• 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

Useful Articles and Resources

• Tomato Plants Care and Feeding
• Tomato Plant Care and Essential Tips For Growing Tomatoes
• Tiny Game Hunting: Environmentally Healthy Ways to Trap and Kill the Pests in Your House and Garden New Edition

Understanding what makes the tastiest tomatoes might help a little. The answer relates to the watering program to a significant extent i.e. if you over water then there is a risk you will make your tomatoes watery and a little bland. There are some circles that advocate dry cultivation with no irrigation. But this is a little bit of a specialist activity and you need to know what you are doing, it requires a soil mix of clay and loam with a minimum rainfall of 20″ to be effective. Not an area I am completely familiar with so if you want to know more about this then you could visit Home & Garden Publications who have an article on that exact subject.

For us lesser mortals what it comes down to is getting the level of watering right so that you get a concentrated flavor as a result. Over water and you end up with those watery, bland tomatoes mentioned earlier. Maintain your watering program so that the soil is moist, not dried out or waterlogged and there is a good chance that you will get the tasty tomatoes you are looking for. As the fruit reaches the ripening stage you can consider backing off on the watering program a little so that you err on the side of a drier soil, but again not completely dry.

Sorry I can’t help more than that it is very subjective and actually down to trial and error to an extent.

Of course the other thing that can help you with taste is selecting the right varieties and many home grown tomatoes come from the Heirloom varieties that have been kept going, not by the market gardeners, but rather the tomato growing enthusiasts that care less about transport toughness and shelf life than they do about getting the tastiest tomatoes. So go for Heirloom and there is a good chance that combined with the right watering program you will get very tasty tomatoes.

There is another source of information, and this was fed through to me by my brother in law who advised me that the UK consumer magazine he subscribes to, called ‘Which’, has stated that the tastiest tomato this year, identified through consumer trials, is the Soiux tomato; which is of American descendency and of course is one of the Heirloom varieties.

The second tastiest tomatoes are listed as being the Orkado tomatoes and while we are at it the worst and most bland tasting tomato was identified as, can you bear it, the Alicante. A firm favorite amongst many of you, I would hazard a guess. Sorry to disillusion you.

Now knowing what the tastiest tomatoes are and finding them for sale anywhere is a different matter. But I can advise you that if you would like to buy them in the UK you can get your tastiest tomatoes here, and I don’t even make any money out of it.

For anyone living in the USA you can get them here Sioux Tastiest Tomatoes and now I do make some money from this link. So if you go and buy some, thanks very much.

Orkado are much easier to find so I will leave you to hunt for them yourselves, and of course the Alicante which you can get pretty much anywhere, that is if you want the blandest tasting tomatoes on the market as reported by Which magazine and my brother in law.

You will discover that by watching this video that pruning tomato plants really isn’t that difficult, the main thing is to make sure that you don’t cut off any growth that has a blossom or fruit on it.

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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Tomato Plants suffer from pests, just like any other plant in your garden. But personally, I found Earwigs to be the biggest pain.

They love to eat the leaves of a tomato plant, and if there are enough of them, this can kill the plant. If you are just battling a few, then, picking them off by hand may work.

But most earwigs, tend to form a crowd, and head into your tomato garden between 2 and 4 am for their buffet snack. Some are brazen enough to eat during the daylight as well, but the night is their perfect setting for some midnight snacking.

Here is what worked for me. If you are a beer drinker, then this is good for you and the tomato garden!. Earwigs love yeast, and guess what is in the beer?. Yeast!

You can do this a few ways, you can pour some beer in a tinfoil pie plate and leave it in the garden overnight. The earwigs are attracted to the yeast and fall in. This will get rid of quite a few.

But if you have a windy area, like me, then this might not work so well. You will wake up to pie plates everywhere and beer spray! Find a container you can bury, or better yet, buy beer in cans, drink about 1/2 of the beer, then bury the beer can, leaving about 1 inch of the top of the can sticking out of the ground.

The earwigs will crawl into the can. Make sure you have finished your watering of your tomato plants, then place the can. Every couple of days, replace the can with a new batch of beer.

So, now you get to enjoy the tomato garden even more, as you will now need to drink a 1/2 beer, or have a party if there are a few rows of tomato plants that need to be protected. You will be happy and so will your tomatoes!

click here for tips on growing the best tomatoes on the street. Article and website by Diane Palmer

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fresh juicy tomatoes straight from the garden to the dining table

When you are just starting out with your own vegetable gardening, a wise choice is to include tomatoes in your choice of plants because they are one of the best plants for a beginner to try his or her hand with. Strictly speaking of course tomatoes are not vegetables they are actually a fruit, but most people categorize them as a vegetable and they are a classic ingredient for a lovely summer salad. There really isn’t anything nicer than having your own home grown tomatoes sitting freshly picked on your plate.

Tip Number 1 – correct spacing

Always leave enough space between your tomato plants when you plant them, a common mistake of a newbie gardener is to place the plants too close together. The plants then end up fighting for everything, nutrients from the soil, sunlight and water. Far better to leave enough space and let them prosper in adequate space even if that means having a few less plants.

Tip Number 2 – warm soil

Warm soil, anyone who has grown tomatoes in a hanging planter will probably have noticed slightly better yields from the plants than when they are planted in a normal garden, providing attention is paid to all the other aspects of growing tomatoes of course, and the reason for this is that the soil is warmed slightly by the sun in a way that normal ground in a standard garden isn’t. What you can do however is to create that same affect by placing black plastic sheeting over the ground and using the thermal heating effect that results to warm the soil.

Tip Number  3 – plenty of sunshine

Tomato plants need a minimum of 6 hours full sunlight a day and some people would recommend up to 10 hours of sunshine. Whichever camp you fall in, it is clear that a good location needs to be selected where the plants can get the required amount of sun.

Tip Number 4 – prepare the soil

You need to prepare the soil for where you are going to plant your tomatoes with a nitrogen rich fertilizer, compost and mulch. The mulch will help with water retention and the compost fertilizer mix will provide the much needed nutrients that are particularly required when the fruit starts to appear.

Tip Number 5 -proper watering of tomatoes

Watering, not too much and not too little. You should aim for a happy balance where the plants neither dry out or are absolutely drenched in water, a moist root ball is a happy root ball and this will allow the nutrients to be absorbed that are required to produce the tomato’s fruit.

Always remember that you are not growing tomatoes for the supermarkets, if they turn out a little less than perfect now and then, don’t beat yourself up over it, they will probably still taste great and there are other alternatives for the ones that don’t get served fresh, for example making tomato chutney is a brilliant way to preserve some of your tomatoes for outside of the normal growing season.