5 Tips for Caring for Your Tomatoes

Tomatoes are one of the easiest and tastiest veggies you can grow! They provide a significant harvest from just one plant, and many varieties don’t require much space. You can grow them in a garden, in a greenhouse, or even in pots on your porch or balcony.

There are so many different varieties of tomato available that you can find one to suit any of your favorite tomato recipes. From huge heirloom beefsteaks with slices as big as your face, to sweet tiny cherry tomatoes for Caprese salad skewers, or delicious Roma types for the perfect bolognese sauce, there’s a tomato for everyone!

Whatever varieties you choose, we’ve got a few tips to keep your tomato plants healthy and help them deliver a bountiful harvest this summer.

1. Watering Tomatoes: Tomatoes grow fast and are pretty thirsty plants. You’ll want to make sure they’re getting regular water to keep the soil moist, but not soaking wet. This may be as often as once a day at the peak of the season. Tomatoes need consistently moist soil, so on hotter days, you may need to water them twice. In pots, they may need to be watered even more frequently because pots dry out faster. With that said, it’s important to avoid overwatering! Check the soil with your finger, and if it feels damp to the touch, recheck it later in the day or the next morning. Inconsistent watering can cause blossom end rot, so try to keep the soil consistently moist, and never drowning or drying out.
2. Supporting tomatoes: Tomatoes, whether they’re determinate or indeterminate, need support. They can get quite tall, and have relatively thick stems and branches. Considering the weight of the fruit, they’re prone to toppling over and breaking their main stem if they don’t have sufficient support. With determinate tomatoes, a standard tomato cage should be enough. Indeterminate varieties can get much taller, and may need tall stakes or ropes to climb.

3. Pruning tomatoes: Whether or not your tomatoes need pruning depends on the variety. Determinate, or bush type, tomatoes do not need pruning—they usually top out between 3-4 feet tall. Indeterminate tomatoes grow continuously, sometimes up to 12 feet tall. Indeterminate tomatoes produce suckers that should be pruned out. Suckers start as a small set of leaves in the joint where branches join the central stem of the tomato plant. Removing these suckers when they’re small is very simple; just pinch the small leaves or short stems out with your fingers. Pruning out these suckers will help encourage vertical growth, direct the plant’s energy towards producing large fruits, and improve air circulation and sun access to the whole plant. 
4. Fertilizing tomatoes: Because tomato plants grow so big, so fast, and produce quite a large number of tomatoes, they use a ton of nutrients. Even if you plant them in the garden, they’ll still benefit from fertilizer, and if you want a great harvest from potted tomatoes, you’ll definitely want to fertilize them. If you’re planting your tomatoes in the garden, you may want to get a soil test done to determine what nutrients your soil might be lacking. If you’re planting your tomatoes in pots with potting soil, its a good idea to give your tomatoes a starter fertilizer when you pot them. Once they start to flower, a tomato specific fertilizer with a slightly higher phosphorous number will help them produce high-quality fruit. Apply fertilizer every two weeks once the plants have started to bloom. 
5. Pollinating tomatoes: If you plant your tomatoes in the garden, you may be lucky enough that the bees will pollinate them for you. But, if you have your tomatoes in pots on a balcony or in a greenhouse, you’ll want to do a little pollinating by hand just to make sure they all get adequately fertilized. You can gently tickle the blossoms of each tomato plant with a clean paintbrush to spread pollen from one plant to the next.

If you’re growing tomatoes this year, these tips should ensure a great harvest. Just remember that all tomatoes need lots of sunshine to develop fully ripe, tasty fruits. If you’ve got a cherry tomato plant, try growing some basil nearby. There’s no better garden snack than a cherry tomato, warm from the sun, wrapped in a basil leaf!

If you haven’t picked up your tomato plants yet, or you need some supplies for growing them, you can stop by any of our garden center locations for a visit. Please respect social distancing guidelines when visiting our nurseries.