Do you want your tomato plants to thrive this summer? Follow these tips for healthy plants that yield fruit all season!
Location
Plant tomatoes in full sun, 8 hours of direct sunlight each day. The best locations have good air flow, but are protected from strong winds.
Crop Rotation
Try to avoid growing tomatoes, peppers and potatoes in the same location each year. These crops are susceptible to the same soil-borne blight and wilt diseases. Unfortunately, the average home garden usually doesn’t have enough space to keep these crops on the recommended 3 year rotation. If blight and wilt are a problem, choose resistant varieties and consider planting tomatoes in a large container, then bury the container in the ground. Use fresh potting soil in the container.
Plant Them Deep
The knobby nodes on the stem will become roots. Pinch off the lowest leaves and bury the stem deep. If your plants are very tall and leggy, a good 6″ might be underground. That’s a good thing!
Pruning
You don’t have to prune tomatoes, but you can choose to remove suckers and a few branches. It just depends on whether you have room for a large, sprawling plant, or if you need to control the size of the plant for containers or crowding. A little pruning is okay, but tomatoes need plenty of foliage to shade the fruits from sunscald.
Fertilizing
Fertilize on a schedule, following the directions of the fertilizer you choose. Tomatoes in decent soil shouldn’t need an obscene amount of fertilizer to perform, but they do need balanced nutrition and trace minerals. Tomatoes in containers will need to be fertilized more often than in-ground tomatoes. The lowest, oldest leaves will yellow when they stop getting sunlight, but that’s not an indication to fertilize. It’s just the plant directing energy into fruit production instead of foliage production. Stick to a schedule and your tomatoes will have all the nutrients they need.
Provide Support
Caging or staking will keep vines and fruit off the ground, and make it easier to harvest. Put the cages on while the plant is small, it’s quite a wrestling match to cage a large plant!
Water Consistently
Water deeply and infrequently, soaking the entire root ball each time you water. Infrequently means watering every 4-5 days, always checking the soil for moisture with your hands first. Your soil, location and other factors play into how often you need to water, so it’s best to physically check the soil. Too much moisture leads to disease problems.
When the temperature soars above 90, you may see tomato plants wilt mid-day. When it’s too hot, the plant will kind of “shut down” and conserve moisture. Wilting does not always indicate the plant needs water. Check the soil for moisture before watering. Use shade cloth, build a temporary pergola or something similar to protect the plants during the hottest hours of the day.
As the season progresses, tomato plants start to look rough. Over-watering will not make them look better. They look ragged because the energy is being directed to fruit production, so stick to the plan and water when the soil needs it, not because you feel bad for the plant.
If you have any questions, give us a call! Our tomato experts are ready to help!