Impatient Tomato Tastings

The first tomatoes of the season are always a bit of an anti-climax. We wait all year for the fruit to come out of the back yard as opposed to some distant clime, and then take a bite. It's not as sweet as the memory, not as drippingly hot and gushy as the movie running through my brain. The first tomatoes aren't the best ones. That is all there is to it. I tend to pick them a little early, eager [...]

Garden Tips: Tomatoes

Now that tomato planting weather is upon us, I want to write a little about some questions we often receive from customers. One of them is "When can I plant tomatoes?" Tomatoes are best planted when the soil is warm (night time temperatures are 50F or above) and all danger of frost has gone by. In Burlington that is generally the end of May or the first week in June.  The best planting meth [...]

Tomato Varieties, Old and New

This past season was pretty hard on tomatoes.  Lots of rain, cool temperatures, and very high disease pressure made for less than ideal conditions.  At Red Wagon, we grow varieties that taste really good and that produce well.  Sometimes those two things don't always go together, and flavor is sacrificed for high yields, or the other way around. Our tomato variety list has always favored flavor [...]