8 Top Tips For Growing Better Tomatoes

Harvesting a crop of juicy, ripe tomatoes is one of the highlights of the gardening year. There’s a world of culinary delights waiting for your fresh haul. Read on for our 8 top tips for growing better tomatoes.

Growing better Tomatoes - Tomato plants with fruits in various stages of ripeness.

Growing Better Tomatoes

Once you have decided to grow tomatoes, you’ll have done your research and know they are hungry plants that, nutrient wise, will consume pretty much anything that you can throw at them.

One of the main considerations for growing better tomatoes is to provide them with enough room to develop root mass. This enables them to access all the water and nutrients they need to grow to the epic proportions you imagined.

Growing Better Tomatoes In Pots

If your aim is growing better tomatoes in pots, then cordon types do well in 20-litre round pots. If you can go bigger, all the better. It just means you’ll give them more room to grow more roots, with better access to water and nutrients. You can go slightly smaller for bushing tomatoes.

Considerations

Depending where you’re growing your tomatoes, consider how stable the pot will be and how big the plant will grow.

Larger plants in smaller pots require watering more frequently and are more prone to blowing over. Larger pots hold more water and will be more stable, especially important for outdoor grown pot plants.

For hanging varieties, larger pots provide more room for fruits to hang free off the ground.

Growing Better Tomatoes In Grow Bags

If you’re using grow bags and want to make growing in grow bags really simple, use a grow bag waterer. These handy garden accessories hold up to 15-litres of water and feed. Growing tomatoes, chillies and anything else you can think of in grow bags has never been easier with a grow bag waterer. They work by filling a well and the capillary mats wick water up in to the growing media, keeping your grow bags watered for up to 2 weeks.

Growing Better Tomatoes—Avoid Tomato spoilers

Avoid Tomato Blight

There are several spoilers that you want to avoid, one being tomato blight. Known as “blight”, this fungal disease thrives in warm, humid conditions with poor airflow. To help avoid blight, ensure there is good airflow bringing in fresh Co2 laden air and consider growing blight-resistant tomato varieties.

The following eight tips will help you to care for your tomatoes better, recognise problems earlier and will mean you grow better tomatoes.

Blossom End Rot

A major cause of Blossom End Rot (BER) in Tomatoes is an interruption to the calcium supply. The interruption isn’t always caused by a shortage of calcium in the soil – it can come from letting the soil dry out excessively. If you want to avoid BER, then you need to ensure you have a regular watering regime in place. Using automatic watering timers are great for reducing your workload. Using grow bag waterers lets the plants regulate their own intake (as long as you keep it topped up and fed!).

It’s really important that you avoid the soil from drying out too much. Also be careful not to overwater and ensure your planters are free to drain excess water.

8 Top Tips For Growing Better Tomatoes

1. Side shoots

On tall tomatoes (vines, cordons and indeterminates) you need to pinch out the side shoots every few days. This allows the plant to concentrate its energy on fruit production. Side shoots (aka suckers) appear at the junction between the main stem and leaves (see below).

Garden tip: Don’t remove the side shoots on bush or trailing tomato varieties.

Growing better Tomatoes - Tomato Leaves showing sideshoots
Growing better Tomatoes - Pinching tomato plant sideshoots out (sideshooting)

2. Supporting plants

It’s a good idea to support all but trailing varieties of tomatoes. Fruit laden branches can collapse even stocky bush tomato plants (determinate).

Large cordon/vine (indeterminate) varieties need a strong stake or other support at around 5-feet tall.

You should place a large bamboo cane or similar next to the main stem when you plant up your tomatoes. You use this to tie the main stem to the support as the plant grows. Bush tomatoes are best supported with a short central stake and encircled with foldable plant supports, to keep fruit off the ground.

3. Water regularly

It’s essential that you regularly water your tomato plants. Watering too little means fewer, smaller fruits and possible nutrient deficiencies, while too much can dilute the flavour. Uneven watering can cause the fruits’ skin to split. The best time to water is in the morning and pouring directly onto the roots.

4. Feeding regime

You’ll need to feed your tomatoes regularly with a liquid feed. This makes all the difference to crop quantity and quality. Using Tomorite liquid tomato feed will bring you great results. Always follow the instructions to avoids over-feeding, as this can also cause you problems.

Growing better Tomatoes - Person watering and feeding tomato plants

5. Greenhouse care

Excess sun and heat can lead to sun scald, scorch and poor setting of fruit. Try to keep the temperature at or below 25°C by putting up shading (netting, whitewash) ventilating and damping down paths.

Garden tip: It’s just as important to ventilate during cooler weather, as diseases thrive in damp air.

6. Removing leaves

When cordon tomatoes mature, the lowest leaves turn yellow and should be removed (snapped or cut off) to improve air flow and help control disease. On all types, regularly remove any dead or yellowing leaves, without completely defoliating the plant.

Growing better Tomatoes - plants with lower leaves removed

7. Stopping the plant

In late summer, cordon varieties should have the main stem ‘stopped’. This is achieved by removing the growing tip by cutting or pinching it off.

Stopping the main stem helps you with growing better tomatoes as it avoids the plant wasting energy on the production of late fruit. Late fruit won’t have time to develop. In general, let four fruit trusses form on outside plants (six on indoor plants) then pinch out the growing tip.

8. Harvesting your haul

Ripe tomatoes come off easily when gently lifted and twisted. When tomatoes are ripe, don’t leave them on the plant. They’ll soften, split and rot. At the end of the season, green fruits can be harvested and kept in a warm, dark place to ripen.

Lady harvesting ripe tomatoes

How Can I Ripen Up Green Tomatoes?

The term “Green” refers to any unripe fruits. Some fruits may be green, but perfectly ripe, as is the case with some variety of apples. With late-season tomatoes, you can have green, unripe tomatoes that have grown and swollen to full potential, but, as the autumn sun is less powerful and lower in the sky, the plant isn’t going to ripen the fruits for you. This is where
growing cordon type tomatoes a bit of knowhow can help you ripen your fruits. There are several factors that dictate how and when your green tomatoes will ripen up.

Should I ripen green tomatoes on a sunny windowsill?

Light

The first factor we need to address is light. Contrary to popular belief, windowsills are not the best place to ripen tomatoes.  Surprisingly, many tomato varieties ripen from the side that sees the least light. You don’t need lots of light to ripen your tomatoes, and, in fact, ripening in sunlight can make the skins of the fruits tough.

Temperature

Temperature is another, important factor.  The warmer a tomato fruit is the quicker it ripens. You can slow down the ripening process by placing tomatoes in a cool area or speed it up with a moderate increase in warmth.

What is ethylene?

Another factor, and one that can really speed ripening up, is a gas called ethylene.  Tomatoes are a climacteric fruit, which means they continue to ripen, even after they are removed from their host.

Ethylene producing fruits

The following is a non-exhaustive list of fruits that are great ethylene producers and will help to ripen your end of season, green tomatoes:

  • Apricots
  • Apples
  • Bananas
  • Kiwis
  • Melons
  • Pears
  • Plums
  • Fig
  • Avocados

Tomatoes produce ethylene inside the fruit as part of the ripening process. In tomatoes, this invisible gas converts carotenoids into red lycopene pigments to give them their red blush. Ethylene is used in commercially grown tomatoes (and other fruits) where they are picked green, shipped and then ripened for sale. Many fruits produce ethylene naturally as they ripen, which is why using fruits such as bananas, apples and Kiwi’s to help ripen your tomatoes at home is a good idea.

Ripening Box

Banana ripening tomatoes

Placing a ripe ethylene producing fruit such as banana or Kiwi in a warm, dark, newspaper-lined box with your green tomatoes can really help ripen up your end of season produce. Keeping the fruit at a warm room temperature will help to stimulate faster ethylene production in the fruit. Temperature and ethylene production are related, with warmer temperatures allowing faster production of this ripening gas.

Placing tomatoes in groups with any of the other fruits will bring you even more success. With heat in mind, it goes to show why greenhouses and polytunnels ripen tomato crops quicker than outdoor grown crops.


Can Dogs Eat Tomatoes?

Growing better tomatoes isn’t just for us. If, like many, you have a four-legged shadow following you around the garden, primed and ready for a tasty morsel to drop. You may have asked yourself: “Can dogs eat tomatoes?”. The good news is that an occasional ripe tomato is deemed safe and makes a nice, fresh treat for your canine companion.

Hairy dog with a tomato in its mouth

One note of caution, be careful to remove any leaves before you toss your pooch their treat. Tomatoes are from the nightshade family, and unripe fruits, leaves and shoots contain compounds, such as solanine, that can harm your dog. The ripe fruits metabolise solanine to much lower, safe levels, which shouldn’t affect your furry best friend.

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