7 Tips for Growing Amazing Tomatoes

If you love tomatoes, you probably know that garden-grown tomatoes taste better than store-bought. Here are some great tips for growing amazing tomatoes.

Whether you’re new to growing a vegetable garden or you’ve done it for many years, tomatoes are one of the most common veggies that people love to grow in their gardens. Unless you absolutely hate tomatoes, these are some o the easiest and most rewarding vegetables you can have in your garden. As easy as they can be to grow, tomatoes are prone to many problems, but we’ve got some great tips to help you out.

1. Give them space

Tomatoes grow on a vine and grow upward from seeds and seedlings. You want to give these vines plenty of room to branch out. This can mean thinning the seedlings to one strong plant and cutting off others. Trim away the smaller and weaker seedlings to allow the best growers a chance to give you the wonderful veggies you want to enjoy. When crowded, tomatoes won’t grow well at all. One way to ensure you don’t have them crowded is to put seedlings in their own small pot once they get their first set of real leaves.

2. Tomatoes require lots of light

If you want to grow some amazing tomatoes during the winter or indoors, you’ll need to add some artificial plant lighting. When growing these vegetables, you need to give them 14-18 hours of light every day. If the tomatoes are planted in an outdoor garden, you’ll want them in the sunniest spot in your garden plot. When indoors, a sunny window works for some of the hours, but the added artificial light will help too.

3. Circulate the air around your plants

The fruits/vegetables of tomato plants can get heavy and become a burden for the plants to carry. In order for your tomatoes to develop strong stems, they need to sway and move in the breeze. When planted outdoors, this happens naturally, but that’s not the case for indoor varieties. If you grow your tomatoes in pots or a greenhouse, you need to add a fan to allow the plants back and forth.

4. Everything must be warm

Like a person bundling in a blanket, tomatoes love the heat. This is why they do so well in the summer months. Your garden soil needs to be warm, which can be done by covering the planting area with black plastic for a couple of weeks before planting the seedlings outdoors. The added temperature increases allow you to receive earlier tomatoes. This is a great way to have the most amazing tomatoes much sooner than you might expect. Tomatoes love the warm air and warm soil.

5. Bury the roots for stronger stems

When you plant most plants, you don’t bury the stem, but the opposite is true with tomatoes. You can plant your tomato plants up to the first set of leaves. This allows the plants to develop roots along the stems, which makes for a much stronger plant. There are two ways to do this. Either dig deeper holes or dig a shallow trench and lay the plant sideways. The tomato plant will straighten itself and grow toward the sun because that’s what they do.

6. The bottom leaves must go

Once your tomato plants are two to three feet tall, remove the leaves from the bottom foot of the stem. These are the oldest leaves and can be the first to have troubles. Removing them will help keep the plants fresh and healthy all season long. The bottom leaves get the least amount of sun and airflow, which is why they tend to contract fungi and diseases more easily. To avoid this, snip them off.

7. Tomatoes need lots of water

If you want the most amazing tomatoes when it’s time to harvest, you’ve got to give them lots of water. For the most part, tomatoes need 1-1.5 inches of water per week, but you might need to water them more when it’s hot and dry. If your plants look wilted, give them some water. You must be diligent about watering. If you’ve got a vacation planned, it’s important to have a watering plan. You can’t make up for missed watering with tomatoes. Once the fruit begins to develop, you can slow down on the watering for a bit.

Use these tips to enjoy some of the most amazing tomatoes when it’s time for your end-of-season barbecue.