10 Things You Should Know Before Growing Tomatoes

Tomato growing isn’t rocket science; this prolific crop can practically grow itself when left to its own devices. But if you want extraordinary tomatoes, healthy plants, and high yields, some methods are proven to deliver. If you can master these simple tips before growing tomatoes, you can cultivate this famous fruit like a pro without all the headaches of beginner mistakes.

Epic founder Kevin should be considered a master tomato grower after nearly 12 years of backyard gardening. If you add my six years of commercial organic farming experience, this article likely includes nearly everything you need to know to grow amazing tomatoes, minus all the fluff and myths. 

Let’s dig into ten crucial things to know before you plant your next season of tomatoes! These steps will (almost) guarantee that you’ll be swimming in flavorful fruits all summer long!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9seQurhbLPM

10 Things We Wish We Knew As Beginner Tomato Growers

Do you ever think about the life-changing tips you would’ve told yourself as a teenager? If you had your current wisdom back then, you probably could’ve avoided many silly mistakes. Thankfully, the stakes aren’t quite as high in the garden, but it’s a lot more fun to reap abundant harvests from the beginning. 

A failed tomato crop isn’t the end of the world, but why waste your time and money if there are proven ways to succeed every season? Hopefully, we can save you some headaches by sharing the ten basic things we wish we knew as beginner tomato growers.

Indeterminates vs. Determinates

The most major division in the tomato world is between indeterminates and determinates. The most important thing to know is that if you’re short on space, choose determinates. But if you have more space for a trellis, grow indeterminates so you can enjoy fruits all summer long.

These two distinct categories describe exactly how your tomato plant will grow and produce fruits, which can affect your timing, trellising, pruning, and preservation. Save yourself a lot of trouble by understanding the two types and recognizing which one is labeled on your seed packet.

Indeterminates

Indeterminates are also known as vining tomatoes. This category includes most cherries, heirlooms, beefsteaks, and slicers. Vining varieties are “indeterminate” because their end growth is “not determined.” In other words, these plants could hypothetically grow and fruit for an extended life cycle if the season wasn’t constrained by frosts. Indeterminates flower and fruit continuously, yielding a continuous supply of fruits as long as the conditions are favorable.

Vining varieties require a trellis to support them, and they perform best with regular pruning because they produce a lot of suckers. These types don’t perform as well with just a tomato cage. They prefer to grow vertically and yield heavy fruit sets throughout summer. So, if you want more consistent production over a longer period of time, choose indeterminates and be sure to pick a strong trellis system. 

Determinates 

Determinates are most often called bush tomatoes. Bush varieties are ideal for compact growing environments and people who love to can or preserve. Many slicers, sauce tomatoes, romas, and grape varieties fall in this category. They are called “determinate” because their growth is “predetermined.” This means they grow to a certain size and then stop. They produce all of their fruit in one or two major flushes (within a month window) rather than providing a consistent supply of fruits spread out over the season.

If you hate pruning, these are the tomatoes for you! They don’t require pruning, but it can help increase production. Bush varieties are great for containers and simple tomato cages. They can also be grown with a Florida weave trellising system to keep them contained. Determinants max out at about five to six feet, which makes them far more manageable for grow bags or pots.

Best Varieties

There are over 10,000 known varieties of tomatoes in the world! Before you get overwhelmed choosing a variety, remember that you have your whole life to try new tomatoes. The best bet for beginners is to choose varieties that are reliable, and even more importantly, delicious. There are a lot of seeds on the market that promise pretty fruits, but actually lack in flavor. If you are drawn to the most colorful and exciting tomatoes, pause to consider if they will perform and taste as good as they look.

To make your gardening efforts worthwhile, prioritize growing an abundance of tomatoes that you absolutely love to eat! Narrow down your selection with these Epic-approved varieties that we would never grow a garden without:

Thankfully, you can experiment with multiple tomato varieties without worrying about cross-pollination. But if you aim to maximize your yields, it’s still best to prioritize three to five cultivars in your first season.

Pruning Your Tomatoes

Before we dig into pruning, know that you can skip this step altogether by growing determinate varieties. Determinate tomatoes do not vine upward and remain compact, which usually eliminates the need for pruning. You may need to remove some lower dead or diseased leaves, but that is all.

Indeterminates, on the other hand, require a bit of tending. A lot of people are intimidated by pruning. It feels scary to cut off parts of your plants that you worked so hard to grow. Luckily, tomato pruning is simpler than you think as long as you know these three key botanical parts of the plant:

Some gardeners believe that sucker removal is not necessary, while others swear by it. Suckers have the ability to form new leaves, vines, or fruits, but they can also “suck” energy away from the plant if left to their own devices. We like to pinch or prune them off as much as possible, and here is why.

This simple pruning technique can triple or quadruple your yields from a single plant. It also keeps your garden tidier. Kevin uses this method in his garden and it is the exact same technique that I used on over 10 high-production organic farms around the country. It’s called the Single Leader Technique. 

Choosing the Right Trellis

Trust us, you don’t want to grow a tomato without a trellis. It quickly becomes a sloppy mess with fruit rotting on the ground. Instead, a simple trellis keeps your plant upright and ensures your fruits stay clean. Here are four methods, from the easiest to the most complex:

Simple Staking

The cheapest, easiest option is a basic bamboo stake. A bamboo stake can be pushed into the ground or a container. It acts as a central support for a determinate (bush) plant’s main vine. You can use twine to tie the tomato to the stake, keeping it upright as it grows.

Classic Cage

A mid-grade option is a tomato cage. Cages are a bit more expensive, but they provide significantly more support, which means more quality fruits. However, it’s best to stay away from the flimsy conical cages because they fall apart very easily. A toppled plant is very disappointing and sometimes unsalvageable. A heavy-duty square tomato cage is much more resilient in bad weather and durable for holding up lots of fruits.

Florida Weave (Not Just for Florida)

If you want to grow lots of tomatoes in a row, the next step up on the trellising ladder is a Florida weave system. This simple design allows you to grow 5-10 plants or more in a linear fashion. It only requires T-posts or stakes spaced four to five feet apart and hammered into the ground. 

Plant your tomatoes 12-18 inches apart, and then use durable twine to weave back and forth between the stakes. The woven twine will basically sandwich the tomatoes into a central layer. Add another layer every week or so as the plants grow taller, and then you can leave them to produce in abundance.

Top-Twine and Clips

The final option is the most complex, yet highest quality trellis. This is called a top-twine method. You must build a more permanent structure with a wood or metal beam about six feet off the ground. Then, use hooks to dangle twine straight downward. As the vines grow, tomato clips are used to secure the plants to the twine, keeping them tidy and controlled.

Proper Watering

If you forget everything else in this article, just remember two words for watering tomatoes: Deep and infrequent!

Tomatoes are thirsty plants, but they don’t necessarily want water all the time. Instead, it’s important to water deeply yet less frequently. You also want to avoid big fluctuations from bone-dry to soggy-wet because watering inconsistency can cause some major problems like blossom end rot, which we’ll explain more below. Fortunately, this can be easily avoided by installing the right irrigation system and using it correctly.

Best Irrigation for Tomatoes

The best irrigation for tomatoes is a manual hose aimed straight at the base or drip lines running along each side of the trellis. You want to avoid wetting the leaves with a hose or sprinkler, as this can lead to a lot of annoying disease problems.

No matter what irrigation setup you use, remember to water tomatoes less frequently but with more water. In other words, it’s best to give your plants a nice long drink of water two to three times per week. You don’t want to trickle small amounts of water on the surface every day. Instead, turn on your hose or drip lines for longer periods with more days in between sessions.

This works because longer watering sessions promote moisture penetration deep into the soil. Deeper watering forces the roots to grow deeper in search of more moisture, ultimately yielding healthier, stronger tomato plants. 

Water-Wait-Water Method

Kevin nicknamed this method “Water-Wait-Water” because waiting for water to penetrate can actually enhance the soil’s absorption of moisture. If you are watering with a hose, stand there for about a minute while the stream of water penetrates the surface. 

Let it soak in while you continue to other plants, then go back through the row one more time to irrigate the root zone for another 30-60 seconds. If growing in containers, irrigate until water flows out of the drainage hole for 30-60 seconds, then stop.

Mulching

We can’t talk about soil moisture without mentioning mulching. Mulch significantly improves water retention, which helps prevent drought stress in tomatoes. Since drought stress can severely reduce yields, we always use mulch to protect the plant roots from drying out. 

A two to three-inch layer of straw or leaf litter mulch prevents the sun’s drying UV rays from directly hitting the soil surface. This ensures that the soil stays moist for longer. As a bonus, mulch reduces weed pressure and enriches the soil with organic matter as it decomposes.

If you’re using drip lines, run them underneath the mulch for extra benefits. But if you’re irrigating with a hose, remember to wet the mulch and the base of the plant instead of watering the leaves. Moisture on tomato leaves invites unwanted fungal diseases.

Fertilizing Correctly

It’s no secret that tomatoes are heavy feeder plants. As these vigorous growers crank out foliage and fruits, it’s obvious that they need a lot of nutrients to fuel their prolific growth. However, overfertilizing or using the wrong fertilizer can do more harm than good.

If you’re growing in containers, the best fertilizer for tomatoes is a slow-release balanced liquid fertilizer. Add a bit of fertilizer to a watering can and apply it every time you water. This is helpful because container-grown plants are highly limited in their root reach. They cannot access the minerals in the ground, so they appreciate a regular boost straight into the pot. 

For in-ground or raised bed growers, it’s best to use quality compost or a small amount of organic granular all-purpose fertilizer. Slow-release, balanced blends like Espoma Tomato-tone Organic Plant Food ensure an even amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. This will prevent over-fertilizing with nitrogen. If you add too much nitrogen, the plant may grow a ton of leaves without producing much fruit.

Things to Avoid

You may have heard of burying eggs, fish heads or other organic material in a tomato hole at the time of planting. In reality, this may be unnecessary! We experimented with many of these commonly-recommended methods, and found that none of them performed quite as well as compost or organic granular fertilizer. 

This is because the plant’s nutrients need to be fully broken down before it can absorb them. A fish head or egg takes too long to decompose, and the tomato cannot uptake the nutrients right away. Moreover, a simple handful of compost or all-purpose fertilizer is much cleaner and less smelly.

Prevent Blossom End Rot

Black tomato butts are one of the most common and most misunderstood tomato problems. While most people think blossom end rot is due to a calcium deficiency, this doesn’t tell the whole story. 

Fruits with blossom end rot indicate a lack of calcium in the plant, but that doesn’t mean there is insufficient calcium in your soil. In reality, most garden soils have plenty of calcium. However, the calcium may not be available for the plant to use. 

Blossom end rot is usually linked to big fluctuations from dry to wet. Inconsistent soil moisture makes it hard for tomato plants to uptake the calcium in the soil. The tomatoes actually need consistent, regular moisture to ensure they can use the available nutrients. To prevent this problem, deep watering and mulching methods should be used. Never let the soil fully dry out between irrigation sessions.

Quick Solutions to Pest and Disease Problems

Honestly, no matter how awesome you are at growing tomatoes, you will probably run into pests or diseases at some point. We all have! Thankfully, there are lots of quick and easy solutions to keep these problems at bay.

Here is a rapid-fire of the most common issues and how to solve them:

Harvest at the Right Time

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to leave your tomatoes on the vine until they are fully red (or orange or purple). Instead, you can harvest them at the “breaker stage,” so they ripen perfectly and store longer. The breaker stage is right when the fruit starts to change color. At this point, the fruit is technically already “vine-ripened.” It has all the plant hormones and flavor compounds it needs to ripen. 

Intriguingly, the plant stops sending nutrients or energy to the fruit once it passes the breaker stage. This means that leaving it on the vine has no added benefit. Leaving fruits in the garden longer can actually pose more risks because bugs, birds, rodents, and fungi are more likely to attack the fruit, rendering it lower quality or inedible.

You can cut the tomato as soon as it begins to “blush” with 50% color. Then, bring the fruits inside to finish ripening in safety on your countertop. This method prevents pest damage and over-ripening while ensuring superior flavor and texture.

Prolong Tomato Storage

Here is one final tip for extending your tomato storage for several days! If you’re tired of mushy or moldy tomatoes, store them with the “shoulders” facing down. Storing your tomatoes on their “butts” can actually cause them to go bad quicker because tomatoes ripen from the bottom up. If you turn them over with the stem-side down, it evenly distributes their weight and keeps the fruit firm as it ripens.