Tomatoes are the favorite vegetable for home growing. You can sprout the seeds indoors (they germinate readily) and grow your own transplants. But it’s easier and quicker to grow your tomatoes from seedlings, so that is the method given here.
- Select a variety that’s appropriate for your needs.
- Choose a spot in full sun, and prepare the soil by digging it deeply and mixing in a good soil amendment.
- If you are planting in pots, use a good well-draining potting soil - no garden soil.
- Add a good vegetable fertilizer
- Plant transplants deeply. If they’re leggy snip off the lower leaves, make a little trench with the trowel, lay the plant in sideways, and bend the stem up gently. Roots will form all along the buried stem.
- Choose a staking system (such as a tomato cage or trellis).
- Water deeply and continue to irrigate so the soil stays evenly moist.
Tips on Choosing Your Tomato Plants:
- If you are buying seeds, ask us which are best for your needs.
- Height and bushiness of the plant are serious considerations, particularly for gardeners growing tomatoes in small spaces or in containers.
- Other factors to consider in selecting seeds or seedlings include taste, size, shape, color, mildness, (acidity or non-acidity), disease resistance, and cracking resistance. Home-growers need not consider whether the variety has “firm skin” or “uniform ripening” characteristics, as these belong to the “good shipping” types and concern primarily commercial growers.
- Your intended use for the tomato may dictate your selection. For instance, if you want to use your tomato crop for preserving or for making tomato paste, you’ll want to paste-tomato variety like “Roma.” If you use tomatoes mostly in salads, you might want to consider cherry tomatoes - no slicing necessary, just toss them in. For slicing tomatoes, one of the larger varieties is best.
- Disease-resistance may be of special interest to you if you’ve had trouble in the past. Also, try rotating where you plant your tomatoes. Replanting tomatoes (or other related plants such as peppers) in a spot that has had problems in the past will just give you problems in the future. Keep in mind that disease resistance is not disease immunity.
- You may be concerned about the “days to maturity” (the time it takes for a transplant to bear ripe fruit) if you are the impatient type. Or you might want something that’s slower if you really love fried green tomatoes!
- Finally, your priority may be in choosing a unique tomato plant, a novelty no one else in the neighborhood grows. Bragging rights are always fun!