Tomatoes are one of the first vegetables that almost every new gardener starts with! I personally love them because of their variety and generous yield each season. This is a basic guide on how to start growing tomatoes.
When To Plant Tomatoes
First, determine when the best time to grow tomatoes is in your region. One of my favorite websites to reference is gardenate.com. This website tells you which months are recommended for seed starting, seed sowing, and transplanting in each climate zone.
Tomatoes are a warm weather crop, so they are best planted when the soil is warm, but the weather is not too hot.
Here in Arizona’s zone 9b, our sweet spot for planting tomatoes is March. It is best to give our plants time to get well established before our brutal summers.
Where To Plant Tomatoes
Tomatoes typically need 6-8 hours of sun to grow their best, so be sure that the area where you will be planting your tomatoes gets a lot of sunlight. You will also want to be mindful of any surrounding plants that may grow to shade your tomato plants.
Soil
Tomatoes like fertile, well-draining soil with a pH of 5.8-7.0.
There are a lot of things that contribute to soil health, and it can be overwhelming for beginners.
The easiest way to start a garden (in my opinion) is to plant in raised garden beds so you can create your own bed mix, and not have to worry about amending your native soil. My favorite garden bed mix is a 1:1:1 ratio of vermiculite, compost, and peat moss or coco coir.
If you intend to plant in your native soil, you may need to amend it to make it more habitable for certain plants.
I have also had success growing tomatoes in a basic garden bed mix with compost mixed in.
Tomato Plant Spacing
Tomato plants need quite a bit of space. Their branches get long and bushy, so I would recommend giving each tomato plant 2-3 feet of space for beginners.
There are pruning and trellising practices you can implement to contain your tomatoes to a smaller area. Maximizing garden bed space will get easier with each season of growing and learning.
Starting Tomatoes From Seed
Directly Sowing Tomato Seeds
You can sow your tomato seeds directly into your garden 2-3 weeks after the last frost or when night temperatures are in their mid 50’s and rising.
Refer to your seed packet for how deep and distant to sow your seeds. (Typically about ¼ inch-ish deep and 2-ish feet apart).
I would put 2-3 seeds in each hole and thin them out to the strongest one (this is still one of the hardest, most heartbreaking parts of gardening for me). Keep the soil consistently moist until germination.
Starting Tomato Seeds Indoors
You can start tomato seeds indoors 6-8 weeks before you are able to plant them outdoors. Be sure to give them warmth, moisture, and light. I will write a separate post about starting seeds indoors.
Transplanting Tomato Seedlings
You can buy a tomato transplant from the store, or start your tomato seeds indoors and transplant them into your garden.
Bury your tomato transplants up to the first set of leaves. This will help establish a strong root system since roots can branch off of the buried stem. Water them in well.
Plant Support
You will want to provide support to your tomato plants to keep them off of the ground. If the fruit and leaves are touching the ground, they will most likely rot.
Tomatoes can be vining (indeterminate) or bushing (determinate), and the way you’ll want to provide structural support to your plants will depend on which type they are.
Vining (indeterminate) tomatoes are best grown with some sort of trellis for structural support.
Bushing (determinate) tomatoes are best grown with some sort of tomato cage.
Most tomato plants bought from the store are determinate, bushing varieties, but there are several indeterminate, vining varieties available from seed.
There are more differences between indeterminate and determinate tomato plants, but that can be covered in another post.
Pruning Practices
For bushing (determinate) tomatoes, pruning isn’t usually necessary. Some gardeners would even say that it actually reduces their yield (I’m personally not too sure about this). I usually just throw a tomato cage on my bushing tomatoes and let them grow.
For indeterminate (vining) tomatoes, you can choose to prune them based on what stage of growth your plant is in.
When your indeterminate tomatoes are young, pick the flowers off of the tomato plant until they are at least 12-18 inches. The plant’s energy can either go towards growth or fruit production, so by removing the flowers, you will tell the plant to focus their energy on root, stem, and leaf growth.
Also, you can prune any suckers/vines on your indeterminate tomatoes that are growing away from the trellis (off to the sides), close to the ground (to prevent rot), or that are too close together (to promote air flow).
Watering
A general guideline is to water tomatoes in the morning, slowly and deep into the soil. In other words, it is best to have water dribble slowly over a longer period of time. This will help the roots grow deeper and help them survive harsher temperatures. However, be careful not to overwater your plants.
Once a deep root system is established, tomatoes are pretty tolerant of the first few inches of soil being dry.
Watering Plants is always tricky to determine because it greatly depends on your environment. You wouldn’t water plants the same way in Arizona as you would in Alaska.
Keep in mind that the first few seasons (first few years really) of gardening is a huge learning curve! You will learn from trial and error.
Here in Arizona’s zone 9b, I water every other day for 30 minutes in the spring, every day for 40 minutes in the peak of summer, then every other day again for 30 minutes in the fall.
Using Shade Cloth for Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a warm weather crop, but Arizona summers in the low desert are no joke! When temperatures start to get around 110 degrees Fahrenheit consistently, you may want to consider shading your garden, especially if it has western exposure. If your tomato plants are well established, they should able to make it through the harsh summers and continue producing in the fall!
Using Frost Cloth for Tomatoes
In many areas, tomato plants are goners in the winter due to the freezing temperatures. Luckily, here in Arizona, we have relatively mild winters, and some people are able to keep their tomatoes alive through the winter using frost cloth! You can try to save your tomato plants by using frost cloth when temperatures start to dip lower than 40 degrees at night.
Good Luck!
I hope I’ve helped you learn a bit more about how to grow tomatoes!
Gardening isn’t for the faint of heart. It involves a lot of trial and error, and can be discouraging at times. But, don’t let the challenge scare you! Just do your best, and you will get better each season. You can’t learn if you don’t try! And once you begin receiving bountiful harvests, you will be so happy that you persevered.
Happy Growing!
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