The Rio Tomato
About The Rio Tomato
When we began growing field vegetables commercially around 2008, we struggled to find enough high-quality pepper plants for our first planting. Our family purchased a tiny greenhouse to raise our own plants.
We began retail sales of plants in a small way in 2010, wanting to provide the same quality of plants that we used in the fields for our own market gardening.
Within a few years, we added Wave® Petunia, and later, Calliope® Geranium. Today, we grow a large range of annual flowers, vegetables, and herbs.
Browse Our 2025 Plant Lists
View and download the flower and veggie plant lists.
Plant Selection
We seek out and grow tested vegetable varieties—often ones that have performed well for us and varieties we prefer to grow. Avid gardeners also introduce us to their personal favorites. Heirloom tomato “Bidwell Orange” was introduced to us by the Clifton family of Bidwell, and “Rife Pink” came from the Byler family of Gallipolis.
Some of the vegetable varieties offered won’t be found in most garden centers, as many have been researched at a commercial grower’s level. Vegetable breeders such as Seneca Vegetable Research, PanAmerican Seed, BHN, Bejo, Sakata, Syngenta, Seminis, and others play a part in the success of our gardening clients. With these varieties, we want to bring the success of the market gardener to your home garden.
We offer over 65 tomato varieties, over 35 pepper varieties, along with a wide selection of herbs and flowers.
Spring & Fall Garden Sales
We are open for Spring garden sales from April 1 through June 10, every day but Sunday, from 8:30 to 5:30. We are a Spring Garden Center, not a landscape or perennial plant source.
In the Fall, we are open from mid-August through the end of September, every day but Sunday, from 8:30 to 5:30. Fall offerings include garden mums and Fall garden plants such as broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, and more.
Our Values
God created man to work with plants and soil.
We enjoy enhancing that relationship by providing a restful place (you cannot hurry a plant!) for folks to browse, and by helping them have success in their own garden.
Easy-to-Grow Vegetables for Beginners
For an easy start in vegetable gardening, here are a few easy-to-grow varieties that will provide a rewarding experience the first year.
- “Turnpike” Bell Pepper – A nice blocky bell pepper that can be eaten green or red; very low maintenance.
- “Jalapeno Ciclon” Pepper – Easy to raise. Peppers take patience, as they grow slowly and ripen slowly.
- “Enterprise” Yellow Squash – A slicing yellow squash, beautiful for stir fry. You may want to wear gloves and use a knife to harvest the fruit, as the stalk is spiny.
- “Red Deuce” Tomato – A heat-resistant 10-ounce red tomato that is easy to grow. Keep the branches gently tied up to a stake so the leaves do not touch the soil.
- “Sweet Million” Cherry Tomato
- “Atlas” Butternut Squash – Easy to raise, but it requires room to spread out. One plant needs a five-foot-wide by five-foot-long area of soil.
Plant Care Tips
A Few Tips for Tomatoes
#1 Blossom end rot is not a disease; it is a calcium deficiency. Put ½ cup of calcitic lime around each tomato stalk, in a doughnut circle, not touching the stalk, so the rain dissolves calcium and moves it to the root zone. This will cure blossom end rot.
#2 If the tomatoes stay hard and green and don’t seem to ripen well, but you have lots of bushy stalk, you may have too much nitrogen in your fertilizer. An optimum fertilizer for tomatoes has nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash in a graduated amount such as 3-12-18, not a proportionately high amount of nitrogen such as 20-20-20.
Plant Care Tips
If Your Geraniums “Get Tired and Yellow” in the Middle of the Summer
Tip #1: Use a fertilizer for your geraniums that contains adequate phosphorus. The three numbers on the analysis need to be nearly even, such as 15-15-15 or 12-15-12. Regular petunia fertilizer will starve a geranium, because petunia fertilizer has less phosphorus, with numbers like 20-10-20 or 23-8-18.
Tip #2: Apply calcitic lime to the geranium planting area. This helps when summer heat exacerbates stress on the plants.
Plant Care Tips
Care of Petunia Baskets
Petunia plants like a low pH. Try adding two teaspoons of vinegar per gallon to your weekly fertilizer water mix.
Petunia plants respond well to pruning. If your basket gets loose and shaggy, try giving the petunia a “haircut.” It will respond by growing out a few inches and reblooming.
Contact The Rio Tomato
Phone Number
Address
230 Wolf Run Road, Patriot, OH 45658