Tomato Season

If your hands are not coated in green resin, then your hands are not in your tomato plants NEAR enough. Tomatoes are amazing to have in your garden, but they can also be problem children because they are susceptible to a lot of diseases and pests. Get in your garden and get in your tomato plants business that is the secret to a successful tomato season, daily management. I know with summer our lives are getting busier especially mommas out there like me, I've got two beautiful girls 6 and 3 and summer means lots of time with them! I love all the extra time with my girls, but it also means I have to work harder to make time for my garden, one of my solutions is getting them in the garden with me. One thing they help me with is tomato care, tomatoes like kids need attention to grow and produce to their full protentional.  

First things first, fertilize.

Tomatoes are takers, they need to draw lots of nutrients from the soil to grow and produce fruit. To help them out you should fertilize the soil before planting. You can also interplant them with a giver like beans or peas, this is one of the reasons we love interplanting. For a killer duo fertilize with a phosphorous and potassium rich fertilizer AND interplant with some bush beans or peas. Once the plants are in the soil and growing you can continue to fertilize them every 4-6 weeks.  

Water the deep roots.

Once your tomato plant is set up for success with fertilizers and "giving" neighboring plants you want to think about water. We talked a bit about good watering practices in our blog "5 Ways to Save Your Garden from the Heat" . The basic idea is to water deeply and less frequently to encourage deep roots and when given the space and gentle encouragement tomatoes can grow very deep roots. To get an idea of how large the root system can be, look at your above ground growth, the roots can grow as long and wide as the plant above ground. When you water you want to reach the very deepest roots and beyond to encourage them to keep growing down. Deep roots give your tomato plant valuable drought resistance because they can draw from deep water reservoirs even when the soil on the top is dried out by the sun and heat. 

So how can you be sure you are watering deeply? For temperatures around 80 degrees you need at least 2 inches of water a week, with each 10 degree increase in the temperature increase your watering by 1/2 inch. For an average 90 degree week your tomatoes need 2 1/2 inches and for averages of 100 degrees they need 3 inches a week. You can use your rain gage to see how much water your garden is getting from rain to help you figure out how much you need to water. A quick example scenario: your local weather station says the average temperature this week is 90 degrees and it rained Monday, so you check your rain gauge, and it says about 1 inch of rain fell so you know your garden needs 1 and 1/2 inches more this week. You could water deeply on Tuesday then you WAIT, if you keep giving your plants water near the surface the roots will stay near the surface. In this scenario 2 days later, it hasn't rained again, and it is still in the 90s, so you water your garden thoroughly again.  

If you are struggling to understand what inches of water looks like you can test how you are watering. First check your watering style, especially as it gets warmer you want to be as efficient as possible when watering that means water just at the base of the plants. You don't need to use any special nozzles on your hose and as you water try counting the seconds. Start with 8 to 10 seconds per tomato plant, if that doesn’t seem to be enough time and your plants appear wilted when you check them in the morning you can increase the amount of water by a few second. Make sure to keep track in your gardening journal when you water, how long, and how your plants are doing. 

Shake your tomatoes!

Your fertilized and deeply watered tomatoes should be growing well and starting to produce flowers now! Once your tomato has started to produce flowers you can help it to pollinate by gently shaking it. Each tomato flower is a "complete flower" meaning that inside is both the male and female part in each flower. This means a single flower can pollinate itself and produce fruit. When you gently shake the trellis the tomato plant is growing on, you will shake the flowers and dislodge the pollen (the male part) inside making it fall to the stigma (the female part). You can also go the high-tech route and use an electric toothbrush to gently vibrate the flowering branches it will have the same effect. Though tomatoes can self-pollinate bees and other pollinators are still important and can help the plant both self-pollinate and cross pollinate as well.  

Prune away what doesn't serve the plant.

You should now have a well fed, deeply watered, and gently shaken tomato that's starting to fruit! Once your plant begins to fruit pruning becomes even more important! You can start pruning a tomato right at the start of the season by pruning off the lowest layer of leaves. These leaves often touch the ground which is a great way to introduce disease to a tomato. They also will not produce any flowers or give your plant energy because they get overshadowed by other foliage. When pruning your tomato plant, it is important to keep in mind what the leaves are for, they are the energy factories and if they are not producing energy for the plant, they are taking energy from the plant and they need to be cut off. Next you can look at the body of your tomato plant, branches that are deep inside the foliage and overshadowed by other leaves can also be pruned away. This opens the inside of the plant for better airflow and once again removes leaves that are not producing energy for the plant.  

As your tomatoes start to produce make sure you continue to prune away any branches that are not producing fruit or flowers. These branches are called suckers, because all they do is suck the energy from your plant. You want to keep the suckers pruned back to create better air flow to your producing branches and to reduce the risk of disease from overcrowding. It may seem counter intuitive but if you are properly pruning you will have a much larger harvest because each producing branch will be able to grow more and produce more.  

Don't forget to harvest!

The last vital step is to pick the fruit! Make sure you are going into your garden daily and picking any ripe or even mostly ripe tomatoes. They will continue to ripen after being picked, you just want to make sure that you get them before the critters do and picking the tomatoes encourages the plant to produce more. You are removing the fruit which is also a big energy drain for the plant, so that it has more energy to pour into more fruit.  

Remember feed, deeply water, shake, prune, and pick. Get your hands in your tomatoes daily and follow these steps to have a bumper crop this year!