Shading Tomato Plants

These tomatoes growing in the Fair Oaks Community Garden are supported by a cage made of concrete reinforcing wire. (SHNS photo by Leilani Hu / The Sacramento Bee)

Researchers may indeed be working on genetically coded sunscreen for hybrid tomatoes and peppers, but so far I haven't read about any Sun Protection Factor 500 Early Girls. That means our summer vegetables again will be subjected to partial incineration by the sun.

Sunscald is not a pretty sight. It's an ugly, brown, leathery-looking patch that develops on peppers and the wrinkled, beige areas on tomatoes. Sunscald will begin appearing in July or August, but there are measures you can take now, during planting time, to minimize the damage.

Leaf cover is nature's sun protection. Plants that have been properly watered, fertilized and mulched have the best chance of growing a lush, protective canopy of leaves. Give the youngsters a healthy start in life.

Cages are essential in protecting tomatoes and are helpful with pepper crops. Don't buy those little, conical cages. A healthy plant will outgrow one in a month or so. They do, however, work great for supporting peppers.

For tomatoes, buy the tallest, sturdiest cages available. Better yet, make your own from concrete-reinforcing wire available at home centers. Homemade cages should be about 30 inches in diameter.

Tuck tomato leaves back inside the cages rather than allowing them to grow outside the structures. You'll create dense, protective layers of foliage. Do the tucking often, as leaf stems can easily snap off once they've grown too long.

I plant peppers on the eastern side of tomatoes so the much taller tomato plants shade the peppers in late afternoon. Vining beans also can be planted to shade tomatoes and peppers. Peppers can be planted very close together. I plant them 10 to 12 inches apart and in clusters rather than rows. They develop quite a leaf canopy for each other and it's easier to water several peppers in a single watering basin.

Use the small cages or stake peppers. Some hybrid varieties produce huge peppers, and branches are brittle.

Don't forget to mulch around tomatoes and peppers. Maintaining soil moisture will help keep leaves from wilting during especially hot periods.

Once plants are green and leafy, the next threat will be tomato hornworms. Hornworms can literally chew up protective leaf cover. Control hornworms by regularly inspecting plants.

Don't overprune indeterminate variety tomatoes. Indeterminates are the ones that seem to grow forever. And never prune determinate varieties (those that stop growing and produce all their fruit in a few short weeks).

When you prune too many leaves, tomatoes are vulnerable to sun damage.

I seldom prune tomatoes other than selectively pinching out suckers. When they outgrow the cages, I allow plants to flop onto the next cage for even more sun protection.

And finally, some of my gardener friends prefer man-made sun screens. They're effective, but require additional work for the setup. They use shade cloth or burlap sack material arranged over or near cages.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, SHNS.com.)