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Tomato Growing Tips - Urban Farmer's Guide
Home > Gardener's Guide > Tomato Growing Tips
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Here are some tomato growing tips that will give your tomatoes the best chance.
Pick the Right Varieties
This is a very important step that gets over looked by many people. There are many factors that will determine the best variety for you including climate, taste, garden size and harvesting type. Climate is a big factor, for example, tomatoes often won’t set fruit above 90 F, although smaller varieties will do so at hotter temperatures. You also need to understand if the variety you chose is a determinant or indeterminate. Determinant will tend to grow to a specific size, and then stop, and often yield most of their fruit over a short period of time. Conversely, indeterminate plants will continue to grow over the season, and will bear fruit over a longer period of time.
Some of our favorite tomato varieties include Beefsteak, Roma, Rutgers, Sweetie and Bradley.
Start Your Seeds Indoors
Starting your seeds indoors will ultimately give your seeds the highest germination rates and a controlled environment. Try using a starting kit with multiple cells and clean soil. Plant two to three seeds per cell and thin to one plant once they reach two inches tall.
Tomato Seeds Prefer Warm Soil
After you have planted your tomato seeds indoors find a location in your house that can provide constant heat to the soil. A good location is on top of the refrigerator or by a warm vent. Keeping the soil above 65 degrees will increase germination rates and speed up growth.
Put a Fan on Your Seedlings
A good way to toughen up your seedlings is to place a fan beside them that will help them move and sway in the breeze. Provide a breeze by turning a fan on them for 10 minutes twice a day.
Prepare a Good Soil for Your Plants
Tomatoes prefer a well drained soil with lots of organic matter. A mature compost should be worked into the soil as well. The soil pH should be around six to seven. If you have anything wrong with your soil and you are concerned try a raised garden bed which will give you good drainage and allow you to control the soil mix.
Location, Location, Location
Finding a good location in your yard is probably the most important step in creating a good tomato garden. Tomatoes are sun lovers and prefer a full sun to produce the best tasting tomatoes. Make sure when starting your plants indoors that you give the seedlings strong sun as well.
Plant at the Right Time
Tomatoes are easily damaged by cold weather, so plant them after any danger of a frost has passed. In order to plant outdoors at the right time be sure to find out your areas last frost date and plant your seedlings six weeks before your last frost. This will give you nice sized tomato plants that will transplant well into your garden.
Bury Your Tomato Plants Deep
Give your tomato plants the best possible chance to get their roots deep. Bury the plants all the way up to the top few leaves. Tomatoes have the ability to produce roots all their stems. Having deep roots will make the tomato plant sturdy in a strong wind or storm and will help the tomatoes find water.
Mulch Later
Wait till after the weather warms up and your plants are a couple feet high before you mulch. Mulching too early can keep the soil cool and will hurt the growth habits of the tomato plants. Mulching is a good way to keep your soil moist and soil temperature constantly warm.
Prune Your Plants
Pinch and remove suckers that develop in the crotch joint of two branches. They won’t bear fruit and will take energy away from the rest of the plant. But go easy on pruning the rest of the plant. You can thin leaves to allow the sun to reach the ripening fruit, but it’s the leaves that are photosynthesizing and creating the sugars that give flavor to your tomatoes.
Water Regularly
Water deeply and regularly while the plants are developing. Irregular watering leads to blossom end rot and cracking. Once the fruit begins to ripen, lessening the water will coax the plant into concentrating its sugars. Don’t withhold water so much that the plants wilt and become stressed or they will drop their blossoms and possibly their fruit.
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