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00:00Folks tell me all the time that they cannot grow their own food because they have no land,
00:04no garden, no yard, nothing but a little balcony hung off the side of an apartment building,
00:10a few feet of concrete up in the air. And they think that shuts them out of growing entirely.
00:15Well, it does not. Not by a long way. And today I am going to show you how a body
00:22with nothing
00:22but a small balcony and a few empty bottles can grow himself fresh tomatoes off that balcony
00:28for a good long stretch of the year. And I will show you the honest way to have a tomato
00:33on hand
00:34near the whole year round besides. No land, no garden, just a sunny rail and some bottles you
00:41were going to throw away. My name is Elias Yoder, and I farm here in Lancaster County in Pennsylvania.
00:48And though I have got good ground to work, I have a great respect for the folks who grow food
00:54where
00:54there is no ground at all, up on a balcony or a windowsill or a fire escape, for they want
01:00it
01:00badly enough to grow it in the air, and that willingness is the whole heart of the thing.
01:06A tomato does not much care whether it grows in an acre of field or a bottle on a rail,
01:11so long as it gets what it needs, and I will show you how to give it just that. Before
01:17I go on,
01:18I will say this once and then leave it be. I gathered the whole of it, all these old ways
01:24of growing your own food, into a book. You can find it at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long
01:32version. If you want it, it is there. I will not mention it again. Now let me be straight with
01:38you
01:39about one thing right at the start, honestly, the way I always am, because I will not have you
01:44disappointed later. You will hear folks promise fresh tomatoes off your balcony all the year round,
01:51every month, winter included. That is not true, and I will not tell you it is. A tomato is a
01:58warm
01:59weather plant, through and through. It wants warmth and long days of good light, and when the cold comes
02:05and the days go short and dark, an open balcony tomato will stop fruiting and die back, no matter what
02:12you do, for that is its nature. So I am not going to promise you tomatoes in the snow off
02:18an open
02:18balcony, for you would try it and fail and blame yourself. But hold on, because there is an honest
02:25way to have a tomato near always on hand, and I will come to it at the end, and it
02:30is better than the
02:31empty promise. First, let us grow a fine long season of them the straightforward way. So we begin with the
02:39bottle, for that is the thrifty heart of this. You do not need to buy pots. A large plastic bottle
02:46or jug,
02:47the big kind that water or juice comes in, makes a fine tomato planter for near nothing. But mind the
02:54size, for this matters and folks get it wrong. A tomato is a big, thirsty, hungry plant with a great
03:02root system, and it will not thrive crammed into a little soda bottle, no matter what you have seen.
03:08So use the biggest bottles and jugs you can get, the several gallon kind, or better yet, lash or set
03:15a
03:15few together, or use a bucket, an old pail, any large vessel. The bigger the root run you give a
03:22tomato, the better it bears, and a cramped root in a tiny bottle gives you a sad little plant. So
03:29think
03:29big on your vessel. Cut the top off your big bottle to make an open pot, or lay it on
03:35its side and cut a
03:37long opening in the upper face, whichever suits your rail. And here is the one thing you must not
03:43forget with any bottle, and it is the commonest way folks kill a balcony plant. You must make
03:49drainage holes in the bottom. A bottle holds water like a cup, and if there is no hole for the
03:56water to
03:56run out, the soil turns to sour swamp, and the roots drown and rot, and your plant dies. So take
04:04a hot
04:04nail, or an awl, or a knife, and put several good holes in the bottom of every bottle, so the
04:11water
04:11runs freely through. No drainage, no tomato. Remember it. Then you fill your bottles with good, rich soil.
04:19And this matters double in a bottle, for the plant has only that little bit of soil to live on,
04:25and
04:26cannot send its roots out hunting for more the way it could in the ground. So it must all be
04:32right there
04:32in the bottle. Fill them with the richest, loosest mix you can make, good soil, and plenty of compost, and
04:40old rotted manure, so that little bottleful holds all the feeding a hungry tomato needs. Poor, thin dirt in
04:49a small bottle gives you a poor, thin plant. Now choose the right sort of tomato, for this too matters
04:57more
04:58on a balcony than in a field. You want the smaller, bushier kinds, the ones that stay compact, and above
05:05all,
05:06the little cherry and small fruited tomatoes, for those are the champions of pot and balcony growing.
05:13They bear early, they bear heavily, they bear over a long season, and they do not mind a container the
05:21way a great sprawling beefsteak would. A big, late slicing tomato is a poor choice for a bottle.
05:29A tumbling cherry tomato is a joy in one, and will hang its little fruits down over the edge of
05:35the rail
05:36by the hundred. So start with a cherry or a small bush tomato, and you are set up to win.
05:44Set your young plant deep, for here is a fine trick with a tomato that I have told you before,
05:50and it serves the balcony grower especially. A tomato can grow roots all up its buried stem,
05:58unlike most plants. So when you set your young plant into the bottle, strip off its lower leaves,
06:05and bury it deep, right up to the top few leaves. All that buried stem turns to root, and in
06:13a small
06:13bottle where every root counts, that gives you a far stronger, better anchored, better fed plant.
06:21Plant it deep. Now the balcony has one great gift and one great trouble, and you must know both.
06:31The gift is that a balcony, being up off the ground and often against a warm wall,
06:37is frequently a warm, sheltered, sunny spot, a sun trap, warmer than the open ground below,
06:45and that a tomato loves. The trouble is the two things a tomato must have plenty of, sun and water,
06:54water. And a balcony can be short on both. For the sun, a tomato wants a good six hours and
07:01more
07:02of direct sun a day. So you must set your bottles in the very sunniest spot your balcony has,
07:09right against the rail where the light falls longest. And if your balcony faces away from the sun and stays
07:16shady, I will be honest, a tomato will struggle there, and you would do better with a leafy green
07:23that mines shade. But a sunny balcony is a fine place for a tomato. And for the water, this is
07:32the
07:32great labor of bottle growing, so hear it well. A little bottle of soil up in the sun and the
07:40wind
07:40dries out fast, far faster than the ground, sometimes near every day in high summer. So you must water your
07:50balcony tomatoes faithfully, checking them daily in the heat, never letting that small bit of soil bake
07:57bone dry. For a tomato that dries out and then floods gets its fruit cracked and its blossoms rotted.
08:06Steady, faithful watering is the whole price of balcony tomatoes. And if you will pay it in daily
08:14attention, they will pay you back in fruit. Feed them too, for a hungry tomato in a small bottle
08:22burns through its food quicker than one in the deep ground. Every couple of weeks through the season,
08:29give them a good drink of manure tea or compost tea to keep that limited soil
08:35rich enough to bear a heavy crop. And give the taller kinds a stake or a bit of string run
08:42up to the
08:42rail above to climb and lean on, so they do not sprawl or snap. Do that, and from late spring,
08:51right through the summer and into the fall, until the first hard frost, that balcony will give you fresh
08:58tomatoes, little sweet cherries to eat right there in the sun, still warm, off a few bottles of dirt
09:07hung in the air where there was no garden at all. That is a long and generous season, spring to
09:16frost,
09:16and it is an honest promise, and I would not trade the taste of a sun-warm balcony cherry tomato
09:23for
09:24anything the store ever sold. Now at the last, let me give you what I promised, the honest way to
09:31have
09:31a tomato near always on hand, since I would not promise you the impossible year-round crop off the
09:38open rail. It comes in two parts, and it is a finer thing than the empty promise. The first part
09:46is a sunny
09:46window. When the cold comes on in the fall, and the balcony gives out, you can bring one of your
09:53best
09:53small potted tomato plants indoors and set it in your sunniest window, the one that gets the most
10:00winter light. Now I will be honest even here, for that is my way. A tomato indoors in the short
10:08dark
10:08days of winter will not bear like it does in summer. The light is too weak and too short, and
10:15you may get
10:16only a few fruits, or sometimes just the plant kept alive and green. But a few fresh cherry tomatoes off
10:24your window sill in the dead of winter, when everyone else is eating those pale, hard things from the
10:30store, is a small wonder worth the little trouble. And even just keeping the plant alive over the winter
10:37gives you a running start come spring. And the second part is the true old secret, the one that fits
10:44everything I have ever taught you, and it is this. You need never be without a tomato plant coming on,
10:52because a tomato makes its own future for free in two ways. First, you save its seed. Every ripe tomato
11:01is full of seeds, and you have only to scoop a few out, let them dry, and there is next
11:07year's plants
11:08for nothing, and the year after, forever, never buying a plant again. And second, and this is the
11:16wonder, a tomato grows from a cutting. Those little shoots that sprout in the crooks of the branches,
11:22the ones folks pinch off and throw away, you can set any one of them in a jar of water,
11:28and in a week
11:29or two, it grows its own roots, and there you have a whole new tomato plant, free, an exact copy
11:37of
11:37the one you took it from. So you are never at the end of your tomatoes. As one plant tires,
11:44you have
11:44already rooted its child in a jar on the sill to take its place. Round and round, plant after plant,
11:52from seed and from cutting, so that there is always a young tomato coming on somewhere, on the sill in
12:00winter, on the balcony in summer, forever, from that first plant, for nothing. That is the honest
12:07answer to wanting tomatoes all year. Not one magic plant that never quits, for there is no such thing,
12:15but an endless chain of plants, each one raising up the next, so that you are never without.
12:22Let me say a plain word about who profits from you thinking you cannot grow your own,
12:27and it is no dark scheme. The store would dearly love the apartment dweller to believe that growing
12:34food takes land, a yard, an acre, so that he never tries, and buys every tomato he eats, his whole
12:42life,
12:43at their price, which for a fresh tomato out of season is dear indeed. There is no money in a
12:50man
12:51learning that a few thrown away bottles, a bag of soil, and one saved handful of seed would give him
12:58tomatoes off his own rail for the cost of nothing. Nobody sells that. So it goes untaught, and folks
13:06with sunny balconies sit eating store tomatoes, believing they have no choice, when a little garden
13:13in the air was theirs for the making all along. The money runs toward the store, and away from the
13:20bottle on the rail, and it always has. So there is the whole of it. Take your big thrown away
13:26bottles,
13:27hold them well for drainage, and fill them with rich soil and compost. Plant a small cherry or bush tomato,
13:35set deep for strong roots, in the sunniest spot on your rail. Water it faithfully, every day in the heat,
13:43and feed it well, for a bottle dries fast and feeds short. Pick your fill of sweet tomatoes from spring
13:51clear to frost. Then bring one indoors to a sunny window for a few winter fruits, and above all save
13:59your seed and root your cuttings, so there is always a new plant coming on. Do that, and though you
14:06have
14:06not one foot of ground, you will scarcely be without a fresh tomato the year around. Tell me down in
14:13the
14:13comments what county you garden in, and whether you are growing on a balcony or a window sill with no
14:20yard
14:20at all, for I have a real fondness for the folks growing food in the air, and I would like
14:26to know how
14:26many of you there are. And if you have grown tomatoes in bottles or pots up high, and found a
14:33good trick
14:34for the watering, or a variety that bore well for you, put it down, for that is just the knowledge
14:40another balcony grower needs. Next time out here, I want to show you how to build a proper compost pile
14:47the old way, layer upon layer, and yes, you can make good compost even on a balcony, in a small
14:55way,
14:56from your own kitchen scraps, to fill these very bottles with rich soil for nothing, rather than
15:02buying it by the bag. It is the foundation under all of it, even up in the air, and it
15:08is past time
15:09I showed you. But for now, remember this, it is not land that makes a gardener, it is the will
15:17to grow a
15:18living thing and tend it, and that will can turn a few empty bottles on a concrete rail into a
15:24garden
15:25that feeds you. A man with a sunny window and a handful of seed is never truly without a harvest.
15:32The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember
15:39it.
15:39what you did.
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