Tomato Plant Growing Tips?

Question

I've got my square box garden organized and the 6 inch tomato plants in the soil. I want to make sure they get the best nutrients that will result in a good crop of fruit. What suggestions do you have that won't cost an arm and a leg to get a bumper crop?

Answer 1

Growing tomatoes can be an enjoyable task when the proper steps are employed to promote good health and luscious fruit from your tomato plants and other vegetables.


By introducing the Veggie Cage Tomato Cage into your yearly tomato growing practices, you will take pleasure in producing a tasteful yield. The question on everyone’s mind is usually regarding how to grow tomatoes and what can I do to promote good health and delicious fruit. In the following paragraphs, we attempt to accumulate many common practices when growing tomatoes, as well as offer a few tomato growing tips for the novice gardener.

Pre-Planting Preparation
Typically, gardeners prefer to begin working the soil several weeks prior to planting tomatoes. They will break up large clumps of dirt, remove any debris, and add light soil (perhaps mixed with a little peat moss). In addition, many gardeners begin growing tomatoes indoors.


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Tomato Growing Tips
When growing tomatoes indoors, an abundance of light is a necessity. This can be accomplished with a sunny south facing window or artificial light. Remember when choosing your garden location, as much sunshine as possible is an absolute necessity!
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Tomato Planting
Once the danger of frost has passed, the tomato plants or seed may be placed (note that it is sometimes recommended to plant the seeds outdoors several weeks prior to the last anticipated frost). Tomatoes prefer well-drained, highly organic soil as well as a soil PH between 6 and 7. To establish a well-drained tomato garden, plant the fruit in a raised bed around 6 inches high.

Tomato growers, when using tomato cages, space the plant anywhere from 2 to 4 feet apart. If you are transplanting, it is wise to create the transplant hole slightly deeper than where it was growing in the pot and soak the hole with water (letting the soil absorb it).


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Tomato Growing Tips
Once planted, it is recommended to water the plants slowly and deeply in order to promote a strong root system, which in turn will produce tasty fruits.
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Caring for Tomatoes during the Season
Throughout the tomato growing process, proper care must be given to the plants in order to accomplish a successful yield. Mulching is very important in order to produce a high yield. The use of organic compost around the base of the plant, typically 2 to 3 inches, helps prevent water loss to the soil and aids in weed prevention. Again, it is important to keep your plants well watered in an effort to prevent any wilting.


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Tomato Growing Tips
Introducing Tomato Cages in the tomato growing process offers excellent support and promotes good health for your plant. Pruning is necessary, unless a tomato cage is used, where the leaf meets the stem (simply clip the small side shoots as they grow).
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When you begin developing the fruit (usually around 1 inch in fruit size), lightly work into the soil fertilizer and water thoroughly, usually completed several inches away from the base of the tomato plant.

Growing tomatoes using tomato cages is a popular method among gardeners because of its simplicity. Cage growing allows the tomato plant to grow in its natural manner but keeps the fruit and leaves off the ground. Although tomato cages require initial expenditure, they will last several seasons.

1) Don’t Crowd Seedlings.
If you are starting tomatoes from seed, be sure to give the seedlings room to branch out. Close conditions inhibit their growth, so transplant them as soon as they get their first true leaves and move them into 4" pots about 2 weeks after that.
2) Provide lots of light.
Tomato seedlings will need either strong, direct sunlight or 14-18 hours under grow lights. Place the young plants only a couple of inches from florescent grow lights. Plant your tomatoes outside in the sunniest part of your vegetable plot.
3) Put a fan on your seedlings.
It seems tomato plants need to move and sway in the breeze, to develop strong stems. Provide a breeze by turning a fan on them for 5-10 minutes twice a day.
4) Preheat the soil in your garden.
Tomatoes love heat. Cover the planting area with black or red plastic a couple of weeks before you intend to plant. Those extra degrees of warmth will translate into earlier tomatoes.
5) Bury them.
Bury tomato plants deeper than they come in the pot, all the way up to a few top leaves. Tomatoes are able to develop roots all along their stems. You can either dig a deeper hole or simply dig a shallow tunnel and lay the plant sideways. It will straighten up and grow toward the sun. Be careful not to drive your pole or cage into the stem.
6) Mulch Later.
Mulch after the ground has had a chance to warm up. Mulching does conserve water and prevents the soil and soil born diseases from splashing up on the plants, but if you put it down too early it will also shade and therefore cool the soil. Try using plastic mulch for heat lovers like tomatoes and peppers. (See Tip #4)
7) Remove Bottom Leaves.
Once the tomato plants are about 3' tall, remove the leaves from the bottom 1' of stem. These are usually the first leaves to develop fungus problems. They get the least amount of sun and soil born pathogens can be unintentionally splashed up onto them. Spraying weekly with compost tea also seems to be effective at warding off fungus diseases.
8) Pinch & Prune.
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.
9) Water Regularly.
Water deeply and regularly while the plants are developing. Irregular watering, (missing a week and trying to make up for it), 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.
10) Getting Them to Set Fruit.
Determinate type tomatoes tend to set and ripen their fruit all at one time, making a large quantity available when you’re ready to make sauce. You can get indeterminate type tomatoes to set fruit earlier by pinching off the tips of the main stems in early summer.

Answer 2

Big Boys, Big Girls, and Supersteaks are some varieties I like. The produce a lot of nice size tomatoes. Delicious produces about the biggest tomatos. And for a nice small bush tomato I like Celebrity tomatos.

I prefer long main stems over short ones. You can lay them on their side and plant the main stem in the dirt till the dirt is just about a couple inches from the leaves. The extra main stem will develop roots (that's what the bumps you see on the stem turn into), giving you a better root system.

Tomatos like plenty of sun and plenty of water. Tilling rabbit manure into the ground before you plant them makes them grow like crazy and and the leaves turn dark green. Watering them with Miracle Grow once a week will also help.

I've found it doesn't do much of any good to trim the plant. Just let it grow. My tomatos normally grow 3-4 times the size of the neighbors plants and will produce roughly 4 times more fruit or more. Every so many years you may find that you will want to move where you plant the tomatoes and plant something else there to avoid blight and lack of nutrients, etc.

Answer 3

We grow tomato plants. I don't know where you live, so it might be different there, but all we used was some miracle grow. We have tomatoes coming out our ears!!

Answer 4

I use miracle grow for tomato's and it is working great...they are huge! I feed them with it once a week and water daily if it doesn't rain. Good Luck

Answer 5

Miracle Gro for tomatoes.

Make your own stakes those wire jobbies are crap.

Fertilize once a week and water every other day...these are the rules for Thunderdome...

Answer 6

Stake them, mulch them, lime them and use a balanced fertilizer. A 5-5-5 is best. Do not use a high nitrogen fertilizer. They will be green leaves but not blooms if you do.

Answer 7

I found that hilling them works wonderful or if I am going to keep them on my deck, I plant them i large black pots and they do really well. I also fertilize every few weeks.