News

A slow start to tomato planting

Cold and wet weather has tomato growers running over a week behind typical planting pace.

But, Red Gold director of agriculture Steve Smith says growers are planting now.  “Hopefully we can get a little bit of acreage caught up,” he says.  “We won’t try to get the whole planting back at one time.  But this is good that we’re getting a nice little window this week.”

Smith says unlike row crops, the delayed start in planting doesn’t decrease yield potential in tomatoes.  “By design we don’t want to get it all planted in a short period of time,” he says.  “Many times our latest planted tomatoes are some of the best as they come into some really good flowering weather the first part of August.”

He tells Brownfield there’s been a little bit of frost concern after the weekend’s much cooler temperatures.  “We are getting reports from our growers that it looks like we have escaped the most damage possible,” he says.  “There may be a few isolated incidents with some damage.  But it looks like we’ve escaped this pretty well.”

California grows about 96 percent of the nation’s processing tomatoes (canned); Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan account for most of the remaining production.

AUDIO: Steve Smith, Red Gold