When Backyard Farms was started, we wanted to enjoy a great tasting, vine-ripened tomato all year round. Building the greenhouse was the first step in this journey, creating an environment suitable for growing delicious fruit whether there was a heat wave or blizzard in Madison, Maine.
But just having a greenhouse isn’t enough to grow and pick tomatoes almost every day of the year. We need to have more than one crop in the greenhouse at certain times of the year in order to keep those tomatoes coming. This process is called interplanting and it’s the secret behind “Always Tomato Season.”
Interplanting
To have tomatoes in market all year round, we use a growing practice called interplanting. While one tomato crop is bearing fruit, we plant a young crop directly behind the existing plants in the row.Take a look at the picture and you can see the young plant that’s only a few feet tall growing behind a much larger plant that’s growing red, ripe tomatoes.
By the time the older crop has finished growing tomatoes, the younger crop is just about ready to start producing tomatoes of its own.
We then remove the older crop from the row to let the new crop absorb all the sunlight and nutrients it needs to produce great tasting tomatoes! Twice a year we repeat this process to make sure we have tomatoes growing all year long.
For more information:
Backyard Farms, LLC
131 River Road
Madison, ME 04950
United States
T: 207-696-5300