Tomatoes are often a new gardeners biggest frustration. While tomatoes are a great plant for the garden they are temperamental, come in many varieties, and have a wide variety of growing condition needs. On top of all this tomatoes can also be susceptible to more pests and diseases than other plants.
With all this stacked against you, you may want to throw in the towel, but don’t give up! While there’s a lot you need to know to grow amazing tomatoes, once you know the basics you can circumvent many of the major problems we just discussed. Like with all gardening, your knowledge of your plants and their needs is what helps you bring up a successful crop. And what a crop!? If grown successfully you will hardly find a more versatile food. Tomatoes are used in everything from salads to pizza, so it’s worth the effort to learn how to grow them properly.
Let’s look at the absolute basics of growing tomatoes. This article will tackle the broad information necessary for you to get started as well as dip into a little bit of the specific information necessary to grow some standard tomato varieties.
The Basic Conditions for Growing Tomatoes
In general, tomatoes like a warm sunny environment. They do best when planted in late spring and should be moved to the garden as starters. Unlike other plants you might grow, the modern tomato has trouble supporting it’s own weight. It will need stakes or a trellis help it hold up it’s fruit once it starts producing. Tomatoes also need space to grow properly. If planting in the garden they can need to be spaced up to three feet apart, though it is possible to keep them raised beds slightly closer together. Compared to root vegetables tomatoes have a narrow range of optimal soil pH between 6.2 – 6.8.
If this all sounds like a lot, you’re right it is. While there are some easy, set and forget style tomatoes (cherry tomatoes typically) you’re not going to get away with that for most varieties. Let’s drive into the specifics and get started with our soil.
Soil Conditions for Growing Tomatoes
Tomatoes need a rich loamy soil. Loam is a rich soil that generally has equal proportions of sand, silt, and clay, but gardens use this term a bit more loosely to also include soils rich in humus. Humus is the broken down organic matter you pull out of your compost or worm bin. All of this goes to say tomatoes demand a lot from their soil. They take a lot of nutrients out and refuse to bear good fruit on poor soils.
Tomatoes can grow in most loose to mild soil densities, but they have trouble with dense clay rich soils. If your soil is too firm or very clay rich you will need to do a lot of tilling before transplanting your tomatoes into the soil.
As we mentioned above, they also need a narrow pH range to get optimal nutrition. A pH between 6.2 and 6.8 is best, but the plants will survive slightly outside of this range as well. Tomatoes in general want a very neutral pH (near 7) and have trouble in overly acidic or basic environments. If the soil pH drops much below 6 your plants can suffer from a developmental disease known as blossom end rot which causes the tips of your tomatoes to rot on the vine due to an inability to properly absorb calcium from the soil. Many gardeners try to fix this by adding more and more calcium to the soil, but that quickly makes the soil too basic and can perpetuate the problem. In actuality the correct response is to take a calm and measured approach to your soil before your plants start fruiting. This is one of the biggest challenges for new gardeners trying tomatoes because most soils are slightly acidic already.
To avoid pH problems with your tomatoes you should test your soil first with a simple pH testing kit. If your soil is too acidic you can raise it’s pH with agricultural lime (which you can find at most garden stores). Tomato specific fertilizers can also help adjust your soils pH, so keep an eye on it.
Tomatoes take to most all purpose fertilizers well, which is one of the few small blessings that they give home gardeners. The caution here is that they love nitrogen rich fertilizers too much. If the plants have too much nitrogen they will spend most of their energy growing stems and leaves and produce very few small tomatoes. As a rule of thumb, you should avoid high nitrogen fertilizers as they reduce yields and instead go with something more balanced or something with higher potassium and phosphorus.
When choosing a fertilizer for tomatoes you should consider something that is a constant release fertilizer. Throughout the growing season you will need to more fertilizer and compost, so keep this in mind when making a choice. Once a season fertilizers are often inappropriate for tomatoes as they are often nitrogen rich and too concentrated for a balanced soil pH.
Growing Temperatures and Climates for Tomato Plants
Tomatoes like it warm and grow best in temperatures ranging between 55-85F degrees. The wide range is partly due to their many varieties, but in general they grow better in warmer weather and like a fairly hot summer. They can be planted and grown well in USDA hardiness zones 5, 6, 7, and 8 throughout the US and can survive other zones with special care such as early or late planting.
Tomatoes can actually survive cold snaps down to 33F for very short periods of time, but temperatures below 40F are bad for the plant and can cause them to die off. Prolonged periods below 50F will slow their growth. Because of this they are best planted outdoors in late spring when you are sure there will not be any more cold snaps.
Choosing What Tomatoes to Grow
There are a lot of different types of tomatoes out there. Which tomatoes do you choose to grow? Well that depends on what you want to achieve. Different varieties produce fruit at different times, have different grow cycles, and produce different varieties of tomatoes. Let’s quickly go over the basic terminology you will need to choose which tomatoes to grow in your garden.
Determinant vs Indeterminate Tomato Varieties
Tomatoes come in two major categories, determinant and indeterminate. These are also often refereed to as bush tomatoes and vining tomatoes, though these names are not strictly correct for all varieties. Just remember that when someone says bush tomato they are likely talking about determinate tomatoes and when someone says vining tomato they are likely talking about indeterminate tomatoes.
Determinant tomatoes are varieties that will grow to a set height and produce fruit for a prescribed range of time. Indeterminate tomato plants will keep growing so long as the conditions are right and will continue producing fruit as long as they are able to. It is tempting to choose an indeterminate plant if you want as many tomatoes as possible, but there are some catches to this.
Having an indeterminate tomato plant means you don’t know how big the plant will get. You may need to add more stakes or cages as it grows and some can even reach 6 feet in height under normal conditions. Some prize winning plants have been seen as big as 10 or even 15 ft tall and that’s a lot to manage!
Because indeterminate tomato plants can grow so large they spend a lot of their energy supporting the growth of the plant itself. A large plant does not necessarily yield more tomatoes and it definitely will yield smaller tomatoes if you don’t prune it to a manageable size.
So which do you choose? If you’re growing tomatoes as a staple of your diet and for food for your family, you actually want to grow both. Determinate tomatoes have large harvests of tomatoes once and are the perfect plants for canning or processing. Indeterminate varieties will produce fruit through the whole season, and are best for getting tomatoes as you need them. Typically the bulk of your crop should be the determinate variety for that one large harvest. One or two indeterminate tomato plants can often provide you all the tomatoes you need for day to day use.
Heirloom Tomatoes, Hybrid Tomatoes, and Early Tomatoes, what’s the Difference?
The word heirloom gets tossed around a lot when it comes to gardening. While its use as a term is a bit wishy-washy it has a simple definition. Heirloom tomatoes are varieties that are at least 50 years old and have not been cross bred into hybrid tomatoes. You can think of these like dog breeds with each breed having specific well known characteristics.
Hybrids are on the other side of this and are crossbreeds of tomatoes that were created to produce specific results. Don’t be afraid of hybrids as a gardener. There’s nothing fishy or sci-fi going on with these and they likely were not produced in a lab. Hybrid just means that multiple varieties were crossed to get produce a better tomato. In fact, most heirloom varieties started out as hybrids that were well liked and preserved as a specific variety.
Early tomatoes don’t really fit into this naming convention as heirloom and hybrid tomatoes can both also be early varieties. However, it’s important to note that early tomato varieties are fast growers that mature in about 50-60 days. This is just something to keep an eye out for because early for tomatoes would be late for other plants and the term changes from plant to plant.
Disease Resistant Tomato Varieties
Tomatoes are very prone to diseases in the garden. Depending on where you are getting your seeds or starters from the varieties’ name may be followed by a selection of uppercase letters. These letters often correspond to a disease that the plant is resistant to. This chart is usually the same for most providers, but it’s important to check their definitions for each letter as resistances are not always well agreed upon across seed purveyors.
When choosing a variety that is right for your garden it helps to know what kind of pests and disease are common in your area. This information is not always easy to find and is best gathered from other local gardeners or farms that may grow tomatoes. Once you know the common tomato blights in your area you can make a more informed decision on the variety you want to grow.
Making the Choice on Your Tomato Plants!
You might still be confused about what tomatoes to grow, but don’t worry there’s and easy solution. If this is your first time growing tomatoes don’t choose just one. Seeds are cheap and you can choose a couple types you want to try out. Ultimately each variety will have slightly different needs an demand more or less of your attention, so the easiest way to choose the best variety is to try a handful of them out. With the ones you like you can even save seeds and plant them them again next year!
Planting Tomatoes
Tomatoes are tempermental plants and often give gardeners trouble. Because of this you need to baby them a little more than most other plants. Planting them isn’t too hard, but it is a bit more time consuming. Rather than rolling the dice on your tomatoes coming up it’s best to begin them early with some indoor growth before planting them outside in late spring.
Starting Tomatoes From Seed Indoors in Starter Trays
Tomatoes should be started indoors from seed in a starter tray for best results. You should plant them early to mid spring if you want to get them outdoors by the end of spring. Typically they take 6-8 weeks to be ready to transplant, so if you want the most grow time for them start 6 weeks before you expect steady ideal temperatures for the plants outside.
Starting out we recommend using a specific seed starter mix for your soil as it will be the best initial conditions for your tomato seeds. Often when you use general potting soil or simple garden dirt you can experience drainage issues in your starter trays or worse you could introduce molds and disease to the plants before they get started.
Your starter trays should be loaded with your starter mix and the seeds should be planted 1/8 inch deep. This is very shallow compared to many other plants, which tells you just how fussy these plants can be. Once planted they need to be kept quite warm before they sprout. For best germination results you’ll want to keep them between 70-80F. This can easily be achieved with a seed heating mat.
To water your seedlings you’ll want to use a spray bottle with a mist setting. Your goal here is to keep the soil moist but not wet. You can mist them whenever the soil starts to seem dry to the touch. If the soil is visibly wet for a long time the tray probably has too much water and you should let them dry out a bit more before misting them again.
Once they sprout you can lower the temperature on them a bit and ideally keep them in a 65F room. A day or two after they sprout thin the seedlings with a pair of shears so that only 1 plant is growing in each cell of your starter tray. The watering plan at this point is the same until they get a bit large enough to transplant.
Your tomato sprouts will also need light which they can get from a window or UV lamps. We recommend using grow lights because it will often give you a straighter taller plant. If you place them in a window be sure to rotate them so they don’t get too much of a lean to one side or the other.
As they start growing their first set of true leaves (the second set of leaves after the seed leaves) you will also want to put a light fan on them for a few hours a day. This will help keep the soil from getting too wet and strengthen the plants to be more resilient when planted outside.
If you tomatoes begin to outgrow your seed try, but it is still too early to plant them outside you will need to transfer them to a bigger pot. If you don’t do this they can become root bound and fail to grow properly once transplanted.
Transplanting your Tomato Starters to the Garden
Once you tomato seedlings are 6 to 8 weeks old they should be ready for the garden. Do not move them to the garden until the last spring frost day unless you are prepared for handling frost conditions in some way. To transplant simply remove the starter from it’s pot gently and place in a small hole in your prepared soil (see soil conditions above) and water deeply.
Tomato plants should be spaced 2-3 feet apart if planted in a ground garden. Plants can be slightly closer together in a raised bed with ideal soil conditions, but overcrowding will just lead to lower tomato production, so it is best to keep them well spaced to improve your overall tomato harvest.
Growing Tomatoes After Planting
Once you’ve got your tomato plants in the ground you’ll need to care for them to ensure they produce a lot of tomatoes for you. Like all plants you’ll need to get down a routine for watering, weeding, and monitoring their growth and conditions. For tomatoes you will likely also need to stake or cage them in an effort to help them stand up under their own weight.
Watering Tomatoes
Tomatoes need 1 to 2 inches of water each weekly. The soil should be kept moist, but should not stay wet. Water the plants slowly as to not flood them, ideally with a light hose setting or drip water irrigation. Once weekly they should get a deep slow watering for best results.
If you notice the soil you’ve prepared is drying out over the week you can supplement their watering by watering less twice a week. This is not ideal and should only be done if your soil is draining too quickly and the plant is becoming wilted or dry.
Over watering tomato plants can lead to disease. Don’t water your plants daily unless you are doing so in an extremely calculated manner (such as with a drip or mist irrigation system). For the average garden once weekly deep watering will be more than enough to keep your tomato plants growing well.
Supporting Tomato Plants – Caging and Staking Tomatoes
As your tomatoes grow they’re going to need to be supported or they’ll quickly fall over and die under their own weight. The easiest way to avoid this to prove them simple support structures they can rest upon.
Caging is best for determinate varieties of tomato plants (bush tomatoes) as you can simple place the correct sized cage over them while they’re still small. Since you should know how tall they will get you’ll be able to choose the right sized cage based on the type of plant you have. Often simply placing the cage around the plant is enough for it to be supported as it grows, but you may need to move branches or use plant safe ties to keep it close to the cage. If you plant is too bushy (perhaps from an overly nitrogen rich soil) you will need to add extra supports as the plant quickly outgrows it’s cage. Placing a cage early is also a good idea as adding them late can lead to a struggle with both the plant and its roots.
Alternatively you can use staking to support your tomato plants. Staking is best for indeterminate varieties of tomato plants as it can easily be expanded as the plant grows. To stake a plant simply place a tall rod, preferably wood or bamboo, in the ground so that it stands up on its own. The tomato plant can be lashed to the stake(s) lightly with plant save ties or you can place rungs between multiple stakes to make a sort of ad hoc trellis that many gardeners call a tomato ladder. As the plant grows larger add more stakes and ties being careful to not damage roots beneath the soil.
The ties you use should be reusable and not have any hard edges. Reusable foam ties are the best in our opinion as they are soft and don’t damage the plant when used properly. Never use zip ties or standard twist ties when affixing your plant to a support as they can damage the vines and hamper your plants growth.
Harvesting Tomatoes
Tomatoes are dead simple to harvest, and if they’ve grown well this step is the best and easiest part of the whole process.
How Long Does it Take Tomato Plants to Grow?
Tomatoes should be ready to harvest between 60 and 90 days after planting depending on the variety. The most common tomatoes tend to grow large enough for harvest in the 70-80 day range. Giant tomatoes are often on the higher end of this scale and smaller plants that produce smaller tomatoes tend to be on the lower end. Tomatoes grow relatively quick after being planted outdoors as they spend the first 6-8 weeks indoors growing from seed.
How to Know When to Pick Tomatoes
Tomatoes should be picked when before they seem fully red. Ideally a tomato will be best to pick when it has just turned a light orange/yellow color just as it is no longer a deep green. The tomatoes will continue to ripen once picked so there is no need to worry about them not being red yet.
If you leave tomatoes until they’re fully red this doesn’t necessarily harm the plant, but the tomatoes won’t get much bigger and hive a higher chance of being damaged or eaten by pests. Additionally, the longer you leave tomatoes of the vine the more energy they take from the plant which can cause all the tomatoes to grow more slowly and reduce their overall size. Because of this it is best to pick tomatoes at they are ready so you can get the most out of the plant.
As an additional rule of thumb, if the tomatoes are still a bit too green looking to you and you cannot tell if they are ready yet you can test them by touch. If the tomatoes are hard they’re not ready to pick. When they are ready they will start to soften slightly. We don’t recommend this be your baseline testing method as you should avoid squeezing your fruit which can bruise it, but if you’re careful and gentle this can help you make the call on tomatoes that are on the edge.
It is also worth noting here that green tomatoes can be eaten in several forms, so if you know how to use green tomatoes, feel free to pick early.
How to Pick Tomatoes
To pick a tomato hold it lightly but firmly and grip the stem with your other hand. bend the stem up slightly and pull to cleanly break it off just above where the tomato connects to the vine. If you are worried about damaging the plant too much in this process you can also use garden shears to get a clean cut, but this is often unnecessary. As long as you are not yanking the plant too hard or leaving split vines you’re tomato plant will be just fine as you pick tomatoes throughout the harvest season.
How to Store Fresh Picked Tomatoes
Once you pick your tomatoes you can leave them out at room temperature to ripen out of direct sunlight. Tomatoes, in general, keep ripening at temperatures above 55F. Lower than this the ripening process slows or stops. Once your tomatoes are ripened to your desired levels you can place them in the fridge and they’ll stay fresh and ready to use for quite awhile. While tomatoes stop ripening in low temperatures they are still prone to rot, just like most other fruits from the garden.
If you have more tomatoes than you can store in your fridge the next best step is to can them. Canned tomatoes are great and keep for a very long time. We will warn you that canning a whole harvest of tomatoes at once can be a time consuming affair that leaves your kitchen smelling like tomatoes for days after you finish, so be ready for some extra work and some open windows when a big haul comes in from the garden.
Troubleshooting Your Tomato Plants
If you are having issues with growing tomatoes, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Tomatoes are notoriously hard for home gardeners to grow right on their first try. Even experienced green thumb gardeners make mistakes and can loose a plant or two. Let’s walk through what to check for if you plants are not doing well.
First and foremost, almost every non-pest related tomato problem can be related back to poor soil conditions. If you plant is growing oddly, not taking to water well, has stunted leaves or flowers, or has poorly developed tomatoes, you likely have a soil problem. The easiest thing to do is start by checking your soil pH. If it too acidic (under 6) or too basic (over 7) your plant may suffer from developmental issues due to an inability to absorb nutrition properly from the soil.
If the soil pH is correct, it might be because your plant is starved for other resources. A good fertilizer or compost addition can correct this if caught soon enough. Just make sure you’re not adding too much nitrogen as that will cause your plant to get bushy and produce less tomatoes over its lifespan.
If your soil is good, and in the right pH the next thing to check is temperature and watering conditions. Over watering can be insidious as the effects leave your plant looking like it has been under watered. Don’t trust the plant, check the soil to see if it is moist and retaining water before you water again. On the temperature front, you may need to check your local weather online to get a spread of what temperatures you’ve gotten over night. Sometimes spring nights can be too cold and you may need to put plant protectors over your young tomatoes to help them stay a bit warmer at night.
Next up are the diseases. We won’t talk about all of them here, but we will say these are more obvious. Some present as discoloration, others show up as blight on the fruit, some even crop us a weird bumps or growths. These all have their own treatments and should be explored early before they ruin a whole plant or spread to the whole crop.
Lastly, you may not be supporting your plant enough. If your pant suddenly has some vines growing way worse than others, this can be a sign of a breakage deeper in on the plant. If you main stalk splits and cracks along one side it can stop sending nutrients to the others and will likely require pruning to salvage the plant.
Tomatoes are Rewarding
There are few things better than pulling a fresh tomato off the vine and preparing it for a meal. Tomatoes are versatile in the kitchen and present you ample opportunities to be used in all sorts of things, so they’re an easy choice for a garden. While they are a bit more difficult for beginner gardeners they’re not too hard to grow on your own once you get the hang of them. Understanding what your plants need and preparing for those needs ahead of time can make all the difference. So what are you waiting for!? Go out and start growing fresh delicious tomatoes at home.