Farm Talk Podcast: Tomatomania! A Celebration Event of America's Favorite Garden Vegetable

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Paul Ward:

Hi everyone. It’s Paul Ward here and welcome to another addition of Farm Talk. I’m very excited today. We’re gonna be talking about backyard gardening. Everybody has their favorite crop that they like to harvest each season. And today, specifically, we’re gonna be focusing on tomatoes. We have an expert with us Scott Daigre. Welcome to the show. 

Scott Daigre: 

Thank you, Paul. It’s good to be with you. 

Paul Ward:

What is Tomatomania? 

Scott Daigre:

We started as an heirloom seedling sale. We’re gonna grow the wackiest, heirloom tomatoes you’ve ever seen and offer them to you as a home gardener. That’s what, that’s what it’s about. It’s also about volume. So when Tomatomania comes to town, you’ll have more choices than you ever believed were possible. We carry those wacky heirlooms.  That I seed; that I custom grow them because nobody else is growing them. But then we also rally the favorites in the classics as well. ‘Cause I can’t do without that. 

Paul Ward:

Right.

Scott Daigre:

I’ll get my wrist slapped, you know, repeatedly. So we pull together unique groups, not always the same group of tomato seedlings. We pull these together and we showcase them at events all over California.

Paul Ward:

We’re in the middle of winter right now. It’s “California winter” wearing a short sleeve shirt. Winter is tomato season. When will these events be happening? 

Scott Daigre:

Well, it’s always spring, obviously Tomatomania aims for the cusp of spring in your city, town  or wherever you are. So we will begin in Southern California, further down the coast than we are now. On February 25th in Corona Del Mar Rogers gardens, that’s our launch. And we will go south after that to San Diego, Mission Hills Nursery down there on and on. Then we kind of come up, back up the coast, a lot to do in the LA area. Often we’ve been north of that, but this year we will not be on our tour. So it begins just when it’s right for tomatoes to go in the ground. Tomato growers, tomato gardeners are eager people. So they want to get tomatoes as soon as possible. We provide them as early as possible. So that can happen. 

Paul Ward:

Okay. And we’re sitting at Otto and Sons Gardens here in Fillmore, California. And you’re gonna have an event here as well. 

Scott Daigre:

We are definitely gonna be here at Otto. This is one of our longest running events. I like to say that, “Otto is to roses what we are to tomatoes.” We go find the newest, the best, the most beautiful, you know, all of that and we showcase it for the home garden and that’s what they do here and have done so well for such a long time. They’ve been amazing friends of the event and they have an amazing team. So we love to partner with them and it will be a highlight of our season as it is every year.

Paul Ward:

Okay. So for the novice, who’s just getting started and listening to our podcast and you know, they’ve tried growing some tomatoes in the backyard. Maybe they’ve had some success, maybe they’ve had some failure. What would be your advice for them to just kind of get started? 

Scott Daigre:

Well, first of all, try again. You gotta try again.  You gotta make this go. Tomato growing is not difficult. Sure, you have steps that you should follow. And there are the basics, you know, and we wanna make sure that the plant is in a good amount of sun or full sun as a good gardener knows, right. Six to eight hours; doesn’t need to be in the sun all day, need to find a full sun spot. Whether that’s in a container or in the ground. You can decide that or a gardener decides that. But once you have a good spot, it’s all about the soil and where the thing is growing after that, it’s all about you, you, the farmer, the gardener, the homeowner. Again, there are not tons of steps, but you have to be on top of it. You have to be aware and you have to apply yourself a little bit. You can get great tomatoes,

Paul Ward:

Right. Are there some tomatoes that are just easier to grow than others? I mean, I would assume so. 

Scott Daigre:

I think you could say that. Sure. I think a cherry tomato is probably the easiest thing to grow. It’s the closest thing to the species, right? You get more of them than other things cuz the smaller the tomato, the more you get and people like that. They tend to be tough. That’s often a good starter kit, you know, for a new grower. And then in the world of tomatoes, you have hybrids and heirlooms in a very general sense, two classes, if you will, of tomatoes. The hybrid tomato is bread. It’s designed to be successful, productive, right?  Disease resistant in many cases, it’s the right people, the right farmers have said, wow, like in any breeding these qualities and these qualities should be crossed so that we get a better mass trap. Right. So that’s what happens with the hybrid.

Paul Ward:

So typically the go to the grocery store and buy a red tomato.

Scott Daigre:

Well, it is, it is. And in hybrid tomatoes, however, they often suffer the cardboard tasting tomato in January kind of, you know, umbrella. Which is not right, which is absolutely, you know, not correct. What you’re gonna do in your backyard is completely different than, or the process is completely different than, than what happened with that tomato you’re buying in January. So some of the hybrids are our  favorites. I mean the Better Boys of the world, my grandfather, he grew 25 Better Boy tomatoes every year. That’s what he did. And back then, there wasn’t much more that you could get, right. In terms of supply or in terms of selection, but they’re amazing tomatoes, Sun Gold or a little Orange Cherry, that’ll make people smile out there. It’s the world’s favorite tomato, no question really. And a hybrid.

So hybrids are amazing. So again, for, for a starter, for somebody who’s just getting going. Aim smaller, grow a hybrid, start with that. Then you can get the wacky heirlooms, I’ll give you more of those and you can ever want in your life. Right. But that’s where it begins. And I think that’s the way, teach yourself that it’s not that difficult. And the reward when you eat what you’ve grown in your backyard is huge. It will make people become Tomatomaniacs like me. 

Paul Ward:

Your followers, your event goers, you call them Tomatomaniacs.

Scott Daigre:

Absolutely. They want what they want. My crowd is very specific and yes, we deal with the absolute beginning gardener to, you know, somebody who’s been gardening for 50 years, all of that, you know, all of those people are fans and lovely supporters of us. We’re very grateful for all that. So we provided it all. One of the things Paul that I love about our events is that I hire, I associate my good garden friends; I ask them to come help at my events, right? So we’re a group of people who know how to grow tomatoes, know largely what’s in the selection and can help people choose and that kind of thing. But you can come to Tomatomania and get expert help. I think that is in an almost irrespective of the variety you choose is really, really important and it makes people good farmers.

Paul Ward:

Interesting. What is the, what do you find is the kind of the number one and number two question that people ask when they come from asking for help.

Scott Daigre: 

Let’s see. That’s a great question. Most of the time they wanna know if it tastes good. And so you kind of go, well, let’s think about that. If you grow it correctly in the right place and you pick it when it’s ultimately (ripe) and you eat it when it’s ultimately ripe, it’s gonna taste good. I don’t across the board point at any tomato in our lineup and if you do it right, and you eat it when it’s ultimately ripe, which is the goal and the biggest advantage of being a backyard farmer, right. It’s gonna be delicious and really that’s what we get that a lot. Is it sweet? Is it delicious? And we have to say yes, if you do it right. After that, I think most of the time what are the main questions these days? Can I grow it in a pot? That’s a huge question for tomatoes. Yes, we know you can grow it in the ground. Right. That’s what farmers do. Right? In rows and rows and rows and acres. Right. We know it’s a field crop, but yes, they grow really well in containers. Not this size, right? This size.

Paul Ward: 

Gotcha. In a big pot.

Scott Daigre:

I say 15 by 15 minimum. That’s a nice round, you know, nice round numbers that everybody can remember. If you can do bigger, I love it. The more real estate you can offer a tomato, the better off it’s gonna be. 

Paul Ward:

So, if somebody lives in a condo, as long as they’ve got, you know, six to eight hours of sun, they could put the pot on the balcony.

Scott Daigre: 

You put a pot outside the back door and you make the soil, you create the perfect soil, right? You fertilize, cuz you have to do that more in a container, right. Because everything’s going right out the bottom and the plant only gets what you give it.  That’s really important. You can move that pot, you know, given the sun. And frankly, if you’re in six to eight hours of sun, especially if you’re a container grower and we’re finding this more and more, I live in Ojai where it’s super hot. Plants; see if they get full day sun and containers just fry, right. They absolutely fry six to eight full sun. The plants will get what they need. And that container’s an advantage for many people and that positioning often where it gets six rather than 13 hours of sun a day is really, really beneficial. So containers are a great way to grow. And yes, that’s a very popular question for all of us. 

Paul Ward:

What about propagating? If somebody wants to kind of get bigger? They’ve had a little bit of success with one or two plants. What would they do? What would they do then get a bunch of pots and kind of cut a little seedling and

Scott Daigre:

Sure. Why not? Well, you can start with seed, you can save seed. And if you’re in, you know, if you’re into that and that kind of gets us to that other class of tomatoes that I didn’t talk about. An heirloom tomato is a tomato that’s true from seed. So if you grow a Black Krim heirloom tomato this year. You save a seed successfully. Lots of YouTube videos can show you how to do that. And it’s easy, but you save it and you plant it tomorrow or next year you’re gonna grow a plant that will produce that exact same tomato that’s natural selection over generations and generations. That’s how heirlooms came about. We picked what we wanted or what was the right color off of a season’s crop. And that seed eventually became true. It’s true from seed.

So I went off on a tangent there on you. But yes, if you get excited about, let’s say a particular variety, if it’s heirloom, you can save seed, do it, try it next year, seed growing into tomatoes, you know, especially out of season ahead of when the weather’s right can be really tricky. A lot of people find that that’s kind of where we are now in greenhouses, right? Tomatoes can be tricky in greenhouses, but you can do it. I’d rather like the idea that if you’re saving seed, sow it in the garden, but sow it after you planted all your ones at the beginning of the season. Sow that seed in Southern California, sow that seed in May. Sow it on May the 15th and watch that baby produce for you till Thanksgiving, if you’re lucky.

So sowing seed in the ground, saving seed. That’s great. You can also take cuttings. You know, this is a cutting of a favorite Dwarf Tomato of mine. I knew back in the fall, I was gonna have trouble finding this seed. Seed crops are like every other crop in the world. Sometimes you have a lot. Sometimes you don’t. This has become, this is Cyril’s Choice by the way, a little two foot tall, little round red jewel of a tomato, right. That produces like a 10 footer. I said, oh geez. I gotta have this tomato next year. But the idea is I wanted this again. So I saved cuttings. And basically you cut off the end of a tip. I did this in November. I took the last healthy cuttings or stems that were growing and sat them in water for a few days. Generally about 10, 10 to 12 days in a bright window; changing the water out regularly. Doggone they sprout roots! And in no time at all presto chango, I’ll show you, oh, these guys got a little wilty, but that’s cuttings in water. And I don’t know if you can see that? But there are roots growing right there. Cut off the bottom of that stem, put that in some decent rich potting soil plus a little manure or something like that. You know, you don’t need a seed starting mix, cuz it’s no longer a seed, but you need a light, fluffy, soil. It’ll, you know, it’ll jump right in like these guys and you’re off to the races. 

So there’s one gallon pot. These have been in here for, you know, through, I guess over the last 12 weeks or so since I took cuttings, right. I’ve been running ’em into the garage every night. Because that’s what you have to do. 

Paul Ward: 

You are dedicated. 

Scott Daigre: 

And doggone. I mean, if you look closely there are flowers happening on this baby, so it’s going on, it’s going on. And I just, you know I mentioned this one’s a Dwarf and that’s a whole new realm of tomatoes for us. Dwarf tomatoes have been around for years. They’ve been around for a hundred years, but in our “Go big, Grow big” kind of world, right. If I can get an eight foot tomato, why would I opt for a two foot tomato? So for many years, I think they just suffered from, well, I can get more off the big one.

Well, what’s happened in the last, oh I guess 10-15 years. This is a group of hybrids from all over the world that have started sharing genetics of the smaller tomatoes. And they took some of those classics from the hundred year old classics and started breeding into modern lines, et cetera, et cetera. And now we have a whole group of heirloom Dwarfs that are indeterminate, will produce over a long season and they don’t get much over three feet tall if you’re lucky. And for the most part we really launched into this about a couple years ago and started them in our test gardens. And in our garden trials, we couldn’t be happier. It’s really exciting. So again, for that first time farmer, right. You know, back up there, who maybe freaks out when a tomato gets six feet tall and what do I do now? A Dwarf tomato can be a great beginner’s tool. And my favorite thing we did last year, Paul with these guys is that we actually grew ’em in hedges. You know, when you set out, when you set out standard tomatoes, optimally, you plant ’em six feet apart, right? Nobody does that cuz nobody’s got that space, right? So we end up about three feet apart, you know, in a typical garden, we spread ’em out and there we are. And off to the races, we planted these babies eight to ten inches apart, right along a row, phenomenal, small compact, sturdy, fruitful, and easy to support at that level. And it was a brand new thing for us. And that’s saying something for all my tomato folks who’ve been growing tomatoes for, you know, some of ’em for 40 years. So it’s pretty exciting. And again, a good tool for a beginner.

Paul Ward:

Have you found that people’s interest in specific tomatoes has changed over time in the period that you’ve been doing tomatoes?

Scott Daigre:

Oh, tomatoes are fashionable or they’re not. So absolutely tomato fashion is a very real thing. 

Paul Ward:

Oh, it’s a very real thing? (laughing)

Scott Daigre:

It’s a very real thing. You know, it just depends on the “happening thing” now. in tomatoes, its this bronzy rusty red color. Right. Okay. It’s everywhere. 

Paul Ward:

So not red, but not green. Not red. 

Scott Daigre:

No, no, no. It’s bronzy right. Our tomato of  the year, this year is a small cherry or grape style. That is a brick red and it can tend to brown. Or brownish with green stripes. It’s amazing. Right. So yes, things change all the time. You have some people who always will grow a large tomato or some who will always grow a smaller tomato. The Blue Tomatoes, ever heard of the Blue Tomatoes?

Paul Ward:

I have not heard of that.

Scott Daigre:

Short story. Oregan state. Some wiley and intelligent hybridizer found a wild tomato that was blue and probably didn’t taste very good. But they took those genetics and started breeding them with modern tasty tomatoes. Eventually over generations, they evolved into tomatoes that have an eggplant color on the exterior. Now that can be a shoulder, that can be a stripe. Oftentimes it’s the whole thing. It is eggplant blue. It carries the same anthocyanin nutrition that a blueberry does. 

Paul Ward:

Oh really? 

Scott Daigre: 

That’s why we like blueberries because of the anthocyanin.

Paul Ward:

Interesting. 

Scott Daigre:

Right. It is interesting. So you got a tomato that’s way cool looking. Really healthy a little bit later to ripen than most, in most cases, which is odd for tomato files. That’s a key piece of information. But yeah, blue tomatoes who, you know, so fashion changes and we, yes, we absolutely will go all over the map and I hope people go all over the map. That’s what we want. You know, there’s a lot out there. There probably are 7,500 varieties of tomatoes that I can get seed for. 

Paul Ward:

Really? I had no idea. 7,500?

Scott Daigre:

So yeah. So I have 300 varieties at one of my events, you know, and that’s a hard edit. 

Paul Ward:

That’s a lot, that’s a lot of varieties. 

Scott Daigre:

That’s a hard edit. The tough part is, you know, God, nobody can go 300, but geez. Yeah. That’s what’s happening.

Paul Ward:

Have you ever been surprised where people were asking for something specific and of course you had heard of it, but maybe there was this outside rush or interest in some specific variety and then you kind of were caught off guard?

Scott Daigre:

Oh, of course. I mean, we, you know, we never know what’s gonna hit, we really don’t. So it’s a variety of things we try to promote again, we promote a Tomato of the Year, every year for the last five years or so. Cause we finally got to the point where, you know, we like yelling about everything, but if you yell about 300, nobody hears anything. So we talk about the star of our trials. We talk about the star of our tastings when we can have them. 

Paul Ward:

How do you become tomato of the year? How does a tomato win Tomato of the Year?

Scott Daigre:

Well, imagine, you know, it’s, it’s gotta be fruitful. Or productive. It’s gotta be beautiful cuz it has to take a good picture. It’s gotta be tasty of course. And then, you know, disease resistant, size, all these things. Sort of play into this as well. So yeah, we’ve been all over the map with that, but it is each year for whatever reason, there’s a standout, you know, even if we have 25 that we adore, there’s always one standout and this year Bronze Torch was that just by far. I would hand it to people and they’d eat it and I would just laugh because their faces would light up and I would go, “That’s the one!” So sometimes it tells us. Other times we have to look a little harder and pick it. I want people to be adventurous and that’s kind of why it exists. Yeah. I want you to grow your favorites from last year, from 10 years ago from whatever, but I want you to grow what’s new just because it’s something different and that’s interesting. 

Paul Ward: 

Very cool. How did Tomatomania start?

Scott Daigre:

My friend Gary Jones, who owned a very trendsetting nursery in Pasadena in the early nineties, started Tomatomania on or about 1992, I think. I arrived and had a wacky professional background and when I decided that the corporate world was not for me I made a big career shift and said, “I’m gonna go work at a nursery,” cuz it’s all I wanted to do was to grow things. And that was 1995. So Gary and I, our paths intersected and I went, ‘You have a tomato event? You have a what?” And he had an heirloom tomato event and nobody had ever seen an heirloom seedling there. That was just when things got started. We could find seed if you were adept, you know, a sleuth. But plants, nobody saw that before. And so we started, I think Gary started with a group of 25 or 30 heirlooms and I was there for four years and I helped him build it.

And by the time I left the nursery four or so years later Tomatomania was the biggest weekend of the year. We were selling 275 varieties and people were kind of losing their brains. We had so much fun. So that’s how Tomatomania started. I took over and bought the company in 2005. I think. The nursery closed, unfortunately. And so we had to put the show on the road.

Paul Ward:

So it’s a road show. 

Scott Daigre:

It’s now a road show. We did our first out of Pasadena, you know, our first road stop was Tapia Bros Farm Stand. The classic farm stand, right in Encino, right at the 405 and the 101. Wow. That is an amazing space for so many people for years. And yeah, I walked in and said, “Hey guys, you don’t know me, but you know how to sell pumpkins and Christmas trees. I do the same with tomatoes. Can I borrow that space?” And they said, “Yes.”

Paul Ward:

Very cool. 

Scott Daigre:

And in a miraculous kind of turn of events, we had a place to go and one event became two events. Two events became three. Over the last 20 years we’ve experimented with the event in five states, 25 cities; trying to figure out how it works best. We’ve landed in Southern California cuz it’s flat closer. We’ve worked on expanding that in recent years and that’s where we sit today.

Paul Ward: 

You can’t, if you’re going to other areas because of agricultural rules, you can’t just put your tomatoes in a truck and take them to…

Scott Daigre: 

You can’t just bounce in, especially in California. Right. You know, so yes, there are all kinds of things to consider when you go anywhere. So we have to honor those and we do and you know, we’ve been largely successful and so welcomed by hosts all over the place. I mean, you know, we’ve been at arboretums. I’ve had, ’em at, I’ve had a Tomatomania at a party store. Anywhere we can go and you know, “Rah-Rah tomatoes!” We do it. 

Paul Ward: 

So they’re big and small events.

Scott Daigre: 

Absolutely. Everyone is different. I’ll be in Ojai at our local feed store. I’ll have, I don’t know, I’ll have 50 to 75 varieties available. Tapia- close to 300. Rogers on or about that. So we have small and large here at Otto. I think we’ll probably have about 150 varieties. That’s a lot. And it’s way more than anybody needs. We just get excited and you know, the bigger, the better, the more the merrier and that’s how we roll.

Paul Ward: 

So what is the optimum soil for growing tomatoes?

Speaker 1 

Well, the key is to make it optimal. I mean that, let’s make optimal soil to grow our tomatoes in. So you have different needs for a tomato. Sometimes you’re in a container, sometimes you’re in the ground, right. If you’re in the ground, you want ideally a soft, loamy rich soil. And we don’t have that much of that in California. Right. So we have to really, you know what a garden knows, what it means to amend right? To change. And you’re gonna change the structure of that soil in order that your plant does the best that it can. So in the ground, you just add copious amounts of organic matter and organic that is rich, that helps a sandy soil be richer and it helps the clay oil drain better. It does everything that a soil needs. So whether it’s manure, bagged or not. It’s green material, it’s your own compost. It’s a bagged mix of some rich combination. There’s lots of brands and lines that will get you what you need. Use it and use a lot of it. It all starts with the soil. If you don’t get it started right; it’s like the foundation of a house, right? The house will fall down. If the foundation is not strong, same thing for your soil. In a container, you have the opportunity to build a perfect universe for a tomato.

Paul Ward:

Really? 

Scott Daigre:

Yep. You’re gonna do it all. You have no clay. You have no sand, you have none of that. So in a pot- and remember larger is better when it comes to tomatoes. One per pot, unless you’re really, really doing a big pot. Or you use Dwarfs. You can fudge a little bit with the Dwarfs. Add another or maybe even a couple, if you get the right one, however, you’re gonna put that soil together. First of all, growers who have grown in pots before say, Hey, can I just use my own, my old soil? And I say, “No, you cannot. You cannot do that.” At least take half of it out for goodness sake. If you have any disease issues at all, get rid of that soil. So the best case scenario, start with new soil every year in a container. I generally like to say, look,  fill half the pot with a premium potting soil. Premium. It’s gonna cost more. Couple Bucks. Cheap potting soil is dust. It doesn’t do much for your plants.

So start with a premium potting soil that’s designed to drain and make your plant and roots happy. Then give it the stuff you just put in the ground. Add worm castings, add compost, add a rich soil mix that you can buy at a nursery near you. Rich soil mix. Look at a soil mix and read the ingredients. If it’s one ingredient, leave it there. If it’s a lot of ingredients: Oyster Shells, bat guano, composted manures, compost four. That’s what you want. So again, half potting soil, that’s your base. Add all those other good nutrients, mix it all together. That’s your best soil for containers. Whether you’re starting cuttings or whether you’re transplanting a little four inch baby or one gallon or whatever. And we sell both. We sell four inch plants, which is the standard nursery fair. And then we sell, we generally sell a one gallon at most of our events.

And that just gets you along further again, you know, my impatient Tomato Maniacs, Who want tomatoes sooner. That’s how you do it. You buy a one gallon plant, which is generally four to five weeks ahead of that little, a four inch guy. And mostly it’s about root growth and stability. You get tomatoes sooner. 

Paul Ward:

Very cool. I want that. And then what about watering? How often? They don’t  take that much water, right? 

Scott Daigre:

Well, watering is a good topic to talk about because it’s also a very tricky thing. Tricky thing. I always say the two things we screw up in tomato gardens are fertilizer and water. Fertilizer, because you’ve got to use it. You know, we’re often really good at buying fertilizer and we put it in the garden shed and there it sits next Christmas. And nothing’s been done with it. 

Paul Ward:

So true.

Scott Daigre:

So I tell people, buy that bag and put it right next to your tomato plants. I don’t care if the bag withers and falls out, whatever! You should use that thing before the bag goes or the box goes away. So buy a fertilizer and use it.  So, back to your question. Water, how much the key is gonna depend on a lot of things. Are you in a container? Height of the summer? You might be watering every day. You might. 

Paul Ward:

Wow. 

Scott Daigre:

And that’s one of your measures about, Hey, do I have it in too much sun? If the plant is wilting every day and you have to rescue that plant every day. You need to move your pot into a little less exposure, right? A softer, kinder place for your plant.

If you’re in the ground, the general consensus or the, you know, “Do what a farmer does.” Farmers are not watering for the most part every day. Right? Even in Ojai where it’s super hot, I “deep water.” So the idea with an in ground tomato, is deeply and infrequently. 

Paul Ward:

It’s like a once a week kind of a thing,

Scott Daigre: 

Soak it. Well, eventually what you wanna do is, you know, you put a four inch tomato into the ground and you only have that little bitty root ball. When you water, I want you to soak the root ball. That’s the rule. So on day one, how much water does it take to water? A four inch, right? Not much, but next week now you got six inches of roots in three weeks- now you’ve got 10 inches of roots. You get me? So as a season goes along, you water, water more, when you water, you don’t necessarily change the schedule. If I put in a four inch plant today in this kind of gorgeous weather, I don’t have to water for three or four days. Try that. And then what you’re doing is, if you deep water, you’re creating a well of water down below the plantIt can’t possibly use everything. It can’t. But what you get is a well of water this year. We’re lucky we have rain that did a little bit for us. We’ve got some deep water. If you create a well below the plant, the roots will always be able to get to it. So on a windy day, on a super hot day, when the plant is stressed, there’s a reserve. That’s what you want so deeply and infrequently in the ground as much as necessary in those pots.

Scott Daigre:

I think, Paul, one of the things that, one of the things getting back to containers and beginners and all that- just in line with watering is that oftentimes if you protect the pot a little bit, you can extend your watering and not have to be out there every day. If you can do it, that’s a good idea. There’s always the finger test, you know, does my plant need water? That’s it. But if you protect the pot, what I mean by that is oftentimes we put our containers on a cement pad, an asphalt driveway, a stone patio.

Scott Daigre:

Right. That’s hot. That’s really hot. So if you can, it helps to grow in a wooden container or a paper pulp container that we love to sell at our events. It’s actually almost cardboard, because it doesn’t heat up. Clay heats up, plastic heats up. And because the roots are all around, you know, a plant as the roots grow, they often coagulate, right? If you will, right on the outside of the plant where all that heat is. So if you’re in a container you’re often just frying roots all summer, instead of trying to grow tomatoes.

Paul Ward:

Interesting.

Scott Daigre:

Protect your pots, put other plants around it, protect them from reflected heat. I take old canvas or whatever I’ve got. And I actually wrap the pots. 

Paul Ward:

Interesting.

Scott Daigre:

That way you remove the sun from the equation, the roots are cool. And container gardeners here. This is what you need to know. You need to be like the ground, the tomato plant wants full sun. The roots wanna be cool. The roots need to be cool. If you can accomplish that in your containers, you’ll be a successful container gardener. So and again, as that pertains to water, if you protect that root ball a little bit more, you won’t have to water so much, that’s better for your plant. They don’t wanna be soggy all the time. That’s, they don’t wanna, they don’t live in swamps. They’re actually, as you pointed out earlier, really, really tough and, you know, don’t need a lot of water in the end. 

Paul Ward:

Very cool. So as recipes change, as people’s taste interests change, do you find that there’s certain varieties of tomato that are becoming more popular based on, on people’s preferences?

Scott Daigre: 

Well, there’s so much emphasis on food today, right? And yes, fashions change, whether that’s taste or look or, you know, whatever it is. I think what we just see is that people want something different. I don’t know that I can identify a trend or a direction or,  I think we try to offer varieties so that people will branch out and figure out that they can make a sauce outta Cherry Comatoes. And you can, you know, or they can roast a Beef Steak, you know? I mean, I love breaking the rules. So yes, if we see those, you know, we do see trends happening, but I don’t know that I can pinpoint them in our emphasis. You know, we urge people to just try something else.

Paul Ward:

Sure. And I would assume that the people that work at your events, that volunteer at your events are called Tomato Maniacs are passionate about coming and working. And it’s almost like just kind of, not even work. It’s fun! ‘Cuz if it’s fun, it’s not really considered work. Who, who comes, who volunteers, who, who are (the Tomato Maniacs?)

Scott Daigre:

These people that come well, number one, I don’t have any volunteers anymore. And I’m really proud of that. Okay. It takes me upwards of 30 people to run my biggest sale over three days. Yeah. It’s a lot of people. We have a lot of friends coming in, obviously friends and customers and so yeah, I need all my good garden friends to do this. I have some people who I mean, I have lots of great people who work with me and no business stands up if it doesn’t have great people. And that’s what we’re known for. Again, we talked about advice and just these, you know, these are die hard gardeners who come and work this thing for me. But I have, yeah. I have people who worked with me at the nursery in the nineties who show up every Tomatomania and it’s like old home week. So they’re, you know, we’re alumni who you just used this weekend to kind of reconnect and share knowledge and excite people about this product, which is, which is really what we want to do.

Paul Ward:

And then for when Tomatomania is not running, cuz it is big events throughout the year. Spring and springtime. Mostly springtime. Where are you selling the rest of the year?

Scott Daigre:

Well, here’s the thing. We only have a small window. It’s a good thing. We’re not in the Northeast because we have a microscopic window, right, in which to sell tomatoes. Right. The tomato season in Southern California is all the way till, you know, and I’m talking about planting season, it can run all the way through June. If you’re in a super beachy area and you get lots of fog in May and you know- end of April, May, June kind of thing, your season may not start in earnest right until, or the plants won’t start, you know, revving up until late June. So we’re lucky in Southern California that we have a long season to talk about. And by the way, it’s those ones you plant in late May and June those are gonna be the ones producing into the fall. And a lot of people want to know that and need to know that.

But yeah, our window is very short. So as I sort of described the scene, we start south of LA and then move up with the season often, always trying to be on the cusp of the season so that people can get started early. We don’t have that much time, that’s the truth of it. So we are available through these events in the spring. We are about plants and not about tomatoes. We try to do tastings at the end of the spring, but we all go into our other lives, you know, which we have to do after that happens or after the events are over. But yes, we do our events and it’s a short little window this year, nine events so far. 

Paul Ward:

Oh really? 

Scott Daigre:

So yes, that’s a good number, nine events we’ve maxed out at 16 in Southern California. That was a little ridiculous. So yeah, I pulled together all these great people and they support me endlessly and we have fun and this year we’ll do nine, nine full on events.

Paul Ward:

Very cool. So you put out Scott, you put out this book called Tomatomania, tell us about this.

Scott Daigre: 

Tomatomania happened in 2016, published by St. Martin’s Press. We were very proud of it. We did, we self-published a little guide for not only my staff, but that we sold for years and this was based on that. So this is 200 pages and lots of pretty pictures and 20 recipes and everything we can give you in like 200 pages. So we were really pleased. It goes through some of the varieties. We can’t possibly hit them all, but the dos, the don’ts you know, some funny stories perhaps and that to convince you that you need to try to grow tomatoes and you can do it successfully. So hopefully that’s what it does through all these pages. 

Paul Ward:

Where can folks find this book?

Speaker 1 

Right now, it’s out of print. I’ve retained the rights now. So you can get it through my website. We’re at tomatomania.com. We have a little store there that we love and you can definitely get it through there. You can obviously get it at our events and a few of the stores that we, or a few of the hosts that see us in the springtime, carry it a little longer than that. We used to be completely a popup, but now we have events that stick for a while. We stayed put for a while. And so some of our biggest events at Tapia and Encino, Moorpark, Underwood Family Farms; we do our event and then we stay for a while. And so we hopefully can offer it for a little bit longer and be a little bit more direct response and available to people.

Paul Ward: 

Very cool for those folks that are lucky enough to be Ventura County based. You’re gonna have an event here next month in March. 

Scott Daigre:

That’s right. We’re Ventura County heavy this year. The entire schedule is on tomatomania.com. You can find out details about different events. Each one’s different, so you can find all of that. Otto, like I said, is one of our longest running events. We will show up here on Friday, Saturday of March. Well, this year it’s March 11th and 12th. Okay. And so we will, we’ll bring in the whole dog and pony show. We’ll set it up. There will be tomatoes. There’ll be veggies, there’ll be- obviously- roses, which won’t be probably in full bloom in mid-March, but some gorgeous roses that you can buy. And again, all the tomatoes that we can provide for you both in four inch and one gallon tomatoes. Plus, I think we’re gonna aim for 150 varieties. So it’s a two day sale again, Friday, Saturday. They’re closed here on Sundays, but yeah, we come out and I’ll have my staff and their staff and we’ll tell you everything, you know, we’ll do everything; we can tell you about tomatoes. I believe that we will be able to do classes again this year. And when we do, we’ll probably have a couple each day, depending on how all that falls out. And so we’ll sit you down and talk to you. 

Paul Ward:

Very cool. 

Scott Daigre:

If you’re willing, we’ll sit down and talk to you about tomatoes and again, tell you everything we can and to help you be successful as a farmer. We’ve got an event in Ojai, an event in Carpinteria, an event in Moorpark and Somis. So we are Ventura heavy this year. And if you’re in the county, come find us, we look forward to seeing you.

Paul Ward:

So we certainly wanna thank our sponsors today, The Escrow Hub and The Money Store. And of course we wanna especially thank our guest Scott Daigre with Tomatomania.

Scott Daigre: 

Thank you. Well, it’s been great to be with you

Paul Ward:

And for you outdoor, backyard, patio, garden enthusiasts, we hope you learn something today about tomatoes- growing tomatoes, and hopefully you can check out one of the Tomatomania events throughout Southern California in the next few months. Thanks. And be sure to join us for the next edition of Farm Talk.