Heirloom Tomato Varieties & Reviews | Tomat-Pomidor
Honest reviews of global tomato varieties from a 15-year-old growers community.
📌 Quick Diary Summary: Mid-Summer Harvest Q&A 🧄 The Disappearing Garlic: Did you plant your garlic 2 inches deep, only to find it buried 6 inches deep in heavy clay at harvest time? This is due to “contractile roots,” which actively pull the bulb deeper into the soil over the winter to protect it from … Read more
📌 Quick Diary Summary: Mid-July Harvests 🧄 The Whole-Bulb Garlic Trick: You don’t always have to separate garlic into cloves. If you plant a whole garlic bulb directly into a strawberry bed (as a companion plant), it will grow a cluster of slightly smaller bulbs that are just as good as single-clove plantings! 🥒 Spider … Read more
📌 Quick Diary Summary: The No-Rotation Method 🔄 The Crop Rotation Myth: You are often told never to plant garlic or onions in the same spot for 3 years. But if you have a small garden, you can break this rule—if you understand soil depletion. 🧄 Heavy Feeders: Garlic and onions have massive fibrous root … Read more
📌 Quick Summary: Watering Onions in the Heat 🧅 Green Means Grow: As long as your onion tops (leaves) are standing tall, green, and actively growing, they need water. If you let them dry out in a heatwave, the bulbs will stop swelling. 🛑 When to Stop Watering: You should only completely stop watering onions … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Falling Garlic & Planting Depth 🥀 Why do garlic stems flop over? If you planted individual cloves and the stems are falling over, it usually means the plant is diseased (root rot) or suffering from a severe lack of water during its active leaf-growth stage. (However, see the hilarious exception at … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Harvesting Garlic Scapes ✂️ How Low Should You Cut? Standard advice says to cut or snap only the curly top part of the scape to leave maximum foliage on the plant. However, some experienced growers cut the scape very low on the stalk—taking the top two leaves with it. The lower … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): The “Wet Cure” Storage Hack Editor’s Note: This bizarre storage method has gained massive approval across our Russian gardening community. If the hardcore gardening women of Siberia and the Urals swear by it to keep their garlic fresh for a full year, you folks in Minnesota and Wisconsin should probably give … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Purple & Yellow Garlic Leaves 🍄 The Worst Case (Fusarium Rot): If your garlic leaves are yellowing and drying out, pull one plant up. If the basal plate (bottom of the bulb) is soft, pinkish, or covered in white mold, and the roots are rotting off, your garlic has Fusarium root … Read more
📌 Quick Summary: Yellowing Spring Garlic 🧄 The Permanent Yellow: Once the lower leaves of a garlic plant turn yellow, they will never turn green again. If you applied fertilizer, look at the new growth coming from the center. If the new leaves are green, the fertilizer worked! 🥶 The Cold Factor: Garlic that sprouts … Read more
📌 Quick Summary: Homegrown Onion Storage 🧅 The Shelf Life: Even if you harvest onions during a wet summer and have to peel them down to their white scales (removing the protective papery skin) due to thrips damage, they can still successfully store indoors from July all the way until May! 🌡️ Storage Conditions: You … Read more
📌 Quick Summary: Planting Grocery Store Shallots 🧅 The Supermarket Hack: Planting grocery store shallots is a great way to save money, as actual shallot “sets” from seed catalogs can be very expensive. 👅 Why Are They Bitter? Extreme chemical bitterness in onions (not just spicy heat) is usually the result of commercial growing conditions, … Read more
📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Spring Garlic Transplants What is Spring Garlic? In cooler climates, this usually refers to softneck garlic varieties. Unlike fall-planted hardnecks, they don’t produce scapes, have a milder flavor, and boast a much longer storage life. The Transplant Hack: If your garden soil is too cold or soggy in early spring, you … Read more