Ray Yeung has tomato juice in his veins.
“My dad started growing tomatoes almost 60 years ago,” said Yeung, scanning one of his fields in West Sacramento, Calif. “Once you start farming, you can’t get it out of your blood. It’s an adrenaline rush.
“I can’t remember not growing tomatoes. I like everything about them. I like the way they grow, I like the way they look.”
Like many people, Yeung loves the taste of a ripe heirloom tomato pulled fresh from the vine: “There’s nothing like it.”
In area restaurants, Ray Yeung has become synonymous with flavorful heirlooms.
“People ask for his tomatoes by name,” said Jim Mills of Produce Express, which supplies tons of Yeung’s tomatoes to local eateries and caterers.
Sacramento earned its nickname for a reason. The Big Tomato appreciates great tomatoes, and Yeung has become Sacramento’s “Mr. Tomato,” nurturing the red beauties from seed to table.
Much of what he has learned on the way to that title can help home gardeners achieve success, too.
Yeung and his crew have transplanted about 15,000 acres of tomatoes so far this season – about 100 million seedlings.
That’s in addition to the Yeung family’s own 2,000 acres, divided among heirloom and canning tomatoes, seed crops and alfalfa.
Ray, 49, farms with his father, Joe, and brother, Richard.
“The best time to plant here is mid-April,” said Yeung, whose crews work almost around the clock from March to June. “You don’t want to wait too late; the later you wait, the lower the yield. You want the plant to get the ultimate amount of day length, and after late June, the days just get shorter.”
Also, the more sun the plant gets, the more sugar in the fruit: “Late tomatoes just don’t taste as good.”
Planting is semiautomated. Riding a tractor-pulled rig, six workers drop the seedlings into wheels that plop them into neat rows, 18 inches apart. A drip system delivers a small dose of fertilizer to help the transplants put down roots.
Canning tomatoes are planted at 7,000 to 9,000 plants per acre; heirlooms, which tend to need more space, are planted 5,000 to the acre. They aren’t staked; they’re allowed to grow in twisting clumps.
Heirlooms have become Yeung’s prized crop, an evolution that happened almost by accident.
“I wanted to eat some good, fresh market tomatoes,” he said. “So I got a few plants.”
Then he asked Mills whether Produce Express might want some.
“He showed me these goofy-looking tomatoes and wondered if there was any market,” Mills said. “Now we’re in our ninth season of selling his heirlooms.
“Yeung took this basically unknown product and realized its unique value. Now, everybody wants heirlooms.”
Their appeal is obvious, Mills said.
“They’re quality tomatoes with good taste with a great variety of size and color. They do so much automatically on the plate; chefs love the colors and shapes. You don’t need to adorn them.”
Yeung learned a hard lesson with his first crop.
“It’s amazing, but the rougher you treat them, the better they respond,” he said. “When I first tried to grow them, I treated them like commercial tomatoes and got zero crop; they were all vines and leaves. I planted 12 acres and got five boxes total of tomatoes. I treated them too well. It was the biggest life lesson I learned – and it cost a lot of money.”
Heirlooms thrive on less water and fertilizer than their counterparts.
“That’s the No. 1 mistake people make – they water them too much,” Yeung said. “No. 2 is too much fertilizer.”
Nitrogen-rich fertilizers will yield bushels of leaves, not heirlooms. Yeung suggests one dose of balanced fertilizer (10-10-10, for example) when planting and a little more as fruit sets.
“But not too much,” he warned.
Yeung recommends one deep watering a week; that’s six hours on a drip system. They may need a little more during triple-digit heat.
Home gardeners should experiment with their tomatoes every year, growing different varieties, Yeung added.
“Plant three (vines) and try three different regimes (of fertilizer). I’m always experimenting, too. Mix it up. You may be surprised.”
