks to you! The regular fertilization and electric toothbrush pollination works wonders! I wish you a million more subscribers! You deserve it (and so do they!). God Bless
I am in south-central Texas and it gets HOT here. It’s also insanely humid overnight and in the mornings and then desert dry in the extreme heat of the afternoons. I grow my tomatoes in morning sun and full shade after about 2 pm. They LOVE it. I can generally harvest tomatoes all summer regardless of the afternoon high temperatures simply due to the shade.
Your exactly correct as I'm a 64 year old gardener and this dog did learn a new trick. Growing with shade cloth in southern alabama is a game changer. For the first time using shade cloth I was able to grow purple boy tomatoes til November without any major disease. Thank you for sharing this information with others as it's amazing using shade cloth. I use 40 % shade cloth.
So funny- I had the same epiphany! I’m growing my tomatoes on the screened porch this year in FL, hoping keeping them drier and without direct sunlight helps. I also just planted red and yellow Everglades tomatoes, apparently they are native to FL and indestructible 🤞 happy gardening!
I'm from Queensland 🌴🌞 Australia and will do the shade cloth thing! One question, I was using netting which got wet in the rain. I didn't remove it for a day. Now the plant has just begun to have leaf spot and black tips on the leaves where the wet netting was. Should I just cut that part of the plant off? Thanks. 😊
I think the shade will be good for my tomatoes late June July and August. I typically get viruses but still get more than enough good ones through October
I kept Pansies, Snapdragons and Violas alive all fall, winter, summer, fall, winter, spring so far in the intense Central Arkansas weather in concrete containers, just by watering, fertilizing and covering when needed. Will be growing Tomatoes in my shady backyard the using your advice, thank you!
Outstanding explanation. And even without any secondary verification, this discussion screams out with obvious accuracy, given what all of us lifelong gardeners have observed. It's just that we never all put it together.
I’m so glad you verified my suspicions from last year! I’ve done a lot to fight what seems like blight and bug damage over the last few years. Last year I noticed that the tomato vines that grew up sapling trees near my compost bins did much better than the ones growing up cattle panels in full sun. Because of this, I allowed Sweet Annie to grow in the rows between the cattle panels. The tomatoes on the protected side on the Sweet Annie did better than on the southeastern side but still the leaves were a little too lacy so probably didn’t shade enough. I thought it might help if I supported with bamboo instead of hot metal so I’m going to change that but I’ll try the shade cloth, too, now. Thanks!
You just changed my mind about cutting down a well-maintained shade tree that impacts my small garden for a few hours in the heat of the day. I plan to keep it thinned and small producing partial shade.
I watched your video last year on shade growing tomatoes and I tried it. And it worked! I still have a tomatoe and eggplant alive from last year.And most of my tomatoes survived through the end of the summer.I'll try it again this year.
i live down the road a piece in Calabash and enjoy your videos! I used to be from NJ going on 8 years ago and I'm a Southerner in Training! Zone 8B here sure is different than NJ with different planting schedules. Your videos are very informative and I'll try the shade cloth trick this year. My potted tomatoes do better than the ones in the garden probably because they get afternoon shade.
Wow, Okay! As a first year gardener, I planted 10 tomato plants last year in South Atlanta, and while the harvest was ho hum, my plants lasted until frost. So this year I am 'REVENGE' planting tomatoes so that I'lll have more tomatoes than I can handle. This means I'm planting 36 tomato plants (I tripled the size of my raised bed space). I saw that deal on Shade cloth that Dale clued me in on,, so I jumped on it and I am going to test it out this year. I think that growing tomatoes this year, might actually be a fair fight.
From here in Maine ... I say OH MY GOODNESS! When we had the same reaction after a bad year, and planted TWELVE plants, we were harvesting by the WHEELBARROW load every two days! Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!! We were giving tomatoes to anyone and everyone who would take them, and still put up scores of quart-jars of pasta sauce, tomato sauce, and cooked tomatoes, and something like two dozen pints of salsa!!!!
I knew as soon as you started, you were heading for the shade cloth! But, your analogies were brilliant. You are a natural teacher. I listened to you last year and took advantage of your Amazon price drops recently. I am ready for this summer in the foothills of western North Carolina. Thank you!
You're welcome! It's too important not to share. This year, I'm trying to get ahead of the heat so people are prepared. I'm hoping every gardener treats shade cloth as essential as a shovel or a hose. If you don't have shade cloth, you aren't gardening. Having it on-hand now will lead to so many more harvests for so many more people.
I have a landrace cherry tomato that has reseeded itself for several years in my side yard. That location only gets direct sunlight for about 5 hours a day in mid summer and is fairly shady during fall through spring. It produces from late summer until frost and never has disease or bug issues. And lucky, lucky me, the tomatoes are really sweet. It showed up as one of several different landrace cherry tomato plants in several areas of the side yard the year after I grew named varieties on my side porch, and is the only one that has survived to this point. The other were really weird shapes, colors and flavors, lol. I've wondered why it grows so well there and it's got to be the protection from the oak trees nearby that give it some relief in the summer. Thank you for the info.
Depending on how many years, this tomato you call a landrace may be an open-pollinated by now. Only takes about 7 generations. Tomatoes seldom cross-pollinate. The stigma has to be exserted (sticking out) of the anthers for it to happen. So, good on you for a new variety unless the original cherry was already open-pollinated of course.
I'm here in Wilmington NC too and I've been worried that my patio only gets 5 hours of sun a day but now I'm thinking that's not so bad. I'm trying 6 different varieties and I'm hoping at least some of them will do well. You are the first person to give me any hope my patio won't kill my plants!
Thank you so much for sharing what you have learned as you learn it. I followed your success last year and since I am in Ohio, I put the shade cloth on at the perfect time and WOW. I have never had so many tomatoes. I had to finally take my plants down the second week of October. Normally my plants are dead a month earlier.
Even in Ohio, shade cloth is useful. I went to Cleveland in July and I couldn't believe how hot it was. It was 90 degrees, and I was roasting. It's *definitely* a game changer and virtually everyone can benefit! Glad to hear you saw success.
I just moved to Utah last year so it will be my first summer gardening here. We don’t have high humidity, but the sun is super strong and hot in the summer. I’m so glad that the garden area in my backyard is right next to a tree because hopefully when it develops leaves, it’ll help shade the garden area a bit, I’m so glad to have learned this info!
I used shade cloth for the first time last year and experienced the same relief from rampant disease and pests on my tomato. I am hoping to extend this to my squash plants this year. Thanks for such great and informative content. Keep up the great videos!
"... which I think is also a spell in Harry Potter." That was fantastic! I've loved your videos and learned a lot for years but that comment alone just sealed the deal forever! Thanks for the knowledge AND the sense of humor. Congrats on yoUr marriage, too😀
A bit early for tomatoes her in upstate New York, but I did a little planting outside today. I inter planted some strawberries in the asparagus bed I put in a week ago.spent a good bit of time in my greenhouse today with my heirloom tomatoes.
We are 5B and I'm a brand new gardener. I won't be able to start my seedlings under a grow light until 4/29. Do you think that's too late? Same question for eggplants and peppers. I'm ok if my yield isn't as much this year, I just want to know if they will survive lol. We are in Northern Maine.
@melaniebirkholz2729 I live in northern NH and the growing season is very small. I have had a garden here for 15 years and probably had 5 good tomatoe years. I start me seedlings indoors on April 1st . I plant outdoors june 1st. My problem is cool nights that leave dew on the plants and that's not good for disease. Early blight and late blight. Mostly late blight. And it happens so fast.
@@melaniebusmc no two growing seasons are ever the same as long as you don’t get a freak frost at the beginning or end you should get something,if you don’t you’ll get nothing!
The Texas Gulf Coast is brutally hot and humid in the summer. I followed your advice about the shade cloth last year over my fruit trees. Made an amazing difference! Have already built a structure to hold a shade cloth over my raised gardens. Will probably attach the shade cloth in mid-April at the latest. Thanks for all your fantastic advice!
I think I'm now up to owning 6 shade tarps. They're just amazing. I would consider them 100% mandatory for Texas. If you're gardening without shade cloth, you're not gardening!
i had a tomato in a pot indoors for >2 years...I decided to bring it home and plant it, I set it in the shade for 2 weeks or so then transplanted it, looks good so far - can't wait to see how it does and if it produces fruit, I'm sure it will...then I plan to put it into a huge pot and bring indoors and see if I can keep it going....
If he plants them in pots, I wonder if he has ever tried cutting it way back and over wintering it inside. It would give you a jump on the next harvest. I do this with a handful of pepper plants each year.
I tossed some shade cloth over the tower frames of our tomatoes last summer after seeing what you were doing. The tomato plants looked so much happier! We are in middle TN and I was still getting tomatoes in August, though not as many as I had hoped from the slicer varieties. The cherry tomato did the best and survived the longest.
I'm in Zone 10a, So Cal. Shade cloth is an absolute winner. Unless you're running cactus, no plant is really prepared for 90-100+ degree weather and getting blasted by sun for a consistent amount of time. The cloth cuts the temps down to the optimal level for most plants which is usually in that 70-80ish degree range. I even put cloth over my dragonfruits in the dead of summer because I was getting burning and rust issues which the cloth made magically go away. You're creating a spring-like climate in summer, its pretty great.
Good advice, as always! Even better, the guy who just trimmed our trees is coming back to rid my garden paths of grass and install Weed Barrier, as per your recent video ! Can't wait !😊
This is the first time I've seen someone realize that if you take plants out of their native conditions it will cause them to not grow as good as they should, kudos. Like for instance, I live in an area that's almost like the tropics. So, I put the tomato plants under the canopy of a tree and they grow great for me. Now, if I would have put them into the full sun, it would have destroyed the plants. But, because I live in a tropic like area, they will get enough sun under the canopy even in the winter months.
Good info! Wiping the slate of all the built-up belief system can address current issue's "root" causes. True in science, engineering, society, culture, you name it. Thanks for your efforts.
I took your advice, and planted my first tomatoes EVER under a 40% shade cloth. As an experiment, I kept one tomato section without the cloth. Same types of tomatoes, and all started from seed. OMG, you weren't kidding! The tomatoes under the cloth measure about 24" long now. The ones without the cloth are half the height. This def changes my garden layout for next year. I did a garden tour where you can see them on my channel. Thank you for sharing.
Incredibly important video. I live in a region of Northern California where we have several weeks of triple digit heat. My entire garden, most of which gets 12 hours of sunlight during the summer, is beneath a 50% filter shade cloth. And in some cases I add additional filters for the lateday scortching sunlight. I sell veggie plants and tell all my customers to invest in shade cloth. It's a game changer. Thanks for posting this video.
Wow, just wow! I have reflected for years on the Godfather’s backyard tomatoes under gauze cloth. This is Ohio and I know what I will have to do, as my tomatoes ALWAYS do exactly what you show in this video. I am going to try over head wires on 4x4’s as I have some. Several patio shade cloth applications are out there on RUclips using rings or snap locks on wires to install open and close over head shade cloth. Thank you a ton for this video.
My tomato plants are almost 4 feet tall right now and have a bunch of green tomatoes growing. They are about the size of a golf ball currently but should get pretty big. They are the slicing/sandwich type of tomato. I might give the shade cloth a try this year. I live in Florida zone 9B so it gets pretty hot down here and stays sunny all year long. I can move the plants closer to the house so they are shaded half the day and use some shade cloth on them. My tomatoes always die in the summer from bugs and disease.
So envious! We're in Maine,in Zone 3, and still have SNOW on the ground! LOL! BUT, great luck on your own growing. There is nothing more delicious than a vine-ripened tomato from your own garden!
Glad our backyard garden is in partially shaded. When we started tomatoes we thought that would be a problem Not so. Staying inside all winter, no sun, exercise or fresh air is a recipe for unhealth. Germs have nothing to do with it. Just another theory. I love peanut butter on my ice cream too. Animals and plants are more intelligent than people. Your gardens are really nice. Good content. Thank you, Dale's dad.
It will change your life in Texas. Seriously. I predict after you see the results this year, you’ll have a garage full of them for next year! I just ordered another. I think I will have 6 shade tarps now!
This definitely works! I'm in NJ and last year's sun was brutal! Everyone else's tomatoes were dropping flowers but mine weren't! And I definitely think it helps with pest and disease too.
Here in Alberta zone 3, i love growing my tomatoes. We don't often get into the 30s during our summer. I will however get some shade cloth and be ready this summer. "They" are warning us drought will be bad this year. Shade, mulch and aspirin will be in my toolbox. I've had great success treating my tomatoes with aspirin.
Greetings from Mallorca, the island in the middle of the western Mediterranean sea. The professional vegetable gardener nearby grows his plants year around under shading cloth. So will I do now. Thanks for your explanations on health. You are completely right say I as a retired medical doctor.
Now I know why some of my plants didn’t get sick. They were the ones that recived morning to noon sun only and more shade as the season went on . Makes perfect sense! Thanks for another great informative video.
I've given up on tomatoes in the Maryland climate, but I don't have a house and was growing them only in planters. Just got a house so excited to try growing them again with these tips.
Nice one Anthony, l believe you have hit the nail on the head. We have just came out of summer here in Melbourne Australia and l have purposely left some tomato plants growing. Many of the varieties took a huge hit to the sun with a large proportion of each plant dying back. Now we are in Autumn there is many plants showing new green growth. Whether they have enough energy to continue growing fruit before winter is another story. Shade cloth at 40% is going to be my next seasons plan for tomatoes. Great sharing and best wishes. Jason from Melbourne Australia.
Great video, last year I moved into a condo where I have a huge deck and there is a deck above mine, so I grew all my plants in 5 gallon pails 20 of them and I put the pails on wheels and moved them around as the sun moved, in my old garden my plants would all be diseased by late July and all dead by September, my new pail garden was still putting out tomatoes in November, healthiest garden I’ve ever had bar none, and that’s because the plants got a lot of shade during the day and I live on the ocean so there is a lot of wind here ..So I agree with you 100% my friend full sun is no good for tomatoes..Love your videos I always say you are a mad scientist!! lol thank you keep up the hard work and GREAT INFORMATION
Last year at the end of July I ordered and implemented shade cloth after watching your video on the results you were having. During that time we were having temps of 100-110 here in Dallas. Using your shade cloth idea, even that late in the season, kept my tomatoes and peppers alive until frost. You can believe that shade cloth is ready to go up again much, much earlier this summer. My deck garden will look like it’s draped for Halloween, but it will still be alive! Best idea ever!
Thank you for this video! I'm in zone 9, hot south TX. I don't have an in-ground garden and use grow bags and GreenStalk vertical planters to grow veggies. Last year was the first time I grew tomatoes. I did the seedling thing and transplanted late March. By June, I noticed my tomatoes seemed stressed. I believed that tomatoes need at least 6-8 hours of sun to produce fruit. My logic told me it was just too hot and the sun too strong for the plants. I have a large backyard pergola with a slated wood cover that provides diffused sunlight. I put the tomato plants under the pergola, and they did much better. Even put some of my other plants under the pergola too and they did better. What you are saying makes sense and works. I'm a believer. Transplanted 11 varieties of tomatoes one week ago into 10-gallon potato grow bags, which are 16" tall providing lots of room for the root system to expand. I let them get morning sunlight and roll them under the pergola early afternoon to enjoy the diffused sunlight. Happy gardening.
great video! FYI in some parts of the world, tomato greens are a very popular dish. I have been cooking tomato greens for years without any problems and they are quite delicious. I usually mix them with other veggies and sometimes with fried green tomatoes. Of course, I also heard my whole life that tomato greens were poisonous. Another wonderful green is cooked zucchini greens with the stems. Just chop the stems into small pieces.
Well. This makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it? Why did it take this long for someone to figure it out? Add to it higher temps makes it harder to keep up with regular watering, further stressing them out. I can't do shade cloth, but I can move the containers to where they'll get partial shade once the heat hits. Thanks for another great, very helpful tomato video!
Shade cloth is a gamechanger! Last year when I posted pictures of me putting up shade cloth over my tomatoes in a local FB gardening group, there were so many Negative Nellies telling me it's pointless since they've successfully grown with out shade cloth all there lives. Some people just don't like trying new things or thinking outside the box. I'm always willing to try something new if it can give me better results.
"Successful" is a spectrum. If all your tomatoes died last year and you got 5 tomatoes this year, you'd be successful. But, can you do better? We should always strive for improvement. Most people aren't willing to put in the extra work, and that's the difference between *exceptional* and average. Strive to be exceptional.
I grew Supersweet 100 cherry tomatoes and a couple of full sized varieties in the Dallas area a couple of years ago in containers. When it started getting really hot outside, I moved them under some shade trees. They stayed healthy and produced until the first freeze around December.
Wow! I live in rural Georgia, about 45 minutes from Augusta, GA. And I had almost given up on growing heirloom tomatoes because of the pests and diseases and so little yield for so much hard work. But I am definitely going to try your shade cloth method. I am also adding a couple of good hybrids to ensure I get a decent crop for all of my hard work, and to be able to preserve some tomatoes for food security with all the craziness going on in the U.S. these days.
Last year my tomatoes did pretty well (just the insane amount of yellow pears out of 4 types) but I planted everything way too close together and did not prune a single vine. They went absolutely wild. August rolled around and a sudden week long drought and then immediate heavy rain made all of the yellow pear tomatoes explode that had been waiting to fruit for those 2 weeks.
You do give and have gave me light bulb moments. Appreciate your thoughts on this subject. Hilo Hawaii….150” of rain a year and high humidity…..temperatures never get below 50 or over 90….roughly 12 hours daylight year round….high tunnels with good airflow and containers….nobody on this island can grow tomatoes or zucchini🤙
Yes!! I have always read tomatoes need 6 hours of direct sunlight! We moved and our backyard was all shaded except a few hours of early morning sun. I still put a garden in anyway and my tomatoes (and peppers)thrived!! I was shocked…. and I never sprayed a thing. I interplant basil, chives and marigolds and to help keep pests away.
Excellent info. I incorporated drip irrigation last year and I had no aphid issues or diseases. I will add the shade cloth this year and I expect great results here in GA zone 8A.
In South Central Texas providing shade is essential. In direct sun the fruit basically cooks on the vine in the summer months. I grow in sub-irragated containers in a structure similar to the one illustrated in the video with great results, having tomato plants survive well into November. A bonus use of the structure it protects the plants in heavy weather and a tarpaulin can be added when tropical weather threatens. TMG is a great channel with great advise. Thanks for your hard work presenting clear and well explained information.
Ive grown tomatoes very successfully in Massachusetts for years. This coming season will be my first in northern Maine! Im worried about the tomatoes with the cooler temps, less sun and lately, very very wet summers. Fingers crossed!
Such a great interview! I was hoping that you’d ask him about the name of his channel and where he got the name from. I read somewhere that his name isn’t really James Prigioni but Daniel Huff.
Thank you so much for this vital info. I don't like the idea of wasting sun (especially after living near Seattle), but now living in northern Virginia, I see how the sun intensity could be too much. Have you considered growing another taller crop inbetween the tomatoes to give a canopy? Corn, sorghum, sunn hemp, sun flower, or fruit trees. I think in a food forest or syntropic system, you could grow tomatoes under the canopy to utilize the sun and reduce stress on the tomatoes.
Everything you say makes sense. I grew a lot of tomatoes in containers last year for fun and l moved several of them under a canopy and l couldn’t believe how well they produced. They outperformed the ones l left in full sun. I thought it was just a fluke. I’m going to try that with my figs this year. Cheers from Ottawa, Canada 🍁
You are the man. Last year as you know it was burning hot here. My tomatos were unhappy and really did not get a good harvest. I had already bought the shade cloth and made the frame from pvc over one of my raised gardens. I normally grow tomatos in the big bags and will do so again this year. Will have to figure a way to attach to the fence. On OKI space is a premium. Thanks for this one!!
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If you enjoyed this video, please “Like” and share to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching!😀TIMESTAMPS for convenience:
0:00 Introduction
1:24 Everyone Is Wrong About Growing Tomatoes
3:58 Wild Tomatoes VS Modern Tomatoes
5:58 The Real Reason Why Tomato Plants Get Sick
10:06 Stop Tomato Diseases Without Sprays
11:42 3 Secrets For Healthy Tomato Plants
12:10 When To Install Shade Cloth
13:03 Avoid Shade Planting Tomatoes
13:58 This Works For Nearly ALL Crops
14:41 Lessons Learned From Last Year
18:12 Adventures With Dale
This is so logical and informative. Thank you for making these videos. It is so nice to learn from other's experiences to know what to do and what to avoid. I also absolutely love seeing Dale as well. He is a true ham, so handsome.
This was awesome thank you
@@donnabrooks1173 I'm glad I could help! Dale says hello
@@rawhoney2199 you're welcome!
@@TheMillennialGardener Right back at him!!!!
WOW... I have been organic gardening for over 50 years and I am so impressed with your pursuit of gardening knowledge! I have incredible gardens every year, but I always learn something from you. You are a model for humanity in these trying times. thank you
Thank you! I really appreciate it. It is a tough climate down here. It’s been a fun journey cracking the tomato growing code in a place they don’t want to grow.
I used to be jealous of your warm climate. Not anymore. I remove 50% of the tomato leaves, cucumber leaves and pole beans, to improve air circulation and to expose the fruit to pollinators and to the sun, so it would ripen before the frost comes. I grow strictly indeterminate tomatoes. Half of my veggies are grown vertically on a trellis, with other veggies in between. I also employ successive planting to minimize the loss of plants due to bad weather conditions, or infestation. This way, I extend the harvest season. I have never had to use sprays on my plants. The most annoying insects in my veggie garden are earwigs and slugs. They love to eat Romaine lettuce. I stopped growing Romaine and started growing other varieties of lettuces that are not bothered by insects. For example, red leaf lettuce and oak leaf lettuce. I also manage to get healthy Boston lettuce heads if I plant the seeds early enough in my cold frame. This way, they mature before the heat comes and before the earwigs reach adulthood.
I always say if you're jealous of my climate, you've never lived here. Too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, too much rain, too many bugs. I can't really complain, because as a human, we get well over 300 usable days a year, and I'll take the climate here any day over where I used to live in NJ and PA. *But,* it is really tough to grow food here for the reasons mentioned above. It's a beautiful place for people, but a terrible place for most plants. Shade cloth has turned my NC summers into something manageable. It's really incredible how it's changed how my tomatoes respond.
Thanks for the great tips 👍
@TheMillennialGardener but NJ is the garden state! Thanks again for all the tips. You have helped me a lot back home here.
Can understand the slug issues .. we've quit growing lettuce altogether for precisely that reason. In a wet summer, you can walk up the driveway in the morning and there'll be 4-6 slugs PER SQUARE FOOT just on the exposed gravel!
@@EducatedSkeptic Is it possible to grow salads in structures the snails and slugs can't crawl into? I think of hanging baskets or tower planters with some unpassable slug traps underneath...
Lemme tell you, you have saved us SO MUCH MONEY w/ your research. I live in Hampton Roads, VA and shade cloth has proven to be an outright necessity for our climates. I appreciate the primo gardening knowledge.
Glad to hear it is also successful north of me! It blew my mind last year. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I agree, he is my go to when it comes doing things naturally. I love his knowledge. People do too much with all these big farmer products.
Hi from Newport News!
@marinadoyle7593 Hello back from south Suffolk!
hey from Yorktown, Va. Thank you @themillennialGardener for all your content. I will definitely being employing the shade tent this year.
Lots of marygolds and basil work well for pests also companion planting helps
Marigolds brought in a bad moth problem for me. I can’t grow them here. Sunflowers work pretty well as trap crops for a lot of our problem insects.
This makes a lot of sense to me! Last year I had tomatoes in a full sun bed and also in a part sun bed. My full sun plants got massive, but ultimately got sick and died. My part sun beds yielded smaller plants, but they produced until mid fall. Ultimately, I actually got more fruit from my part shade plants.
They do enjoy the full sun in the spring, at first. They take off like rockets. But then, spring turns into summer, the days get too long, UV index gets too high and the plants get scorched, just like if a person sunbathed on the beach for 12 hours straight. Those conditions would be deadly to humans, so it's fair to say it's also deadly to many plants. That's why I love shade cloth. You can plant them in full sun until the sun gets too strong, put up the shade cloth until the sun cools back down in fall, then take it off again. It's a no-compromise solution.
Our shadecloth here in Arizona has saved our tomatoes the last few years. We can get upwards of 115 in the hottest part of summer. Doing this has helped so much!
115 tomatoes on how many plants? 🙂
@@EducatedSkeptic Sorry, I meant 115 degrees F. 😅
@@dawnteskey3259 Oh, yeah. Too hot isn't good for most things! Happy gardening!
It’s absolutely mandatory in most of the south and southwest.
True. I live in Bulgaria, as soon as May comes, the sun starts killing everything. In the summer time, it is usual to see 55C or above at ground level, which is normal, but let's just imagine how difficult it is to survive it day after day for pretty fragile plants.
Keeping tomatoes, peppers and aubergines in the shade is common practice here.
You are my favorite gardening channel !!!!!
Thank you!! I really appreciate that.
The form of pest control you described is called Integrated Pest Management (aka IPM). It’s an organic/sustainable practice used to strengthen crops immune system in order to make them more resistant to pests. I have a bachelors in wildlife sustainability and we were taught to use this practice, it’s very interesting to me that through experience and error you were able to come to your own conclusions and naturally integrated IPM into your system.
Amazing work! I live in Texas and have struggled to find a gardening page that grows in hot temperate regions, looking forward to more of your videos!
An amazing thing happens when we run real, honest trials and evaluate them: we learn stuff 😅 I don't know about you, but I love finding out I was doing things the wrong way, because that means there is a better way, and I can get better results for less work.
I accidently discovered this same thing. We had that massive heatwave in early June a couple of years back, and we built a canopy for the garden. We continued to use it through the summer, and got massive, gorgeous, healthy plants! It really does work, and it does prevent most pests, too.
P.S, I sub a lot of garden channels, but you are by far my favorite!! Keep up the great work, and thank you!
You are such a hard worker. It’s amazing all the great information you provide. I take notes on all your videos. I have learned so much from you. Thank you so much!
I'm so happy to know that my videos are helping you! It's a lot of work, but it's rewarding to know the videos are helping so many people/
Back in the day when our grandpas told us to grow them in full sun, the sun wasn’t this darn hot! Last year I grew my cherry tomatoes under a 60% shaded area. They are the only ones that lasted.
The sun is hotter now?
@@freedomliberty7611
Ya I am in Texas and I remember it was way hotter when I was younger.
Have not seen hot weather like when I was a kid in years.
But I suppose location means everything.
@@freedomliberty7611
Lmao unless you were trolling and ment the actual temperature of the sun’s surface.
😂
@@ragnar9886 Summers here aren't really warmer either. We still haven't seen anything near as hot as the 1936 heat wave in my area (Great Lakes). Winter has definitely gotten warmer, and spring and fall have gotten warmer too, but summer hasn't really changed. The exception is in the big cities where it's gotten warmer due to larger urban heat islands. Toronto summers are probably 4-5F warmer due to all the pavement. But in the surrounding countryside, it's basically the same.
I live in the deep South and same heat as always.
However, what has changed is the sky.
Weather being man.ipulated with chem.trails. The s.k.y used to be beautiful🔵 90% during summer, and now 🌥️☁️😢
I live near Atlanta and share your humid woes regarding tomatoes. I moved from Wisconsin where my parents still live. Although I can brag because of my warmer climate, they always have tons more tomatoes than me. I bought a shade cloth end of last season because of your videos and am looking forward to competing with my parents who will get a better tomato harvest. P.s. I share your videos with everyone who loves gardening since our climates are so similar. Thank you!
I totally agree about the shade cloth. They protect from driving rain, high winds and hail if you tie them down well enough.
Running a clothesline through the grommets ties them down really well. I show how to do it on the video I linked in the video description. It held it in place all season with minimal shifting.
We just had a freak storm come through here on Tuesday, it dropped 2" of rain and 2" of hail that ranged from pencil eraser size up to almost golf ball size. It was crazy. I must admit I'm glad we didn't have our shadecloth up yet. 😅
Shade cloth for the win. Good to see you're planning for hot weather - both for your plants and for your furry bestie.
It seems we go from "too cold" to "too hot" too soon. Since we can't have the climate we want, we'll modify it.
That confirms what I’ve been observing the last couple seasons. I live in ARKANSAS, close to the Tennessee/Mississippi borders. Wicked hot and humid. I grow 15-18 indeterminates in a 4’-8’ grow bed. Rough 24” between rows and 12”-14” between plants.. they are tall and bushy by the time it’s gets blazing inJuly. I’ve observed that all the leaves and shading kept each other alive as compared to my in ground plants that are 30” apart and 32” between rows… just an observation.. the grow bed plants were still producing into Oct/Nov… the in ground were cooked by August/Sept
Everyone around me said they’ll never make it due to over crowding… they have been amazing! Tons of fruit and most are large!
The best gardening channel on RUclips
I did this last year, i used the 30% clothshade and i did not spray a single thing in my garden. Acrually when i was searching youtube about shade cloth in summer, your video is what gave me confidence that it's okay to donthis. My zucchinis and cucumbers were healthy, no disease, my tomatoes were great. Only mistake I did was i put the shade cloth on too early. I will have to watch the weather app. Thank you so much for your wisdomatic content 🙏
Fantastic video! You did crack the code! All these years, we have been abusing our tomatoes with full sun locations! Thanks for sharing your epiphany!
John McHatton
It's true! But, planting in shade doesn't work well, either, in most places. This has been my solution. It blew my mind last year. I'd never grown such healthy tomatoes down here.
I am going to do this, this year!! I am so tired of losing my tomatoes!! Thank you so so very much!!!!!!! Savannah, GA
You’re welcome! This will make an *enormous* difference in your climate.
❤But they taste so good when you grow them yourself
Question: How do pollinators find the tomatoes? Thank you and keep up the excellent work!
They don’t need to. Tomatoes are wind pollinated. The male and female sex organs are enclosed in a flower, and when the wind vibrates the flower, it shakes up the pollen inside. That’s how tomatoes are pollinated. Bees don’t really matter, and it’s why most commercial tomatoes are grown inside greenhouses.
Man, these are the BEST gardening videos on RUclips! My tomato harvest last year was phenomenal thanks to you! The regular fertilization and electric toothbrush pollination works wonders! I wish you a million more subscribers! You deserve it (and so do they!). God Bless
I am in south-central Texas and it gets HOT here. It’s also insanely humid overnight and in the mornings and then desert dry in the extreme heat of the afternoons. I grow my tomatoes in morning sun and full shade after about 2 pm. They LOVE it. I can generally harvest tomatoes all summer regardless of the afternoon high temperatures simply due to the shade.
Your exactly correct as I'm a 64 year old gardener and this dog did learn a new trick. Growing with shade cloth in southern alabama is a game changer. For the first time using shade cloth I was able to grow purple boy tomatoes til November without any major disease. Thank you for sharing this information with others as it's amazing using shade cloth. I use 40 % shade cloth.
I found a lot of plants don’t like the hot summer sun part shade is great
So funny- I had the same epiphany! I’m growing my tomatoes on the screened porch this year in FL, hoping keeping them drier and without direct sunlight helps. I also just planted red and yellow Everglades tomatoes, apparently they are native to FL and indestructible 🤞 happy gardening!
I'm from Queensland 🌴🌞 Australia and will do the shade cloth thing! One question, I was using netting which got wet in the rain. I didn't remove it for a day. Now the plant has just begun to have leaf spot and black tips on the leaves where the wet netting was.
Should I just cut that part of the plant off?
Thanks. 😊
I think the shade will be good for my tomatoes late June July and August. I typically get viruses but still get more than enough good ones through October
I kept Pansies, Snapdragons and Violas alive all fall, winter, summer, fall, winter, spring so far in the intense Central Arkansas weather in concrete containers, just by watering, fertilizing and covering when needed. Will be growing Tomatoes in my shady backyard the using your advice, thank you!
🙋🏻♀️ SEARCY AR here. Yep, it’s BRUTAL in the summer here (but we love it 🤪)!
Outstanding explanation. And even without any secondary verification, this discussion screams out with obvious accuracy, given what all of us lifelong gardeners have observed. It's just that we never all put it together.
I’m so glad you verified my suspicions from last year! I’ve done a lot to fight what seems like blight and bug damage over the last few years. Last year I noticed that the tomato vines that grew up sapling trees near my compost bins did much better than the ones growing up cattle panels in full sun. Because of this, I allowed Sweet Annie to grow in the rows between the cattle panels. The tomatoes on the protected side on the Sweet Annie did better than on the southeastern side but still the leaves were a little too lacy so probably didn’t shade enough. I thought it might help if I supported with bamboo instead of hot metal so I’m going to change that but I’ll try the shade cloth, too, now. Thanks!
You just changed my mind about cutting down a well-maintained shade tree that impacts my small garden for a few hours in the heat of the day.
I plan to keep it thinned and small producing partial shade.
Zone 7, so high heat and little rain. This year the weather is crazy, 52 this morning, no rain till friday, when we go to 70, and maybe rain.
I watched your video last year on shade growing tomatoes and I tried it. And it worked! I still have a tomatoe and eggplant alive from last year.And most of my tomatoes survived through the end of the summer.I'll try it again this year.
i live down the road a piece in Calabash and enjoy your videos! I used to be from NJ going on 8 years ago and I'm a Southerner in Training! Zone 8B here sure is different than NJ with different planting schedules. Your videos are very informative and I'll try the shade cloth trick this year. My potted tomatoes do better than the ones in the garden probably because they get afternoon shade.
Wow, Okay! As a first year gardener, I planted 10 tomato plants last year in South Atlanta, and while the harvest was ho hum, my plants lasted until frost. So this year I am 'REVENGE' planting tomatoes so that I'lll have more tomatoes than I can handle. This means I'm planting 36 tomato plants (I tripled the size of my raised bed space). I saw that deal on Shade cloth that Dale clued me in on,, so I jumped on it and I am going to test it out this year. I think that growing tomatoes this year, might actually be a fair fight.
Good luck!
From here in Maine ... I say OH MY GOODNESS! When we had the same reaction after a bad year, and planted TWELVE plants, we were harvesting by the WHEELBARROW load every two days! Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!! We were giving tomatoes to anyone and everyone who would take them, and still put up scores of quart-jars of pasta sauce, tomato sauce, and cooked tomatoes, and something like two dozen pints of salsa!!!!
I'm trying the shade cloth this year as well! Last summer was AWFUL for everything.
As a fellow North Carolinian (just outside of Wilmington), you have REALLY helped our garden! Thank you for this and all your great videos!
Yeah man, good work!
Thank you!
awesome discovery! add shade in the heat!
I knew as soon as you started, you were heading for the shade cloth! But, your analogies were brilliant. You are a natural teacher. I listened to you last year and took advantage of your Amazon price drops recently. I am ready for this summer in the foothills of western North Carolina. Thank you!
You're welcome! It's too important not to share. This year, I'm trying to get ahead of the heat so people are prepared. I'm hoping every gardener treats shade cloth as essential as a shovel or a hose. If you don't have shade cloth, you aren't gardening. Having it on-hand now will lead to so many more harvests for so many more people.
lol and you just talked about shade cloth i ordered last year after your video,nice
Phenominal info on this video! Thanks! I will love my partial shade raised garden plot more now.
My Texas raised bed garden is under a tree. The tomatoes get AM sun and then spotty sun. People thought I was crazy.
I’m sure it helps a lot.
I have a landrace cherry tomato that has reseeded itself for several years in my side yard. That location only gets direct sunlight for about 5 hours a day in mid summer and is fairly shady during fall through spring. It produces from late summer until frost and never has disease or bug issues. And lucky, lucky me, the tomatoes are really sweet. It showed up as one of several different landrace cherry tomato plants in several areas of the side yard the year after I grew named varieties on my side porch, and is the only one that has survived to this point. The other were really weird shapes, colors and flavors, lol.
I've wondered why it grows so well there and it's got to be the protection from the oak trees nearby that give it some relief in the summer.
Thank you for the info.
Depending on how many years, this tomato you call a landrace may be an open-pollinated by now. Only takes about 7 generations. Tomatoes seldom cross-pollinate. The stigma has to be exserted (sticking out) of the anthers for it to happen. So, good on you for a new variety unless the original cherry was already open-pollinated of course.
I'm here in Wilmington NC too and I've been worried that my patio only gets 5 hours of sun a day but now I'm thinking that's not so bad. I'm trying 6 different varieties and I'm hoping at least some of them will do well. You are the first person to give me any hope my patio won't kill my plants!
Thank you so much for sharing what you have learned as you learn it. I followed your success last year and since I am in Ohio, I put the shade cloth on at the perfect time and WOW. I have never had so many tomatoes. I had to finally take my plants down the second week of October. Normally my plants are dead a month earlier.
Even in Ohio, shade cloth is useful. I went to Cleveland in July and I couldn't believe how hot it was. It was 90 degrees, and I was roasting. It's *definitely* a game changer and virtually everyone can benefit! Glad to hear you saw success.
Great info ❤️ My favorite gardening tools are shade cloth, frost cloth and insect netting
Yes, yes and yes! I have a shed full of them!
I just moved to Utah last year so it will be my first summer gardening here. We don’t have high humidity, but the sun is super strong and hot in the summer. I’m so glad that the garden area in my backyard is right next to a tree because hopefully when it develops leaves, it’ll help shade the garden area a bit, I’m so glad to have learned this info!
I used shade cloth for the first time last year and experienced the same relief from rampant disease and pests on my tomato. I am hoping to extend this to my squash plants this year. Thanks for such great and informative content. Keep up the great videos!
You’re welcome! Glad to hear it helped you, too!
"... which I think is also a spell in Harry Potter." That was fantastic! I've loved your videos and learned a lot for years but that comment alone just sealed the deal forever! Thanks for the knowledge AND the sense of humor. Congrats on yoUr marriage, too😀
A bit early for tomatoes her in upstate New York, but I did a little planting outside today. I inter planted some strawberries in the asparagus bed I put in a week ago.spent a good bit of time in my greenhouse today with my heirloom tomatoes.
We are 5B and I'm a brand new gardener. I won't be able to start my seedlings under a grow light until 4/29. Do you think that's too late? Same question for eggplants and peppers. I'm ok if my yield isn't as much this year, I just want to know if they will survive lol. We are in Northern Maine.
@melaniebirkholz2729 I live in northern NH and the growing season is very small. I have had a garden here for 15 years and probably had 5 good tomatoe years. I start me seedlings indoors on April 1st . I plant outdoors june 1st. My problem is cool nights that leave dew on the plants and that's not good for disease. Early blight and late blight. Mostly late blight. And it happens so fast.
@@melaniebusmc no two growing seasons are ever the same as long as you don’t get a freak frost at the beginning or end you should get something,if you don’t you’ll get nothing!
The Texas Gulf Coast is brutally hot and humid in the summer. I followed your advice about the shade cloth last year over my fruit trees. Made an amazing difference! Have already built a structure to hold a shade cloth over my raised gardens. Will probably attach the shade cloth in mid-April at the latest. Thanks for all your fantastic advice!
I think I'm now up to owning 6 shade tarps. They're just amazing. I would consider them 100% mandatory for Texas. If you're gardening without shade cloth, you're not gardening!
i had a tomato in a pot indoors for >2 years...I decided to bring it home and plant it, I set it in the shade for 2 weeks or so then transplanted it, looks good so far - can't wait to see how it does and if it produces fruit, I'm sure it will...then I plan to put it into a huge pot and bring indoors and see if I can keep it going....
If he plants them in pots, I wonder if he has ever tried cutting it way back and over wintering it inside. It would give you a jump on the next harvest. I do this with a handful of pepper plants each year.
I tossed some shade cloth over the tower frames of our tomatoes last summer after seeing what you were doing. The tomato plants looked so much happier! We are in middle TN and I was still getting tomatoes in August, though not as many as I had hoped from the slicer varieties. The cherry tomato did the best and survived the longest.
I'm in Zone 10a, So Cal. Shade cloth is an absolute winner. Unless you're running cactus, no plant is really prepared for 90-100+ degree weather and getting blasted by sun for a consistent amount of time. The cloth cuts the temps down to the optimal level for most plants which is usually in that 70-80ish degree range. I even put cloth over my dragonfruits in the dead of summer because I was getting burning and rust issues which the cloth made magically go away. You're creating a spring-like climate in summer, its pretty great.
Makes so much sense, going to use the shade cloth this season. Good stuff here.
Thank you! My tomato plants produced but nothing i could use last year! I'm definitely taking your advice this year! I'm in upstate South Carolina!
This will be a game changer for you. It'll make the tomatoes so much happier!
This has been so educational! All other videos or reading material tell you, crops need 8+ hours of direct sun.
I love how Dale starts licking his lips just when he sees the bowl coming! 😂❤ I love dogs!
The juice factory starts flowing 😂
Good advice, as always!
Even better, the guy who just trimmed our trees is coming back to rid my garden paths of grass and install Weed Barrier, as per your recent video ! Can't wait !😊
This is the first time I've seen someone realize that if you take plants out of their native conditions it will cause them to not grow as good as they should, kudos. Like for instance, I live in an area that's almost like the tropics. So, I put the tomato plants under the canopy of a tree and they grow great for me. Now, if I would have put them into the full sun, it would have destroyed the plants. But, because I live in a tropic like area, they will get enough sun under the canopy even in the winter months.
Good info! Wiping the slate of all the built-up belief system can address current issue's "root" causes. True in science, engineering, society, culture, you name it. Thanks for your efforts.
I took your advice, and planted my first tomatoes EVER under a 40% shade cloth. As an experiment, I kept one tomato section without the cloth. Same types of tomatoes, and all started from seed. OMG, you weren't kidding! The tomatoes under the cloth measure about 24" long now. The ones without the cloth are half the height. This def changes my garden layout for next year. I did a garden tour where you can see them on my channel. Thank you for sharing.
Incredibly important video. I live in a region of Northern California where we have several weeks of triple digit heat. My entire garden, most of which gets 12 hours of sunlight during the summer, is beneath a 50% filter shade cloth. And in some cases I add additional filters for the lateday scortching sunlight. I sell veggie plants and tell all my customers to invest in shade cloth. It's a game changer. Thanks for posting this video.
Wow, just wow! I have reflected for years on the Godfather’s backyard tomatoes under gauze cloth. This is Ohio and I know what I will have to do, as my tomatoes ALWAYS do exactly what you show in this video. I am going to try over head wires on 4x4’s as I have some. Several patio shade cloth applications are out there on RUclips using rings or snap locks on wires to install open and close over head shade cloth. Thank you a ton for this video.
My tomato plants are almost 4 feet tall right now and have a bunch of green tomatoes growing. They are about the size of a golf ball currently but should get pretty big. They are the slicing/sandwich type of tomato. I might give the shade cloth a try this year. I live in Florida zone 9B so it gets pretty hot down here and stays sunny all year long. I can move the plants closer to the house so they are shaded half the day and use some shade cloth on them. My tomatoes always die in the summer from bugs and disease.
So envious! We're in Maine,in Zone 3, and still have SNOW on the ground! LOL! BUT, great luck on your own growing. There is nothing more delicious than a vine-ripened tomato from your own garden!
Glad our backyard garden is in partially shaded. When we started tomatoes we thought that would be a problem Not so. Staying inside all winter, no sun, exercise or fresh air is a recipe for unhealth. Germs have nothing to do with it. Just another theory. I love peanut butter on my ice cream too. Animals and plants are more intelligent than people. Your gardens are really nice. Good content. Thank you, Dale's dad.
Because of this video I’m ordering shade cloth, I’m in Texas & my tomatoes just can’t take the heat past June. Thank you.
It will change your life in Texas. Seriously. I predict after you see the results this year, you’ll have a garage full of them for next year! I just ordered another. I think I will have 6 shade tarps now!
This definitely works! I'm in NJ and last year's sun was brutal! Everyone else's tomatoes were dropping flowers but mine weren't! And I definitely think it helps with pest and disease too.
Millennial Gardner love your RUclips info. What is the black mat you use under you grow buckets. Thanks
Here in Alberta zone 3, i love growing my tomatoes. We don't often get into the 30s during our summer. I will however get some shade cloth and be ready this summer. "They" are warning us drought will be bad this year. Shade, mulch and aspirin will be in my toolbox. I've had great success treating my tomatoes with aspirin.
Greetings from Mallorca, the island in the middle of the western Mediterranean sea.
The professional vegetable gardener nearby grows his plants year around under shading cloth.
So will I do now.
Thanks for your explanations on health. You are completely right say I as a retired medical doctor.
Now I know why some of my plants didn’t get sick.
They were the ones that recived morning to noon sun only and more shade as the season went on .
Makes perfect sense!
Thanks for another great informative video.
I've given up on tomatoes in the Maryland climate, but I don't have a house and was growing them only in planters. Just got a house so excited to try growing them again with these tips.
Nice one Anthony, l believe you have hit the nail on the head. We have just came out of summer here in Melbourne Australia and l have purposely left some tomato plants growing. Many of the varieties took a huge hit to the sun with a large proportion of each plant dying back. Now we are in Autumn there is many plants showing new green growth. Whether they have enough energy to continue growing fruit before winter is another story. Shade cloth at 40% is going to be my next seasons plan for tomatoes. Great sharing and best wishes. Jason from Melbourne Australia.
This is interesting, I am in Kentucky and it gets extremely hot and humid and my tomatoes thrive and produce until October when we get frost.
I have used shade over my tomatoes and other warm weather veggies for the last two years and no issues at all. Good sharing of great info!
Thanks!
Great video, last year I moved into a condo where I have a huge deck and there is a deck above mine, so I grew all my plants in 5 gallon pails 20 of them and I put the pails on wheels and moved them around as the sun moved, in my old garden my plants would all be diseased by late July and all dead by September, my new pail garden was still putting out tomatoes in November, healthiest garden I’ve ever had bar none, and that’s because the plants got a lot of shade during the day and I live on the ocean so there is a lot of wind here ..So I agree with you 100% my friend full sun is no good for tomatoes..Love your videos I always say you are a mad scientist!! lol thank you keep up the hard work and GREAT INFORMATION
Last year at the end of July I ordered and implemented shade cloth after watching your video on the results you were having. During that time we were having temps of 100-110 here in Dallas. Using your shade cloth idea, even that late in the season, kept my tomatoes and peppers alive until frost. You can believe that shade cloth is ready to go up again much, much earlier this summer. My deck garden will look like it’s draped for Halloween, but it will still be alive! Best idea ever!
Thank you for this video! I'm in zone 9, hot south TX. I don't have an in-ground garden and use grow bags and GreenStalk vertical planters to grow veggies. Last year was the first time I grew tomatoes. I did the seedling thing and transplanted late March. By June, I noticed my tomatoes seemed stressed. I believed that tomatoes need at least 6-8 hours of sun to produce fruit. My logic told me it was just too hot and the sun too strong for the plants. I have a large backyard pergola with a slated wood cover that provides diffused sunlight. I put the tomato plants under the pergola, and they did much better. Even put some of my other plants under the pergola too and they did better. What you are saying makes sense and works. I'm a believer. Transplanted 11 varieties of tomatoes one week ago into 10-gallon potato grow bags, which are 16" tall providing lots of room for the root system to expand. I let them get morning sunlight and roll them under the pergola early afternoon to enjoy the diffused sunlight. Happy gardening.
great video! FYI in some parts of the world, tomato greens are a very popular dish. I have been cooking tomato greens for years without any problems and they are quite delicious. I usually mix them with other veggies and sometimes with fried green tomatoes. Of course, I also heard my whole life that tomato greens were poisonous. Another wonderful green is cooked zucchini greens with the stems. Just chop the stems into small pieces.
Well. This makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it? Why did it take this long for someone to figure it out? Add to it higher temps makes it harder to keep up with regular watering, further stressing them out. I can't do shade cloth, but I can move the containers to where they'll get partial shade once the heat hits. Thanks for another great, very helpful tomato video!
Shade cloth is a gamechanger! Last year when I posted pictures of me putting up shade cloth over my tomatoes in a local FB gardening group, there were so many Negative Nellies telling me it's pointless since they've successfully grown with out shade cloth all there lives. Some people just don't like trying new things or thinking outside the box. I'm always willing to try something new if it can give me better results.
"Successful" is a spectrum. If all your tomatoes died last year and you got 5 tomatoes this year, you'd be successful. But, can you do better? We should always strive for improvement. Most people aren't willing to put in the extra work, and that's the difference between *exceptional* and average. Strive to be exceptional.
@@TheMillennialGardener So true! Thanks for watching out for those Amazon deals. I have more shade cloth on the way here.
I grew Supersweet 100 cherry tomatoes and a couple of full sized varieties in the Dallas area a couple of years ago in containers. When it started getting really hot outside, I moved them under some shade trees. They stayed healthy and produced until the first freeze around December.
Wow! I live in rural Georgia, about 45 minutes from Augusta, GA. And I had almost given up on growing heirloom tomatoes because of the pests and diseases and so little yield for so much hard work. But I am definitely going to try your shade cloth method. I am also adding a couple of good hybrids to ensure I get a decent crop for all of my hard work, and to be able to preserve some tomatoes for food security with all the craziness going on in the U.S. these days.
Last year my tomatoes did pretty well (just the insane amount of yellow pears out of 4 types) but I planted everything way too close together and did not prune a single vine. They went absolutely wild.
August rolled around and a sudden week long drought and then immediate heavy rain made all of the yellow pear tomatoes explode that had been waiting to fruit for those 2 weeks.
I recommend shade cloth, drip irrigation and mulching the plants well. Moderating temperatures and regulating moisture will help prevent that.
@@TheMillennialGardener Thanks :D
I live in Wilmington and appreciate this info as I am growing tomatoes now.
You do give and have gave me light bulb moments. Appreciate your thoughts on this subject. Hilo Hawaii….150” of rain a year and high humidity…..temperatures never get below 50 or over 90….roughly 12 hours daylight year round….high tunnels with good airflow and containers….nobody on this island can grow tomatoes or zucchini🤙
Yes!! I have always read tomatoes need 6 hours of direct sunlight! We moved and our backyard was all shaded except a few hours of early morning sun. I still put a garden in anyway and my tomatoes (and peppers)thrived!! I was shocked…. and I never sprayed a thing. I interplant basil, chives and marigolds and to help keep pests away.
nice ive grown 150+ and i agree,igrow 100+ fruits in new england,i am a long time farmer
Excellent info. I incorporated drip irrigation last year and I had no aphid issues or diseases. I will add the shade cloth this year and I expect great results here in GA zone 8A.
In your location, this shade cloth will be a game-changer. Shade cloth and drip irrigation makes happy tomatoes in the South!
In South Central Texas providing shade is essential. In direct sun the fruit basically cooks on the vine in the summer months. I grow in sub-irragated containers in a structure similar to the one illustrated in the video with great results, having tomato plants survive well into November. A bonus use of the structure it protects the plants in heavy weather and a tarpaulin can be added when tropical weather threatens. TMG is a great channel with great advise. Thanks for your hard work presenting clear and well explained information.
Ive grown tomatoes very successfully in Massachusetts for years. This coming season will be my first in northern Maine! Im worried about the tomatoes with the cooler temps, less sun and lately, very very wet summers. Fingers crossed!
Such a great interview! I was hoping that you’d ask him about the name of his channel and where he got the name from. I read somewhere that his name isn’t really James Prigioni but Daniel Huff.
Thank you so much for this vital info. I don't like the idea of wasting sun (especially after living near Seattle), but now living in northern Virginia, I see how the sun intensity could be too much. Have you considered growing another taller crop inbetween the tomatoes to give a canopy? Corn, sorghum, sunn hemp, sun flower, or fruit trees. I think in a food forest or syntropic system, you could grow tomatoes under the canopy to utilize the sun and reduce stress on the tomatoes.
Everything you say makes sense. I grew a lot of tomatoes in containers last year for fun and l moved several of them under a canopy and l couldn’t believe how well they produced. They outperformed the ones l left in full sun. I thought it was just a fluke. I’m going to try that with my figs this year. Cheers from Ottawa, Canada 🍁
It is fascinating. Just like we would burn if we sat outside in the sun all day, so do our plants. If we hurt, they hurt 😆
You are the man. Last year as you know it was burning hot here. My tomatos were unhappy and really did not get a good harvest. I had already bought the shade cloth and made the frame from pvc over one of my raised gardens. I normally grow tomatos in the big bags and will do so again this year. Will have to figure a way to attach to the fence. On OKI space is a premium. Thanks for this one!!