Tips for a Bountiful Harvest
“Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What’s life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can’t buy
That’s true love and homegrown tomatoes”
-Guy Clark
Singer-songwriter Guy Clark spoke for most of us when he penned his classic ode to the “love apple,” as the French call it. Originally found in the mountains of Peru, Chile and Argentina and domesticated in Mexico, the tomato started its life as an ornamental plant and grew to be the staple of the Mediterranean diet and the darling of gardeners across the United States. They’re grown in window boxes, 5-gallon buckets and backyard plots everywhere. What do you need to produce dark, red and juicy fruit?
The Keys to Great Tomatoes
To ensure that you have plenty of healthy and tasty tomatoes, you need to pay attention to a number of things:
- The location—Tomatoes thrive on sunlight. You want them in a location where they’ll get a minimum of 6 hours a day. They also like warm weather, but can lose their blossoms if exposed to too much heat. If you’ve started with seeds inside, you don’t need sunlight until the shoots break the soil, but you’ll want your seeds to stay warm and moist.
- The soil—Tomatoes require a lot of water, but they need to be planted in soil that drains well. Too much clay in your soil may cause root rot or may cause tomatoes to burst before you can pick them.
- How you water them—Tomatoes should be watered regularly. Depending on the weather, that may be daily or every couple of days. To check, stick your index finger in the soil up to the second knuckle. If the soil is moist, you are okay. If not, add water.
- What you are feeding them—A balanced fertilizer is best. Phosphates can promote the production of fruit, but too much nitrogen can make the plants very green, but unproductive. If you’re starting or growing in pots, you want to add some calcium, as most commercial soils are low in calcium. The easiest way to do that—mix a handful of gypsum in the soil.
- Giving them the support they need—Tomato plants are either determinate or indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes grow to a specific height and then produce all their fruit at the same time. Indeterminate tomato plants keep growing and produce fruit indefinitely. Most determinate tomato plants need little staking, but indeterminate plant require cases or other support to keep fruit off the ground.
- Hardening off—If you start tomatoes indoors, this is an essential component to a successful crop. Plants that start indoors are more sensitive to sun, wind and temperature changes and may thrive indoors and do poorly when transplanted outdoors. To minimize this risk, you need to harden off the plants by gradually exposing them to outdoor conditions.
