How To Choose Determinate or Indeterminate Tomato Plants

Are you anxious to experience that warm taste bud tingling bite of juicy tomato on top of a burger or the classic bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with a tomato you grew yourself? Or maybe you dream of a plate of red and yellow tomatoes interspersed with slices of fresh mozzarella cheese, sprinkled with finely shredded basil and drizzled with olive oil.

Then you walk into a garden center to buy your plants and the number of different varieties of tomatoes is overwhelming.

This post aims to breakdown one of the more confusing questions around tomato plants.

Determinate vs. Indeterminate

What on earth could that mean to a tomato?

Determinate

A determinate plant is one with a limit to growth and production during the season. The plant will remain compact and is the best choice for a container garden. This limit to growth also means that at the peak of it’s growth cycle, it will also stop producing tomatoes.

Indeterminate

The indeterminate variety will continue to grow and unless pruned will grow throughout the season becoming taller and taller, sometimes almost tree like. It will continue to produce fruit until frost or the gardener pulls it out of the ground. Indeterminate plants need to be in a garden or deep enough soil to support the large plant. These tomatoes also need to be staked, caged or somehow supported to keep them upright.

How do you know?

We recommend you buy plants directly from the grower. Check your local farmer’s market in April and May for vendors who have plants for sale. The farmer will know what type of plant they are offering and will be more than happy to tell you all about their tomato plants.

If you are shopping in a garden center, check the plant tag. It will specify determinate or indeterminate as well as several other facts that will help you choose the best tomato plant for you.

We will cover a few more of these in our next blog posts.

As always you can keep up with Five Feline Farm activities on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Planning Ahead

The menu challenge became really difficult this week. As in, couldn’t pull together a menu in advance, difficult.

There were so many tasks crammed into each day that I resorted to my old habit of planning one meal at a time. Even when I knew this would be the kind of week where a planned menu would have been helpful and possibly even save me from some stress. I commit to doing better next week.

Despite this momentary lapse on my part, there is still activity happening at the Farm toward future meal prep.

Gardening is the ultimate planning ahead.

Donna has been squeezing early spring vegetable planting into every spare moment of her day. Not that there are a lot of those spare moments, but because of her foresight, we have a tender green salad waiting in the refrigerator.

But that isn’t all.

Snap peas, radishes and spinach seeds, in addition to the leaf lettuce seeds, are nestled into dark rich soil. Tomatoes, peppers and herbs are growing in the greenhouse, just waiting for the threat of frost to pass. We will see the fruits of her labor on the table soon.

Taking a lesson about planning for the future, I believe I’ll start working on next week’s menu now.

You can keep up daily with Five Feline Farm activities by following us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Winter Philosophy

At this writing, we are experiencing a Polar Vortex dipping into the middle of the U.S. It brings us some of the lowest temperatures and wind chills in recorded history.

We have taken the steps we can to prepare:

  • Check the propane level for the house and the generator
  • Close off the porch
  • Stock up on birdseed to help our feathered friends
  • Dig out our warmest clothes
  • Make sure the vehicles are full of gas

Like many of you, we prefer long days of warm sunshine, being outside working in the garden or mowing the grass, and sipping cold iced tea in the afternoon shade. We don’t like to be cold or to shovel snow when it piles up in the driveway or drifts in front of the garage door.

Some people cope with the cold dark winter by moving south to warmer weather, but we hunker down and stay put.

There is also a beauty to winter we must not forget. Winter gives us time to do some of those inside chores we put off until after gardening season. It offers us a time to rest from the hard labor that often comes with outside work.

In the midst of the vigilance required to stay safe in bitter cold and snow, while we wait for the sun to drift further north on it’s daily rounds, let’s remember to be grateful.

Here’s a short list to get you started:

  • Long evenings to read a book
  • The beauty of pure white snow pouring a cleansing blanket on the brown landscape
  • When fog freezes on the trees turning everything into a wonderland
  • The blessing of a warm house

What are you grateful for?

How Do You Treat Your Skin?

You have probably heard that your skin is the largest organ in your body. It is responsible for protecting your delicate insides from the elements. That’s a big job. Taking good care of your skin can help protect the rest of you.

Did you know your skin is porous?

This means what you put on your skin can be absorbed into your body. In fact, there are several medicines that are topically applied. Everything from analgesics to birth control to nicotine to high end narcotics can be delivered to your system through a patch or a cream rubbed on your skin.

What about your lips?

Lips are skin too. Not only does the skin of your lips absorb what you put on them but you are likely licking your lips taking in whatever you have applied as a protectant.

So what is the point of all this?

Take a look at a tube of national brand lip balm. Do you see an ingredient list? No. If you want to know what you are smearing on your lips, you have to search the internet and even then, it is not easy to locate. When you do find the list, the first ingredient is petroleum. It then progresses through a number of ingredients or chemical compounds that are difficult to pronounce.

Our Answer.

Here at Five Feline Farm, we take a more simple approach in our lip balm known as BEEk Balm. We use beeswax for durability and protection, sweet almond oil for soothing and moisturizing, and Vitamin E oil for heathy skin support. Then we add pure honey or food grade essential oil for flavor.

That’s it. Four ingredients. Our list fits on the tiny label of a lip balm tube.

You can take this one small step to living a more pure life. Get yours here today.