Hi there, I'm Christy Wilhelmi from Gardenerd and a question came in, because it's tomato season,
about "Why aren't my tomatoes growing?" Now that's a pretty vague question because, how is it not
growing? I'm not exactly sure, so I'm going to cover all the different reasons why tomatoes might not
be growing for you. First let's start with the plant itself. When you put it in the ground
did you break apart the root ball? Because if you buy a tomato particularly a plant that's been in
the pot at the nursery for a while, which I know a lot of people are drawn to, because they might
already have fruit on them, the root ball might be just wrapping around itself inside the pot.
And when you put it in the ground, I like to put the root ball in my hands and give it a rip and
then turn it a quarter turn and rip it again. And that gives the roots a new direction. Basically it
forces the roots to start developing new offshoots in new directions. And that's going to help
establish the foundational root system that you need in order to grow big strong tomato
plants. Next let's talk about nutrients and soil. Because these are the most important factors in
whether or not tomatoes grow most of the time. Is your soil in a container, or in the ground,
or in a raised bed? It depends. If you bought an imported soil to plant your tomatoes in,
chances are that has a huge amount to do with how well your tomato plants are doing. If you
bought a four dollar bag of soil at the... you know, at a big box store that's not the best
quality soil there is, and you're going to have to fortify it in order for stuff to grow. So
let's talk about nutrients for a minute. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Those are the big three.
Those are the numbers that you find on a box of fertilizer. Organic fertilizers usually run between
like three and seven in terms of numbers. Nitrogen, as I've done in another video that you can see
if you click the link in the suggestions, is for green leafy growth. So if you have a big giant
tomato that's not producing any fruit you have plenty of nitrogen but you're missing the next two:
phosphorus and potassium. Phosphorus is for root development and fruiting and flowering. Potassium
is for overall vigor and a little bit of fruiting and flowering too. Those last two, those are the
most important, important parts when it comes to the results you're looking for with tomatoes. So
make sure you're feeding your tomatoes more often because tomatoes are heavy
feeders, meaning they need lots of nutrients. Now if your soil is native soil, it is most likely
the case that you already have those nutrients in the soil, but they may not be able to
have access to what's going on... to what's going on in that soil. So let's talk about soil biology.
You need fungi and bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, flagellates, and ciliates. These...bacteria and fungi
take exudates from the plant roots and become food. They turn it into food for those nutrient cyclers,
which are the protozoa, nematodes, the ciliates and flagellates. And those guys convert nutrients back
into something that the plant can eat. So if you...if your soil is missing those those vital biological
microbes, things are not going to go as well for you. So I always recommend amending soil with
compost, compost tea, biologically active compost tea, and worm castings. Because that helps import
new microbes into the soil. So once you've done that then fertilizing. Fertilizing is something
that if there...if your tomatoes are in containers you need to do at least monthly, probably more
often. My friend Scott Dagre at Tomatomania, he fertilizes every time he waters his tomatoes.
And that's with, like, either a liquid kelp or liquid fish emulsion. Because tomatoes need it.
And that's in containers. Remember roots can't go deep in containers in order to extract minerals
from deep soils. You have to get it all from what you give them so if you're not feeding
your tomatoes regularly, meaning at least once a month, your probably missing out on production.
All right, what else could be going on with your tomato plant? So let's say you have a tomato
plant that is growing but it's not producing any fruit or it's flowering and those flowers
are dropping off. Now I already mentioned the bit about nutrients being really important for
fruiting and flowering, but let's say you've got flowers and they're dropping off. There
are a couple things that could be happening here. First off, when temperatures get above 90 degrees
the pollen inside tomato flowers goes sterile and the flower just drops off without setting fruit. So
if you're planting in temperatures that are really high, or by the time the plant gets to the point
where it's flowering, it's over 90 degrees every day, and nighttime temperatures are high as well,
that can be the reason why you're not getting any tomatoes. Most of the time tomatoes are planted
early enough that they fruit and...they flower and fruit while while nighttime temperatures still
drop. so that's okay. But once you get to the point where your nighttime temperatures aren't a whole
lot different from your daytime temperatures it may still be over 90 degrees or close to it,
you're going to be losing fruit. They're just not going to set. So what you can do is sort of hang
on and wait and then as temperatures cool down in fall, if your tomato plants are still going,
they'll start setting fruit again. So that's why people end up with so-called winter tomatoes,
where they're picking tomatoes on plants that they've maybe covered in a floating row cover
to get through the winter. That kind of thing happens, not very often, and in fact here, where
I live, we are coastal so our tomato plants are covered in powdery mildew and we definitely
get blight by the end of the season. So we treat tomatoes as annuals and pull them out at the end
of the season and start fresh next year. Which brings me to another point. If you have tomato
plants that are diseased...you know...the rule of thumb is pull out anything that's diseased. But
i know that if you've already got fruit set on it you're not going to do that. I don't do it. So it's
really important to prune off anything that looks diseased. All brown and yellowing leaves. Which by
the way, tomatoes start to yellow their leaves when they start ripening fruit. That's normal. But you'll
see diseases like Septoria leaf spot, blights that move from the bottom of the plant up to the top...
from the base of or from the from the tips of the leaves up to the to the stem to the main trunk.
That's blight, and there are a lot of different blights out there and once it gets in your soil
it's kind of there to stay. So it's really important to rotate your tomato crops from year
to year once that gets into your garden space. And the last reason why your tomato plants might be
growing could be your watering techniques. Remember, tomatoes once established like to be watered
deeply but infrequently. So that's going to look like every 5 to 10 days in ground or maybe every
three to five days in containers. If you're in a really hot location and that container is smaller
you're going to probably need to water more often. That's is just a fact. You may need to water
every couple of days, maybe even every day if you're in really hot temperatures. But make sure
to not over water because that's when tomatoes start tasting really watery and not very sweet.
Those are just a few reasons why your tomato plant might not be growing. Check all of those things off
and if you still have an issue with it, type a comment below. I hope you liked this video. If you
do, like, subscribe, and share it with your friends.
And don't forget to check out Gardenerd.com for a ton of helpful growing information about tomatoes and a whole bunch of other stuff. Check out my
books Gardening for Geeks, GrowYour Own Mini Fruit Garden, and my novel Garden Variety. Happy gardening.