Va. Beach tomato grower gets back to basics, hits pay dirt

VIRGINIA BEACH

Whoever said it wasn't a good year for tomatoes hasn't seen the robust and luscious fruits that are exploding on the vines, and being devoured with gusto, at Denver Hicks' Bay Colony home in Virginia Beach.

Denver's tomatoes are the big, red globes of every tomato grower's dreams.

An enthusiastic email from his wife, Nancy, certainly sounded like Denver's tomatoes were heading for the tomato stratosphere this year: "Look what Denver got for Father's Day!" she wrote June 19. "The large Cherokee Purple heirloom he is holding in his hand weighs just over a pound!"

And there were some ripe, pretty, grape and cherry tomatoes in the photos, too. Nancy said she and Denver had been amazed at the growth of their plants and the fruit hanging on the vines.

"We just walk out there every day and go, 'WOW!' " she wrote.

And Nancy was so right.

By the time I got over there a week later, the Hickses were getting ready to pick a Cherokee Purple that weighed in at 1 pound, 10 ounces. Wow!

"I figured the 1-pound-10-ounce tomato was worth about $10, Nancy said. "I saw in Fresh Market that they were $4.99 a pound."

Two remarkable characteristics of the Hicks' tomatoes stand out. Not only are the fruits healthy, huge and prolific, they also started ripening in force less that two months from the time they were planted.

Denver put the plants in the ground April 22; Father's Day was eight weeks later. That's the holiday before the Fourth of July, which is usually the great-expectation time for tomatoes.

Denver, who has gardened for years, once had a large vegetable garden in the backyard. When the couple built a swimming pool, he started growing tomatoes in upside down baskets and pots, which he particularly found less than satisfying.

"Tomatoes in pots on the ground would plug up the holes in the pots with roots, seeking Mother Earth," he said, "and caused the plant soil to become water logged, which created mostly vine rather than tomatoes. And the tomatoes were smaller than they should have been."

So, this year, Denver went back to the basics.

He cleared a small, raised flower bed, 6-by-15 feet, in a protected area of the yard -fence on two sides, house on one and shed on the other. He tilled down about 1 foot and added three bags each of manure with compost, play sand and topsoil.

He mounded up three rows of soil in which he planted 11 tomato plants - Cherokee Purple heirlooms, Better Boys and a couple of cocktail tomatoes - along with some eggplants, peppers and a little basil.

Denver believes his good results are due in part to the plants' deep roots. He planted the tomatoes so deep that only one-third of each plant was above ground. He also installed a soaker hose and a timer, and he watered the plants every three days for 20 minutes, rather than giving them the daily watering that plants in pots must have.

This also encouraged deep, rather than shallow, roots, he believes.

Denver thinks the tomatoes came in early because the bed is in such a protected spot. Since the bed is small and the crops really can't be rotated, he is considering removing the soil and adding new soil next year to minimize the chance of disease and fungus building up in the soil and attacking the tomatoes.

That might be worth every ounce of effort it takes, especially if next year the Hickses also can eat the tomato stack that Nancy recently made with the giant Cherokee Purple.

She sliced the juicy gem, spread fresh basil pesto on each slice and stacked the slices alternately with sliced, fresh mozzarella and drizzled balsamic vinegar on top.

"The ultimate tomato experience," she called it.

The kind dreams are made of.

Mary Reid Barrow,

barrow1@cox.net