Tomato Growing Tips - More of our Best Tips for Growing Tomatoes

Here are more of our best tomato growing tips.

Plant Deep - When planting your transplant seedlings, unlike most vegetables, set the seedling into the ground so the stem is covered all the way to the first set of true leaves. Tomatoes will send out roots from the stems, so setting them deeper will encourage a stronger root system, which is key to strong, healthy tomato plants. Tomatoes to be staked can be planted about 24 inches apart with 3 to 4 between rows. If you plan to use cages space them 30 to 36 inches apart.

Staking Tomatoes - While tomatoes can be grown without stakes or cages, they are much easier to care for and will reward you with higher yields if you give them some type of support. Of course, one way to avoid this is with a hanging tomato planter or upside down tomato planter, as the vines will simply hang in these and need no further support.

Cages made of concrete mesh are common, or a similar support can be made of chicken wire, but often the mesh size is too small for chicken wire to allow you to put your hand through. There are other commercially available tomato cages. For many of the smaller determinant varieties it is adequate to simply stake the tomatoes, with a simple wooden stake and some soft twine to secure the plant in place. Another popular choice is to use a trellis for support. It’s best to put the cages in place when the tomatoes are planted to avoid damaging the roots and branches when placing them.

Pruning Your Tomatoes - The common approach is to prune back to a single or double main stem coming out of the ground, this is commonly done to staked plants, where cages plants are often not pruned.

Fertilizing Your Tomatoes - For best results, you can look at using a dedicated tomato fertilizer. Fertilizer with too much nitrogen will cause a lot of leafy growth, but no tomatoes. Tomatoes are heavy feeders and do well with fertilizer applications, especially with a fertilizer with more phosphorus. Apply 2-1/2 to 3 pounds of a tomato fertilizer, such as 5-10-10, 5-20-20, or 8-16-16 per 100 square feet of garden area. Ideally you should add the fertilizer into the soil before planting your tomatoes by 2 weeks or so. After the first fruit has set you may want to add an additional sidedressing. Another alternative is to use tomato spikes, which have a slow release fertilizer.

Water Often - A consistent soil moisture is critical to the development of tomatoes, and if allowed to dry too much it can help bring on blossom end rot, which is primarily caused by a low level of calcium in the fruit. Generally speaking one to two inches of water per week will be needed.

Mulch Your Tomatoes - Mulch is a great way to help manage your tomatoes. It helps suppress weed growth, moderates the soil temperatures, and with organic mulches will eventually break down and enrich the soil. In addition it keeps the fruit off the ground, especially for unstaked plants. There are commercially available black plastic mulches, and lately there have been some claims that red mulch variations can accelerate ripening of tomatoes.

That is it for our top tomato growing tips. Try a few and see if you can’t boost your tomato growing harvest this year!