10 Tomato Gardening Tips

Growing Vegetables
Tomato Gardening

In this tomato gardening tips, let us fulfill the dreams of all tomato gardeners by coming up with the 10 Tomato Gardening Tips that every tomato gardeners should know.

Well, what is the dream of every tomato gardeners?

All we want is to have the reddest, sweetest, and juiciest tomato in our neighborhood and be one of the earliest to taste our own sweet harvest during the tomato harvest season.

Without further talking, let us move into 10 tomato gardening tips which you can apply it immediately to your tomato garden or tomato plants. Trust me, you will see some improvements for the upcoming tomato harvest season if you apply the following tips correctly.

Space Up Seeds When Planting

Most vegetable gardeners plant tomatoes using seeds. You need to provide some space between tomato seeds when you start deploying them into the soil.

Apart from giving them space to spread their branch further in the future, doing so will decrease the amount of competition for nutrients, which might slow down the growth of your tomato plants. Another alternative for space them out will be to transplant the plants 2 weeks after they start to sprout.

Fan Your New Tomato Plants

Many have no idea about this but fanning your sprouting tomato plants will actually help them to develop their better stems.If you live in a windy area, providing a breeze for your tomato plants should not be a problem.

If you plant your tomato indoors, you can always place them in front of a fan for 5 to 10 minutes twice a day. If your area is not as windy as others, you can always try out some outdoor fans which are available at most gardening supplies store.

Expose Tomato Gardens to Sunlight

Just like what we learned about roses in gardening caring for roses, tomato plants love sunlight as well. Make sure that your tomato gardening spots can receive ample sunlight exposure.

If you plan to plant tomato indoors, which is another popular tomato gardening method, you should then get some fluorescent grow lights. Place your young tomato plants directly under these lights for 13 to 18 hours a day so that they can have the same growing effect as if they receive enough sunlight exposure.

Heat Up Soil Prior to Planting

If you want to harvest your tomatoes way before the harvesting season, one of the things that you can do is to heat your soil prior to planting your tomato plants.

No, don't burn or cook the soil! What you can do is cover up the soil at your intended tomato plating spot with thick black plastic sheets.

Plant Them Deep

To help your tomato plants in developing a better root system, you should plant them deeper into the soil. If your tomato plant comes in a pot, you should bury them deeper into the soil by digging a deep hole.

As roots can start growing out from the stem of tomato plants and the stem will grow towards the sunlight, you shouldn't be worrying about how the plant is going to adapt itself after you plant them deeper into the soil.

Delayed Mulching or Use Plastic Mulch

Every avid gardener should know that mulching helps in containing water and prevents plants from contracting diseases that come from the soil due to the reduced splashing of soil onto the plant.

As tomatoes love soil that are well heat up, mulching the soil prior to their planting may counter your efforts of trying to warm the soil up using black plastic sheets. Thus, you should only mulch a few weeks after your planting or opt for mulching using plastic mulch.

Bottom Leaves Removal

Once your tomato plants reach a height of about three inches, you must remove leaves that grow within one inch from the ground. Doing so will help your plants to fend off unwanted and troublesome fungus infections.

These leaves do not receive a lot of sunlight exposure and soil born funguses may be splashed onto them while you are weeding or watering the plants. To make sure that funguses stay away, you can always spray an adequate amount of compost tea on your plants as part of your tomato gardening efforts.

Frequent Watering

Just like any other gardening methods for vegetables, watering plays an important role. If you water your tomato plants inconsistently, the blossom end may start to dry off and rot.

However, when your tomato plants are nearing their harvest season, you should reduce the amount of watering so that the harvested tomatoes will be sweeter as they concentrate their sugar in the fruits. Watering too much at this stage may cause the fruits to drop way before they are ripe.

Proper Pruning

What you are aiming to prune here are the suckers that grow on the crotch joint between two branches. All they do is to consume extra energy and they are useless as they don't normally bear fruits.

You can also slightly prune the leaves so that the layers become thinner to allow sunlight to reach the fruit. Do not take them off completely because the leaves conduct the photosynthesis process that creates food particles for your plants.

Prepare for Harvest Season

There are two types of tomato plants that you should know of for your tomato gardening efforts so that you can prepare for the harvest season.

Determinate type tomatoes start to ripe all at once and you must prepare to harvest a large amount of them at one time. As for indeterminate type tomatoes, you can set them to ripe earlier by pruning off the main stem tip of the plants.

Tomato Gardening Tips Conclusion

With that, we conclude the 10 tomato gardening tips that every tomato gardener should know. For the upcoming tomato harvest season, we hope that you can boast some red, ripe tomatoes in your garden to your neighbors.

Be sure to share the jam, ketchup and recipes that you prepare using the tomatoes that you have grown yourself with your family members, friends and colleagues.

Photo credit: Jutta M. Jenning

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