As with any garden plant, knowing the proper way to care for it from the start will ensure the best result. We’ve got all the info you need, from start to finish beginning with the soil. Here, in order is what you’ll need to know about growing tomatoes:

* Climate and Soil
* Heirlooms and Hybrids
* Seeds and Seedlings
* Planting and Fertilizing
* Watering and Mulching
* Determinate, Indeterminate, Semi-determinate
* To Pinch out Suckers or Not
* Commom Problems & Solutions
* Prevent Diseases From Starting
* Havesting
* How to Ripen Green Tomato Tricks
* Popular Tomato Varieties

Climate and Soil

Tomatoes like a nice warm area in full sun, and need at least 8 hours of sunlight a day, or they get spindly and produce little mature fruit.
You want soil that will hold water as evenly as possible because uneven uptake of water can cause all kinds of problems with tomatoes including: flower drop, fruit splitting and blossom-end rot.

Heirlooms and Hybrids

Heirlooms, loosely defined, are open-pollinated cultivars that were introduced many generations ago, and were of such merit, that they have been saved, maintained and handed down. It is generally agreed that no genetically modified plants can be considered heirloom cultivars.

Heirlooms are often not as productive as hybrids, but they typically taste better, and you can save their seeds from one season to the next, eventually breeding a variety that is perfectly suited to your conditions. Most heirlooms are “indeterminate” types, meaning they grow long, sprawling vines and produce tomatoes continuously through the season.

Hybrids, on the other hand, are tomatoes whose breeding has been controlled, and organized for specific reasons. For example, they often have disease-resistance bred into them that heirlooms lack.

In fact hybrid tomato varieties have many advantages compared to open-pollinated varieties. Hybrids usually produce higher yields, they generally mature earlier and more uniformly, and many hybrids have better fruit quality.

It’s really up to you which you want to plant. If you want to avoid hybrids and plant heirlooms only, look at that tag, there will usually be a “F1″ demarcation for hybrids. If you need or want the disease resistant tomatoes, you will have to buy hybrids.

Seeds and Seedlings

Seeds

In long-season areas, tomatoes can be direct-seeded into the garden, but most people start their seeds indoors 5-6 weeks before the last spring frost, and then plant their seedlings out into the garden.

Seedlings

If you’re going to buy your seedlings from the garden center or elsewhere, then look for clean, dark green foliage and a sturdy habit. If the bottom leaves are yellow or brown, or if there are any flowers already showing, the plant is stressed.

Look at the leaves and the underside of the leaves closely for any pests. If you see any chew marks, or aphids, don’t buy it. Try to buy the healthiest, pest-free, plants available because they will be the most productive plants overall.

Planting and Fertilizing

Generally you don’t want to fertilize tomatoes too much until the plant is well established, and in full flower, because too much nitrogen will give you lots of foliage and not a lot of fruit. I have found, however, putting down a small amount of balanced fertilizer gets the plants off to a good, healthy start.

Then next time you’ll want to fertilize again is when the plants start to flower. Also, spraying your plants with a kelp solution two or three times a season boosts vigor, which helps the vines fend off diseases.

Always plant tomatoes deep, and on their sides.

Dig out a shallow trench. Remove the lower stems and branches off the tomatoes, leaving only the upper most top leaves.

Lay the entire plant down a trench on its side and cover with soil. Leave only the top leaves showing. Don’t worry if the foliage is pointing to the side, it will right itself and grow upright in a few days.

Watering and Mulching

When watering, always keep the water towards the base of the plant, and try and keep the leaves dry. Tomatoes can become infected when airborne spores land on wet plants, so never use an overhead sprinkler. Obviously if it rains you can’t do anything about it, but try not to unnecessarily get the plants wet.

Water regularly but allow the soil to dry a bit between waterings. You want tomatoes to have a regular available water source without keeping them soggy.

In areas with high heat, you may need to mulch around the base of the plants to keep the roots from drying out, and help with moisture retention.

When tomatoes get too wet or too dry that’s when problems start. So try to keep the soil moisture even, without being soggy.

Determinate, Indeterminate, Semi-determinate

Determinate tomatoes means they will stop growing, are bushy, and get about 3 feet (.91 m) tall. Examples of this type include Pik-Red, Early Girl, and Super Bush

Indeterminate tomatoes don’t stop growing, and produce a lot of suckers from the main stem of the plant. If conditions are good, those suckers can flower and set fruit. Examples of this type of growth habit include ‘Big Beef’ (most of the beefsteak types), ‘Supersonic’, and ‘ig Boy’.

Semideterminate plants have habits of both. Examples would be ‘Celebrity’ and ‘Mountain Pride’.

OK – so which do you choose to grow?

It all depends upon the variety of tomato you want to grow. One isn’t better than another, they simply have a different growth habit. The tag on the seedlings or seed packet will tell you what you have.

Determinate tomatoes don’t need to be caged or put on a trellis, but then again, neither do indeterminate varieties.

Whether you use cages or not is really your choice and how much space you have in your garden.

To Pinch out Suckers or Not

Some gardeners prune tomatoes by pinching out suckers or the leafy shoots that grow from leaf axils. The leaf axil is the “V” between the central trunk (stem) and lateral branches.

Here is how you determine whether to remove suckers or not.

If left on the plant, suckers will keep growing and usually produce fruit. It can be helpful sometimes to prune suckers out so the overall plant doesn’t get top-heavy, or produce more fruit than the plant can mature in time for fall. Just keep in mind, if you prune them, you will get fewer, but larger fruit.

You can let some of the suckers stay on if you want, suckers don’t hurt anything. It’s up to you how you want your tomatoes to grow.

Common Problems & Solutions

# Cat-facing
This is when irregular shapes and lines, especially at the top of the tomato, are caused by temperature shifts and incomplete pollination in cold weather at flowering time. There is nothing you can do about it. The tomato will still taste great. Next time, don’t plant too early, or select varieties that resist catfacing.

# Blossom-end rot
This is caused by poor calcium uptake due to inconsistent moisture. If you currently have this problem, remove any rotted or diseased tomatoes, provide consistent moisture, and keep a layer of mulch on the soil. If you live in a super hot area, you need to mulch around your tomatoes to keep them from drying out. They like nice even moisture.

# Sunscald
This can happen any time there is a real spike in the heat. If the fruit is far from ripe, chances are that the entire fruit will rot. Remove damaged tomatoes.

# Split skin or cracking
This can happen any time the plants experience accelerated growth, which can be brought on by a sudden increase in moisture after being too dry, like summer rains after dry periods. To fix, provide consistent moisture, or look for varieties that are resistant to cracking. Another reason you may see splitting or cracking is that the fruit is overripe. There is nothing wrong with these tomatoes, they are great to eat, just keep them picked.

In addition to this, many cherry tomatoes crack with the slightest shift in weather, and after heavy rains, and there’s not much you can do about it. If you can, try and pick all the ripe ones before it rains.

# Flowers form, but few or no fruit develops
Tomato flowers fall off prematurely when there is a sudden change in the weather because it is too cool, or too hot, or the soil is too dry.

Improve the growing conditions. Mulch to keep the soil moisture even.

Use Blossom Set, which is a product that is all-natural, and environmentally friendly. It’s a natural plant hormone that helps blossoms set fruit in spite of poor weather conditions, and produces larger, meatier tomatoes with fewer seeds.

Use early in the season and get tomatoes up to three weeks earlier. When tomato flowers are fully open, spray regularly for bigger yields all season. It can also be used to increase fruit set on cucumbers, melons, eggplants, strawberries, and peppers.

# Green shoulders
Some tomatoes are unimproved old-time varieties and end up with “green shoulders.” That’s just the way they grow, and there’s not much you can do about it.

Prevent Diseases From Starting

Rotate Your Crops

To avoid soil-borne diseases, place your tomatoes on a three year rotation schedule, and rotate with unrelated crops such as corn, beans or lettuce, or grow a cover crop. This will give you a chance to solarize your soil and break the disease cycle. Make sure you don’t plant your tomatoes in the same place that other members of the tomato family (peppers, eggplants, and potatoes) have grown in the past two years in order to keep them healthy. If that is not possible, grow disease-resistant cultivars if you think your soil has diseases like Fusarium or Verticillium wilt.

Get Rid of Diseased Plants

Never compost plants with diseases because you risk spreading the disease to the rest of your garden. Instead, throw them away or burn diseased plants and any garden debris, like mulch or weeds, that came in contact with them.

Plant Disease Resistant Cultivars

‘Celebrity’ – Has tolerance to alternaria stem canker, fusarium 1 and 2, nematodes, gray leafspot, tomato mosaic virus, and verticillium wilt

‘Italian Gold’ – Has more tolerance against blossom-end rot

‘La Rossa’ – Has verticillium and fusarium 1 and 2 tolerance

‘Neptune’ – Great heat tolerance and resistance to bacteria wilt. This cultivar is also resistant to fusarium wilt race 1 and 2, verticillium wilt race 1, and gray leafspot

Harvesting

Pick fruit when it is a solid color (red, yellow, etc.) from top to bottom, but still firm. Also, pick often. In fact, you may need to harvest daily or every other day. Keep an eye on how the fruit is developing.

Also, cold can degrade tomato flavor, so store tomatoes on your kitchen counter, where the temperatures are above 50° F (10° C), instead of in your refrigerator’s crisper.

How to Ripen Green Tomato Tricks

If when the fall months come there are still several green or partially ripe tomatoes on your vines, but not enough warmth and sun to mature them properly, don’t give up on them! There are two ways to ripen green tomatoes properly.

Always ripen tomatoes indoors! Tomatoes ripen from the bottom to the top and from the inside out. So never put them on a windowsill. That will only turn them red, not ripe. What you want to do is put them in a warm, dark spot and cover them with a single sheet of newspaper. These conditions are the ones tomatoes need most to continue their ripening process, which is internal. Light at this point is not necessary any longer.

Popular Tomato Varieties

Several tomatoes have been rated for flavor. Here are a few varieties that are consistently voted winners:

Heirlooms

* ‘Brandywine’ – Red

* ‘Brandywine OTV’ – Big, red, and juicy

* ‘Caspian Pink’ – Beefsteak-type tomato with pinkish red fruit

* ‘Constoluto Genovese’ – Red ribbed fruit

* ‘Hillbilly’ – Yellow and red streaked fruit

* ‘Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter’ – Pinkish red fruit

Red Tomatoes

* ‘Arkansas Traveler’ – Good for hot-weather

* ‘Carmello’ – FVNT hybrid

* ‘Celebrity’ – VFFTNA hybrid

* ‘Early Girl’ – VFF, early and dependable

* ‘Stupice’ – Good for the Northwest, where fruit set is a problem

Colored Tomatoes

* ‘Cherokee Purple’ – Large pink-purple fruit

* ‘Garden Peach’ – Small yellow fruit, slightly fuzzy skin

* ‘Jaune Flamee’ – Small deep orange fruit

* ‘Lemon Boy’ – VFN hybrid with mild yellow fruit

* ‘Paul Robeson’ – Midsize dusky dark red fruit

Plum Tomatoes

* ‘Amish Paste’ – Medium-large red

* ‘Margherita’ – VF hybrid

* ‘Speckled Roman’ – Meaty, striped yellow and orange fruit

Cherry and Grape Tomatoes

* ‘Sungold’ – FT hybrid with yellow fruit

* ‘Isis Candy’ – Marbled red-orange fruit

* ‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’ – Early red cherry / grape

* ‘Super Sweet 100′ – VF hybrid

* ‘Cupid’ – Fast hybrid red grape

So, was this too much infromation? Are you overwhelmed by what at first seemed a simple backyard activity? Don’t be. The first few steps are all you need. Pick a plant, choose a sunny spot and prepare your soil. You’re good to go!

Now, if you felt this was only a beginning and you would like more details about planting and maintaining tomatoes, please visit weekendgardener.net.

We’ve compiled some guidelines for you to help make the decision process a little easier. You can read the whole, unabridged version here.

Property Damage Coverage

Property damage coverage helps pay for damage to your home and personal property. Other structures such as a detached garage, a tool shed, or any other building on your property are usually covered for 10% of the amount of coverage on your house.

Personal property coverage will pay for personal property including household furniture, clothing, and other personal belongings. The amount of insurance coverage is usually 50% of the policy limit on your dwelling. The coverage is also limited by the types of loss listed in the policy. The coverage only pays the current cash value of the item destroyed, unless you purchase replacement cost coverage. Your homeowner’s policy also provides off-premises coverage. This means that the policy covers your belongings against theft even when they are not inside your home.

Personal Liability Coverage

Homeowner’s policies provide personal liability coverage that applies to non-auto accidents on and off your property if the injury or damage is cased by you, a member of your family, or your pet. The liability coverage in your policy pays both for the cost of defending you and paying for any damages the court rules you must pay. Liability insurance does not have a deductible that you must meet before your insurer begins to pay losses. The basic liability coverage is usually $100,000 for each occurrence. You can request higher limits that are available for an additional cost.

Medical Payments Coverage

Medical payment coverage pays if someone outside your family is injured at your home regardless of fault. This includes payment for reasonable medical expenses incurred within one year from the date of loss for a person who is injured in an accident in your home. The coverage does not apply to you and members of your household.

Additional Living Expenses

If it is necessary for you to move into a motel or apartment temporarily because of damage caused by a peril covered in your policy, your insurance company will pay an amount up to 20% of the policy limit on your dwelling for these expenses.

You can protect your home, property and liability with the proper insurance policy. Take the time to access what you need to ensure you are covered.

Coffeemakers —Save on pricey coffeehouse blends by brewing your morning cup at home. Resisting a three dollar cup of coffee will save you nearly $1,000 per year!

Freezers —Stock up on frozen foods when they are on sale. In 2008, shipments of home freezers were up five percent as consumers started to realize the savings in stocking up on frozen sale items. Also, remember to shop for an ENERGY STAR freezer to save even more on energy costs.

Water filters —Use a water filtration system in your refrigerator instead of buying bottled water. This practice will save you money, and will help the environment by reducing the number of plastic bottles that clog landfills.

Portable electric heaters —Turn down the heat and use portable heaters in rooms that are used frequently. Keeping the thermostat down will save money while portable heaters provide direct and quick warmth.

Electric Oven—An electric oven turned on for 1 hour on 350ºF only uses 2kWh of electricity, costing just 24 cents. The cost of dining out can add up quickly. Try cooking at home for a low-cost meal.

With a little effort and forethought, you can save quite a bit of change.

As your laundry accumulates, pre-sort it into designated baskets for lights, darks and whites. This way, a load will be ready to throw in the washer whenever you have a minute to spare.
While sorting, don’t forget to close zippers, clasp hooks and check pockets to prevent snags and avoid washing tissues, money, lipstick, etc.
Streamline the laundry process by incorporating storage solutions and flat working surfaces into your laundry room. This will keep laundry where it belongs and eliminate the need to treat, sort and fold in other rooms of the house.
Wash small loads as needed between laundry days. Today’s high efficiency washing machines use substantially less water and energy than a conventional top-loading washer. Which means you can do small loads when you have time, rather than waiting for the basket to fill up.
Don’t overload the washer or dryer. Clothes come out cleaner and less wrinkled when given room to move freely.

Follow these tips to cut your energy use at home:

Set your thermostat at 68 degrees F during the day and 60 degrees at night. You might need to wear a light sweater, but the change will show up on your bill.

Keep your lamps and TVs away from air-conditioning thermostats. The heat they produce can cause the unit to run longer.

Reduce your trips to the refrigerator. Up to 30 percent of the cold air escapes ecah time the door is opened.

Make sure your furniture is not blocking any vents or radiators.

Clean your dryer filter. A dirty filter can increase energy use by up to 30 percent.

This is little more involved:

Go to http://hes.lbl.gov to give your house and energy audit. Use the site to calculate you home’s energy use by entering your zip code. Then find out more ways to save energy.

I visited the site and found I could save up to $500 in energy costs. Of course some of those changes would require an initial cash output, for example, adding insulation to parts of my home, but the long term savings might make it worthwhile.

Boy have times, and appliances changed. Today, you might get nine years out of your dishwasher and microwave, ten from your washer, and if you’re lucky thirteen out of your dryer and refrigerator. We’ve detailed the average lifespan in this article if you’d like find out about a specific appliance.

Not only are appliances not made to last anymore, but the manufacturers, being fully aware of this, have geared their warranties accordingly.

Hometownlife.com reports that a reader called to report that her 12-year-old dishwasher ran all night. Her husband turned it on when they went to bed around 10 p.m., and when she walked into the kitchen at 7 a.m., it was still running. She opened the door and the blast of heat was like opening an oven door. She called the manufacturer who sent out a service technician who couldn’t tell her why the dishwasher didn’t shut off. The manufacturer then told her they couldn’t do a thing for her because it was well out of warranty and besides that, they told her the average life span of the dishwasher was six years. They offered her $50 towards the purchase of a new dishwasher provided it was their brand.

Although the dishwasher was not new, one should expect that it would at the least run safely and that the response from the manufacturer would be more helpful.

You can read the whole article here.

Invitees

Where a homeowner, by express or implied invitation, induces or leads others to come upon the premises for any lawful purpose, a duty to exercise ordinary care arises to keep the premises safe. The invitation may be express, implied from known and customary use of portions of the premises, or inferred from conduct actually known to the homeowner. Workers or contractors are typically considered invitees.
Licensees

A licensee is a person who has no contractual relation with the owner of the premises but is permitted, expressly or implicitly, to go on the premises. A social guest at a residence is normally considered a licensee. The homeowner is liable to a licensee only for willful or wanton injury. It is usually willful or wanton not to exercise ordinary care to prevent injuring a licensee who is actually known to be, or is reasonably expected to be, within the range of a dangerous act or condition.
Trespassers

Surprising to many homeowners is the fact that a duty is also owed to those without permission to be on the premises. A trespasser is a person who enters the premises of another without express or implied permission of the owner, for the trespasser’s own benefit or amusement. The duty of the owner to a trespasser is not to prepare pitfalls or traps for the trespasser nor to injure the trespasser purposely. Once the owner is aware of the trespasser’s presence or can reasonably anticipate such presence from the circumstances, (EVIDENCE of skateboarders in an unfinished swimming pool would fall into this category) then the owner has a duty to exercise ordinary care to avoid injuring the trespasser.

Homeowner’s Insurance policies cover this form of legal liability in the event that anyone suffers an injury while on the insured property. The extent of your liability, and the extent of your coverage will have a lot to do with what category Santa falls into. Since he is bringing you presents for your kids, and is clearly on your property for your benefit rather than his own, he is clearly not a trespasser. If you are Jewish, Muslim or staunchly secular and don’t believe in Santa, you might have a clearer shot at having your carrier classify him as a trespasser.

If Santa is like a meter reader, he is welcome to come onto your property for his own benefit and on his own schedule. He’s not there because you invited him, but because it comes with the job. He’s the guy regulating the whole naughty/nice thing and you don’t really have much of a say. In that case, you just can’t show wanton disregard for his safety or willfully harm him. Lighting a fire in the fireplace is probably a no no. But if he trips over your rooftop inflatable reindeer and takes a tumble it probably isn’t your responsibility.

But if you put out a plate of cookies and milk, watch out. You’ve probably made Santa an invitee and you need to exercise reasonable care to provide him with a safe environment. No black ice on the roof, no hard to see cables or satellite dishes that might catch up the sleigh or the reindeer. Its up to you to make sure that he can enter and leave safely.

Generally, even if you do have liability for an injury to a visitor, if you have reasonable homeowner’s insurance your are going to be covered under your premises liability coverage. If you aren’t sure about your coverage, check out our homeowners insurance quote system here.

And remember, even if you do get sued by Santa Claus, your insurance carrier probably has a responsibility to defend you in courth. Its one of the Clauses in your policy.

Read more about premises liability coverage here

Or Track Santa here.

* An estimated 32,500 intentionally set structure fires occurred in 2007.
* Intentionally set fires in structures resulted in 295 civilian deaths.
* Intentionally set structure fires also resulted in $733,000,000 in property loss.
* 20,500 intentionally set vehicle fires occurred, no change from 2006, and caused $145,000,000 in property damage, an increase of 8.2% from 2006.

The following table shows the number of fires, deaths, and dollar loss due to intentionally set structure fires that occurred from 1998 to 2007. Note: Injury data for intentionally set structure fires are not reported to NFPA.

Arson Fire Statistics Year Fires Deaths Direct Dollar Loss In Millions
1998 76,000 470 $1,249
1999 72,000 370 $1,281
2000 75,000 505 $1,340
2001¹ 45,500 330 $1,013 (excluding 9/11)
2001² - 2,451 $33,440 (including 9/11)
2002 44,500 350 $919
2003 37,500 305 $692
2004 36,500 320 $714
2005 31,500 315 $664
2006 31,000 305 $755
2007 32,500 295 $733

Flexible payment loans, called Option ARMs are adjustable rate mortgages with several flexible payment options. Generally they allow a homeowner to make a full payment according to a standard payoff schedule, or to pay only the interest with no payment towards the loans principal, or even a lesser “negative amortization” amount which would allow some of the interest owed to add to the original principal. These loans existed for only one reason, to create a lower initial payment structure to allow a buyer to acquire a property that she couldn’t afford. Unfortunately, the low payments always had a sunset provision, in the case of many homeowners, a true drop dead provision. At the end of two years or perhaps three, the loans would reset to the higher full payoff paced payment which the borrower generally couldn’t afford. The only possible salvation to a homeowner in these time bomb loans was to refinance or sell. In a down market, with tight credit, these homeowners are facing a perfect storm with no way out. The risk was never a mystery, it was just ignored.

Warnings came from all sides of the mortgage market.

We expect to see a huge increase in defaults, delinquencies and foreclosures as a result of the over selling of these products,” Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, wrote to regulators in 2006. The group advocates on housing and banking issues for low-income and minority residents.

But bankers, afraid of having their opportunities limited fought the regulations. “To conclude that ‘nontraditional’ equates to higher risk does not appropriately balance risk and compensating factors of these products,” said Lilian Gavin, the Chief Investment Officer of Downey Savings which carried over 50% of its loan portfolio in these products. Downey insisted these loans were safe — maybe even safer than traditional 30-year mortgages.

In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy, bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Today, in the midst of the worst housing recession in a generation, the proposal reads like a list of what-ifs:

_Regulators told bankers exotic mortgages were often inappropriate for buyers with bad credit.

_Banks would have been required to increase efforts to verify that buyers actually had jobs and could afford houses.

_Regulators proposed a cap on risky mortgages so a string of defaults wouldn’t be crippling.

_Banks that bundled and sold mortgages were told to be sure investors knew exactly what they were buying.

_Regulators urged banks to help buyers make responsible decisions and clearly advise them that interest rates might skyrocket and huge payments might be due sooner than expected.

Those proposals all were stripped from the final rules. None required congressional approval or the president’s signature.

“In hindsight, it was spot on,” said Jeffrey Brown, a former top official at the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, one of the first agencies to raise concerns about risky lending.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the regulators bent to the banks and the financial fallout has trashed everything.

Read more about Home Loans and Refinancing at Refinance.Net

We’ve all experienced power outages and the mess of melted and spoiled food that must be cleaned once the power is restored. If the power is out for an extended period of time, the smell of rotten food can be hard to remove.

Here are step-by-step instructions from inrich.com for getting the smell out:

Start by cleaning the refrigerator compartment thoroughly. Anne Field, an emeritus extension specialist with Michigan State University Extension, suggests this method: Unplug the appliance, remove all food and removable interior parts, and wash the interior with a solution of 1 to 2 tablespoons of baking soda in 1 quart of warm water. Rinse and wipe dry.

Leave the door open and let the refrigerator air out, with a fan directed toward the inside. If weather permits, open the kitchen windows.

Field recommends washing removable shelves and other parts in a warm detergent solution. Don’t put glass or plastic parts in hot water, she cautions. They might crack, especially if they’re cold.

Clean the door gasket with a detergent solution, too.

Next, clean the freezer compartment following the instructions that came with the appliance manual. If you don’t have a manual, contact the manufacturer. Some can be found online.

Ways to absorb odors: If odor remains, Field suggests trying one or all of these removal methods:

Spread baking soda on shallow pans and place them on the shelves of the empty refrigerator to absorb odors. Leave the door open and the refrigerator unplugged.
Spread activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, in shallow pans and place the pans on the shelves. Turn the refrigerator on low and run it empty a few days till the odors are absorbed.
You can also try the same method with cat litter spread on shallow pans, several ounces of imitation vanilla (not pure vanilla extract) poured into a saucer or fresh ground coffee in cereal bowls. With the coffee method, a slight coffee odor might remain, but it can be removed by cleaning the refrigerator again with baking soda solution, Field says.
Pack each shelf of an empty refrigerator with crumpled newspaper. Set a cup of water on the top shelf or sprinkle the newspaper lightly with water. Allow the refrigerator to run for five or six days. This method takes longer, but Field says it can be effective in removing strong odors.
Buy a commercial odor remover. One brand Field suggests is Odors Away by Wrap-on Co., available at some hardware and hospital supply stores.
If none of the methods removes all the odor, Field says it probably has penetrated the insulation. You can contact an appliance service company for an estimate on the cost of removing the liner and replacing the insulation, but replacing the refrigerator may be a better choice, she says.