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Most of the tomatoes that Curtis grows fall into the cherry and saladette category - the smaller tomatoes.\xa0 These types of tomatoes offer several advantages - they are pretty vigorous, they have a relatively short DTM, and because chef's like them.\xa0 And when much of your sales are for restaurants, you grow what they want to buy.

Over the years Curtis has evolved his system for tomato culture.\xa0 And he now looks at them as a bit of a bonus crop given the way that he grows them.

Many home gardeners dedicate full rows to tomatoes and give the plants wide spacing\u2019s. \xa0

Curtis does the opposite.\xa0 He interplants his tomatoes; dedicating most of his bed space to another crop, while squeezing his tomatoes into the out 2 edges of each bed. \xa0

This strategy works for several reasons.\xa0 It takes advantage of more of the soil strata.\xa0 The tomatoes are planted deep, so their roots occupy the deeper layers of soil.\xa0 While the main greens crops in the beds have shallow root systems.\xa0 So while the plants are planted in the same space competition is minimized.\xa0 Another reason why the competition is minimized is that the tomatoes occupy more of the vertical space.\xa0 If you time the plants strategically during the year plant growth and sun angles allow you to get more plants in the same space with no shading.

Overall, inter-planting has been huge for Curtis's farm.\xa0 It's what's allowed him to hundreds of pounds of greens and hundreds of pounds of tomato, in same relative space. \xa0

Not a bad bonus yield in a situation where most farmers would simply leave the tomatoes out. \xa0

Look around your garden at the extra space and think about that next time you plant your tomatoes.

It's currently May 4, 2016.

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