The type of tomato you plant will decide when you get to harvest your crop.
Tomatoes are forgiving garden plants, producing a satisfying crop for novice and experienced gardener alike. If you plan to grow them in your garden, it pays to learn when to plant them and what type to plant in order to get the harvest you want. In general, seedlings transplanted to the garden any time from mid-May to mid-June will ripen from late June through mid-August. Hot weather -- 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher -- will accelerate ripening. Pick your tomatoes when they are firm and colorful or harvest before an early freeze and allow them to ripen inside.
Determinate Tomatoes
Determinate varieties produce a dense cluster of flowers, stop growing at that point and begin to fruit. The fruit ripens all at once, which can be tricky if you have a lot of plants and would rather space your salads and fresh tomato dishes over a season. A solution is to plant successively so the harvest is stretched over weeks and months as the plants mature. Determinate tomato varieties include Celebrity, Floramerica, Mountain Gold, Tiny Tim and Cherry Gold. Harvest times, from seedlings-in-the-ground to picking and eating, range from 45 to 72 days.
Indeterminate Tomatoes
Indeterminate tomato plants encompass all heirloom varieties and any tomatoes that continue to grow, flower and fruit over time, rather than all at once. They are prized for strong, sweet flavor, produce a lot of vigorous foliage and may be slow to mature. Indeterminate types include early bloomers Early Cascade and Early Girl that both ripen in about 55 days. More typical are the huge tomatoes: Delicious, Supersteak and Beefmaster, all ready near 80 days; orange Jubilee and pink Brandywine, ripening between 72 and 80 days; and the small Super Sweet 100 and Large Red Cherry, edible in 70 days.
Heirlooms and Oddities
Heirloom tomatoes produce true-to-parent seed and may not be as beautiful as contemporary, hybrid varieties. But they are sought after as gardeners seek a taste of original flavors and are willing to monitor plants for diseases and harvest them over a longer period, later in the season. Get seeds from online specialty nurseries and seedlings from local nurseries. Odd-colored tomatoes are trendy -- and indeterminate. White Wonder is white-fleshed and takes 85 days to mature. Evergreen, a green and yellow cultivar, also ripens in 85 days. Yellow Stuffer, a semi-hollow, lemon-colored tomato, looks like a pepper and may be stuffed and baked like one. It matures in 80 days.
Paste Tomatoes
Paste tomatoes are appropriate for canning and preserving for sauces and tomato-based dishes throughout the winter. They are firm-fleshed and slightly grainy which gives them more substance when cooked into paste. These tomatoes tend to cluster and ripen all at once. This is undesirable if you want a summer season of fresh tomatoes, but it is perfect for the work of canning which is most efficiently done in large batches. Red paste tomatoes like Roma, San Marzano and Viva Italia ripen, on average between 70 and 80 days from planting.
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