Growing tomatoes is not hard, though there are some things you need to do and watch out for. Usually the hardest thing for me about growing tomatoes is choosing which varieties I want each year since there are so many. I usually stick to the ones that I know I can use throughout the summer and also cook and freeze for use in the winter. Here are some tips for growing tomatoes.

Starting and Planting the Tomato Plants

If you start tomatoes by seed or go to the garden shop and get small plants, make sure you plant them deep enough. Plant them deeper then they are in the pot up to the first couple of top leaves. These first bottom couple of leaves will then turn into roots.

If the plants you buy are large, make sure you loosen up the root ball so the roots can grow easily into the dirt. Again make the hole deep enough so the first couple of leaves are below the surface.

Before planting, put some good compost into the hole before planting. You can also add some type of fertilizer like Miracle-Gro tomato food in the hole as well. Follow the instructions since you don’t want to burn the roots.

Growing Tomatoes - Tips and Problems

Give the tomato plants good spacing, they like and require airflow in between them as that helps to pollinate the plants.

Pollination is very important; this is why adequate spacing is needed between plants. Sometimes you will have plants with lots of flowers but no tomatoes. A tomato plant flower is both male and female so they don’t need bees for pollination. There does need to be some air movement to make the tomato plants pollinate. If the weather has been hot or humid and still, this can make the pollen sticky and not want to go where it is supposed to go. You can lightly tap the tomato plants to get the pollen to move and pollinate.

Before the tomato plants get too big, put tomato cages around them. You can use the normal wire type cages or make your own tomato cages using bamboo poles and some of what is called green garden tape or multi-purpose plant tape. You can wrap that around the poles and the tape will stretch, as the plants get bigger.

Make sure your cages are deep enough and sturdy, as the tomato plants get big they can become top heavy and a strong wind can knock over the cages and tomato plants. This can especially happen during a heavy thunderstorm when the ground gets saturated. Some years my tomato plants and cages just become too heavy and would start to lean so I tied rope from the cages to a nearby fence to hold everything up.

Watch for one common pest called white flies. They are tiny white flies that can really ruin a tomato plant. If you get them you can spray the plant with soapy water and if that doesn’t work you can buy special strips of sticky paper that the flies stick to and hopefully that will control that problem. You can also make your own with double sided tape on cardboard and hang these whitefly traps on the tomato cages.

The time of day you water your garden is important. It is best to water in the morning before it gets too hot. Watering at night leaves the plants wet all night and can cause some types of fungus or disease on the tomato plants. Do not go a week without watering and then try and make up watering by practically flooding the garden, tomatoes and most garden plants like even watering throughout the summer.

Throughout the summer you should occasionally put some good compost around the base of the plants, this will continue to nourish them. You can also use the tomato fertilizer if needed. I have found that too much fertilizer makes a lot of leaves and not much fruit.

When the plants get about 2’ to 3’ tall you might notice the bottom leaves turning brown and or yellow. This is from fungus and other pathogens from the soil that get splashed onto the bottom leaves. When the plant is about 3’ you can remove the leaves of the bottom 1’ of the stem if needed.

Tomato growing tools. Tomato cage, green garden tape and whitefly trap

Different Varieties and Uses for Tomatoes

You can get many varieties of tomatoes. Plum tomatoes for soups, Roma tomato for pasta sauce, the different beefsteak tomato types for everything and my favorite really is the cherry tomato. You can eat those as you weed the garden, and hopefully you’ll leave enough for your dinner salad.

If you are getting too many tomatoes, you can cook the tomatoes into a paste adding seasoning for freezing to use during the winter. Or make pasta sauce or tomato soup and freeze the extra, there is nothing like homemade tomato soup from your garden during the winter.

© 2009 Sam Montana

Other gardening articles:

How to help your garden after a hailstorm

How to start your own vegetable garden

Gardening for small spaces

How to attract butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden