• Supporting Tomato Plants
• Pruning Tomatoes
• Watering Tomatoes
• Feeding Tomatoes
• Pest Control



Supporting Tomato Plants

This is particularly important for tomato care when growing vine tomatoes, they usually produce trusses on which you will first get blossom and the blossom will become your tomato fruits. To keep your plants and fruit healthy it is necessary to tie the trusses to a suitable support usually with a soft string. There are a number of ways in which you can provide support for the plants but the simplest is just a stake pushed in besides the plant and soft string to tie the plant to the stake.

Pruning Tomatoes


Pruning tomato plants is done for 3 primary reasons, to prevent lower trusses touching the soil which is the biggest source of contamination. To control the number of trusses you want on the plant so that you can ensure all the fruit you get will ripen and finally to remove non producing foliage, i.e. take out growth where there is no blossom so that the energy for the plant is directed to the fruit producing regions.


Watering Tomato Plants

Tomato plant care requires regular and consistent watering to ensure that the plants neither dry out or become saturated in water i.e. water logged. Neither of these conditions is desirable and incorrect watering is the biggest source of tomato problems related to tomato care.

Feeding Tomato Plants

Occasional feeding of tomato plants with a high nitrogen liquid feed, ideally that has been developed specifically for tomatoes, is always a good idea. This should ensure that you will produce healthy fruit in a plentiful supply. The best suggestion for this is that you follow the instructions on the product you use and also be aware that over feeding tomato plants can actually be counter productive and may result in problems such as blossom end rot for example. So the key is to follow a properly planned feeding regime and make sure you feed your tomatoes enough but not too much.

Pest Control

Tomato plants will need to be regularly checked for the presence of pests, the vast majority of which place themselves on the underside of the tomato plant leaves. Many can be removed by hand, if caught early enough, either by picking them off or by wiping the leaves between your thumb and forefinger. For persistent pests or large infestations you may need to use a suitable pesticide or sometimes a mix of 1 part soap and 4 parts water may be enough. Clearly when looking for pests the underside of leaves is the first place you should look. Tomato plant pests are much easier to eradicate if you find them early on and hopefully before any permanent damage has occurred

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The time to maturity becomes quite critical when leaving things a little late in the season. For example in the UK about now, approaching the end of May, it is about as long as you can leave it before getting your plants in. That said there are 3 general groups of tomatoes that mature in approximately the following periods:

• Early varieties take around 50 to 60 days
• Mid Season take around 60 to 75 days
• Late season take around 80 to 90 days

Typically it is the size of the fruit that dictates how long they take to mature, so clearly cherry tomatoes will generally fit into the 50 to 60 day grouping, medium size fruits, such as plum tomatoes, fall into the 60 to 75 days and the larger beefsteak varieties will take around 80 to 90 days. So if you select the early to mid season varieties you should still be OK up to the end of May in Europe.

This is a general guide but obviously if you are selecting specific varieties and you have left it a bit late then refer to the label for the best time for planting and when you can expect to harvest the last of the fruit.

If you are totally organised and on top of everything, then ideally you will have sorted out a range of plants that cover all the maturing periods so that you have a plentiful supply of tomatoes from the early part of the season right through to the end. But if you are anything like me, you will be rushing to get your plants in at the last minute , well this year anyway.

Of course your tomato planting schedule changes when you are growing tomatoes from seed, typically you need to be planting tomato seeds around 4 to 6 weeks before you need the tomato plants ready for planting out. Not too difficult to work backwards and figure out when they should first be going into the pots. In Europe its from around the middle of March to the beginning of April.

One of the problems with writing about taking care of tomatoes on the Internet is that your readers can come from all over the world, Australia, the United States, the UK or mainland Europe. This book doesn’t care what country you are in or what climate, hot, cold or somewhere in between, it provides detailed information and pictures to help you grow and take care of your tomatoes using a step by step set of instructions that have been written by people who know their subject and have written in an easy to understand format.

So if you are just starting out or you are looking to dramatically improve your growth rates and crop yields by referring to a comprehensive, single source option with great cultivation advice. Then I would recommend that you at least check out this 88 page book How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

The tomato plant is one of the easiest plants to grow in the garden and is a great source of food for the family, they are both delicious to eat and promote good health. Learn how to care for tomato plants and you will be able to produce a lot of fruit throughout the growing season.

There are a few basics to get right concerning both the tomato plant care and feeding so that you can ensure lots of juicy fresh fruit straight from the garden.

The first bit of advice for tomato plant care is to ensure that before planting tomatoes make sure that the last frost of the year is over with, neither the plant or the fruit have any tolerance to freezing, so all your preparation could come to nothing if the plants are exposed to a frost.

Next, prepare the soil, it is a good idea to dig a trench about 18″ deep, fill the bottom with a mulch, many people use newspaper to line the bottom of the trench, then add in a mix of high in nitrogen compost and soil to fill the trench.

The compost will provide the basic feed for the plants but can be supplemented with a tomato feed once or twice a week once the fruit starts to appear, this is important for tomato care as the fruit needs a lot of nitrogen to flourish.

Another important aspect of a tomato plants care is to ensure that the trusses are properly supported, this can be done as simply as pushing a stake in the ground and then tying off each truss, as it develops, to the stake with a soft garden string. Prune the tomato plant to remove lower shoots to prevent contact with the ground and to control the number of trusses, a good number is 4 to 6 trusses.

You will also need a regular watering program, ideally 2 to 3 times a day to keep the soil moist but not saturated. Add to this occasional treatment with a pesticide on an as required basis and you will have dealt with all the basic needs for tomato plant care.

Tomatoes are best eaten fresh, so eat them as soon as they are ready picking from the early, lower trusses, this will also encourage further fruit to grow.

Visit Tomato Growing for more tips and advice on tomato growing, the best types of tomato plants and to get access to expert advice that could double or triple the size of your crop of tomatoes.

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