- It's finally May and to me that means tomato season.
So today let's go over my five basic tips
for how to make sure you grow your tomatoes successfully.
This first tip is all about location
and where you actually plant your tomatoes.
Now this is something I actually don't hear people
talk about very often, but tomatoes do need full sun.
Most of you probably already know that.
But full sun kind of has this loose definition
of six to eight hours.
So when it comes to actually choosing
where you wanna plant your tomatoes,
and let's just say hypothetically you have
a slicing tomato and a cherry tomato,
you're slicing tomato's going to be the one
that really, really wants full sun,
I'm talking from sun up to sun down.
That'll be the preferred option for those big tomatoes
'cause that big fruit requires a lot of energy to produce
and actually to taste sweet and delicious.
So those big slicing tomatoes you're gonna wanna prioritize
into the sunniest spot of your garden.
Now, the cherry tomatoes don't need as much energy
to produce and create sweet fruit
'cause they're much smaller so it takes a shorter
period of time, little less energy to produce that fruit.
So you can actually put that
in a location that gets a little bit more shade.
You still want that like, six to eight hour minimum,
but the big boys are just not going to taste good
or even really produce very well if you put 'em
somewhere where they only get eight hours of sun.
So let's say hypothetically I only have these two beds.
I want to plant my big tomatoes and my small tomatoes.
I would put all my big tomatoes on this side
and all my cherry tomatoes on this side.
And that's because behind me is south, that way is west,
so as the sun crosses over the sky,
the morning light's gonna hit both beds.
At noon, it's going to hit both beds.
And then in the afternoon these bigger tomatoes
are gonna get full sun
and cast a dappled shadow onto the cherry tomatoes.
That's totally fine.
These are still going to get enough sunlight
to produce plenty of fruit
but the big slicers they need and want that full day of sun.
So you wanna make sure that if you are limited on space
and you have to choose where to put things,
put your big slicing tomatoes in the sunniest spot
and put your cherry tomatoes either behind them
or somewhere where it gets a little bit less sun.
Now full sun is still going to produce the best tomato,
so if you have the option
try to put both in as much sun as you can.
But this is a good way to optimize your space
if you are limited by that.
So next let's talk about pruning, suckers,
and that's probably enough for the next step.
Airflow is the secret to healthy tomatoes.
If you don't have good airflow, you will get disease,
you'll get powdery mildew, fungal diseases,
things like that which will make you really sad.
So let's talk about how to prune
and my approaches to pruning.
This isn't the pruning all the way through the season.
This is what you do early on in the season
when you first put your tomatoes in.
There are a couple things
that you always want to make sure you do,
the first of which is that you remove any leaves
that are touching the soil or the surface of your bed.
And I'll show you why.
When this leaf is sitting here touching the soil
a roly-poly could come up, chew on the leaves, create holes,
and then when the wind blows,
it's gonna rub up against the soil
and that's how you get diseases transferred into your leaf.
So the soil is kind of the disease vector for tomatoes
or at least one of the primary ones.
So keeping the leaves off the ground
is a good way to make sure that it doesn't catch it.
The other thing I like to do, depending on your mood
and how you actually trellis the tomatoes,
is remove suckers.
In this case, I have a single stem trellis,
which means that I only really have this one string
to support the entire plant.
So if I let it grow all of its suckers,
that means that I'm not gonna have any way to support it,
it's gonna flop over and break.
And right here where you see the string wrapped
really tightly around the stem, that is the main stem
or single leader, as it's also known, when grown this way.
So what is the sucker?
If we trace the stem up to a leaf node,
let me actually remove this leaf
so you can see a little bit more.
If you trace it up,
you'll get to this junction where the main leaf comes out
and in that little crotch is a little sucker.
So this right here is a sucker.
When people say pinch the sucker,
you're literally pinching it with your fingers to remove it.
So now I've removed this sucker, I could get rid of it but
if we keep going up, there's actually a much larger sucker.
When they get to this size
they start getting pretty thick, close to like a pencil.
That's when you're gonna wanna actually prune it away.
So I'm gonna take my pruners here, which I just sharpened.
I'm gonna snip this and now I've removed that sucker.
The reason why we wanna remove the suckers in this case
is 'cause we don't want this to bush out.
If it bushes out, I can't really support it
'cause there's only a single string.
So what can you do with the sucker
now that you've removed it?
Well you can throw this in a cup of water, it'll root,
and now you have a clone of this exact plant.
So in this case I have the sun gold,
I could put this in a cup of water.
Once it grows some roots, I can plant it out
and I'll have a second sun gold.
Now there is a time where you don't wanna
remove the suckers,
so let's go take a look at that example right now.
So in this side of the garden
I have my tomatoes set up on a Florida weave trellis system.
That's where I have these T-posts
and some strings that come every so often and
pull the tomatoes together to stop them from flopping over.
In this system I can actually support a lot of suckers
and that's because I'm essentially keeping it in a plane
by putting all these strings that capture the tomato plants,
keep 'em in check and support the entire plant.
So if I do have a sucker grow out from here
eventually a string will come capture it
and it won't flop over and break.
That's the beauty of the Florida weave is that
it's very forgiving when it comes to actually pruning.
But the same rules apply;
any leaf that touches the ground needs to go.
Any early suckers I will also probably remove,
'cause I want to give this
at least a foot off the ground of pure airflow.
Remember, airflow is really
what keeps your tomatoes healthy.
So even though this can support suckers
I don't wanna create too many early on
'cause I want that early airflow
at the beginning of the season
where it might be a little more humid
and chances of disease are a little higher.
Later as I get into the drier part of the year
I will let more suckers grow
because the disease issue won't be as prevalent.
So that's kind of the way to think about it.
You want airflow, you wanna reduce disease
and you want to keep everything
off the surface of your planting medium
or soil or however you're growing your tomato.
You just don't want any leaves touching the ground
and you will probably wanna remove
some of those early suckers.
So now let's talk about the next tip,
which you will find very interesting.
This next tip might trigger some of you
and that's because I'm watering my tomatoes overhead
and getting the leaves wet.
A lot of people say that you cannot do this 'cause
your tomato will instantly succumb to diseases and die.
But guess what? This morning it rained.
So my tomatoes got wet. I can't do anything about that.
It rains everywhere around the world
and tomatoes don't just die when they get their leaves wet.
Now there is a chance that you will get a higher
proportion of disease if they stay wet for too long.
So really when it comes to watering
it's all about when you do it.
Right now it's early morning, almost noon,
and getting the leaves wet is no big deal
'cause it has all day to dry off.
Now if it was sunset and I came through and watered these,
yes, that would be worse because they would sit
wet and cold overnight.
And again, it can rain overnight and you can't do anything
about that, but you just wanna try to minimize it.
The more important thing is that you keep mulch on your soil
because what happens is when you water, there's a chance
that if you're using especially an aggressive watering wand
that the soil can splash up, get on your tomato leaves
and that's where the disease transfer can really occur.
So when it comes to watering, try to water
earlier in the morning if your leaves are gonna get wet.
Try to make sure that you always have mulch
to reduce the chance of splash up.
And when you do water, water deeply,
you don't wanna just come through every day
and hit it with a little spritz of water.
You wanna really, really soak the ground,
let the water percolate down deep
so that the roots go down deep
and create a more resilient tomato.
So don't just come every day, give them a little splash.
Try to do a deep watering either once
or a couple times a week, depending on how hot it is.
So let's now talk about actually planting the tomatoes.
We'll step back in time a little bit
and I'll share with you a couple tips
that are kind of important to keep in mind of
when you actually do plant your tomatoes.
Let's talk about planting tomatoes
and how to actually plant them
and a couple different options
that maybe you haven't seen before.
Now most people will always say, including myself,
that you should plant tomatoes deeply
so that you get more roots.
So if I plant it literally up to here
all of this will produce roots over time.
Now the problem is
if you live somewhere that's a little bit cooler
it takes a long time for spring to warm up.
If you bury your tomato that deep,
down here the soil's gonna be quite cold
and your tomato is not going to be a happy camper.
So let's dig out a test pit here.
(power tool buzzing)
This power planter's really convenient
for tomatoes in particular.
So I got a pretty deep hole there.
So the idea is that you can take this
and go all the way down like that.
If I bury this, all those roots will grow.
Now if you do live somewhere where the soil might be
too cold, you do have another option to get more roots.
And actually this is a good way to use a tomato
that maybe is a little bit leggy,
like this guy's a little bit long, honestly.
So what you could do instead is take a trowel,
dig a channel, like so,
and then what you're gonna do is actually take your tomato
and just lay it down in there.
What this is going to do is the same thing,
you're gonna get plenty of rooting
along the stem 'cause that stem will be buried,
and it's not quite as much burial just 'cause of
the awkward logistics of laying a tomato down flat.
But it's already pointed up.
And now what will happen is over the next two days
the sunlight will come passing through
and this tomato will start leaning itself upright
to capture more of the sun's energy.
It'll naturally fix itself in the right orientation,
but at the beginning it'll look a little bit funny.
The advantage of this is that
now you have all that stem buried,
but it's very close to the surface where the soil's
nice and warm and it's gonna create a wider root spread.
So this is totally a viable option,
again especially if you live somewhere cold.
This is the way I would plant my tomatoes deeply
if I were you.
I like to think of tomatoes as social plants.
They like to have companions
and things next to them to help them grow better.
So when it comes to planting tomatoes
I never like to just plant tomatoes.
You've seen in every single bed that I've shown you tomatoes
I either have flowers, peppers,
or other things alongside them.
So in this bed I have determinate tomatoes
that is tomatoes that grow for a determined period of time,
set all their fruit and then ripen at once, harvest it,
and you pull the plants out.
Just 'cause they're determinate doesn't mean
that they don't want companions either,
even if their life is a little bit short-lived.
So some of my favorite companions are marigolds
'cause marigolds do a really good job
of deterring some pests.
Specifically, they can actually help
with things like root-knot nematode,
which I actually suffered from last year.
So I'm definitely including some marigolds.
So right here is a great spot to throw a marigold.
It'll also allegedly help deter aphids
but I don't know if that's really that true.
I do know that it can help
with that nematode problem though
so I definitely wanna make sure I include it.
The other great option that's also edible is basil.
So over here I have some basil that I could put in
but I'm actually gonna put it elsewhere.
Basil is nice and aromatic.
It helps deter pests, it creates these nice flowers
if you let it bloom, it will also attract pollinators.
So that's a great option.
And also it's next to your tomatoes now,
so it's very easy to cook up a nice tomato sauce
or make a nice caprice salad with fresh basil and tomatoes.
Just makes sense to put 'em next to each other.
The last one that I really, really absolutely love
and will put everywhere in the garden is alyssum.
Right here I have a nice little purple/white alyssum.
And in these beds over here, I have giant mounds of alyssum.
Alyssum is really great
at attracting these little parasitic wasps
and those wasps are also good pollinators,
but more importantly, they are predators.
They can attack things like aphids, eat them,
and importantly they will parasitize
and kill tomato horn worms for you.
So not only will it make your bed look better,
the tomatoes will grow better,
they'll be healthier, but they'll also actually
secretly be protecting your tomato plants.
So hopefully all these tips will help you
grow wonderful tomatoes this year.
I can't wait to start harvesting them.
It's my absolute favorite thing to grow every year.
Nothing tastes better than a homegrown garden tomato.
So best of luck to you guys out there.
And if you have any other questions about tomatoes
definitely drop 'em in the comments
and I'll be sure to reply.