It's tomato planting time!

Here are some ways to get more from your tomato plants this year. Pick the sunniest spot in the garden. Your tomato plants need at least 6 hours of sunlight a day. 8 hours a day is better. If at all possible, choose a spot where you didn’t grow tomatoes or potatoes last year. Rotating your crops every year helps cut down on disease problems. Great soil is a must for growing tomatoes, so plan to amend the site with compost and peat moss.

Add 2" to 3" of compost and peat and dig it in to your existing soil 6" to 8". Once the soil is amended, plant your tomatoes on their sides in a trench, not straight down in a hole. This method keeps your roots closer to the surface. They will develop more roots and the roots will stay warmer through the course of the growing season. Warmer roots will give you more tomatoes.

Start by removing the lower leaves from the plant. Next, dig a trench deep enough to hold your tomato plant. 

Add some tomato fertilizer such as

Espoma Tomato-tone or

Happy Frog Tomato and Vegetable to the bottom of the trench. These fertilizers feed your tomatoes and they add calcium and magnesium. Plus, they contain mycorrhizae, beneficial fungui which will help your tomato roots grow bigger roots and take up nutrients more efficiently.  

Place your tomato plant in the trench and add enough soil to bury the stem. When you get to the top of the tomato, gently build up the soil until the top of the tomato is upright. Now that your tomato is planted, give it a good drink.  Your tomato plants need to be watered deeply and regularly through the growing season. Not watering consistently can lead to many problems including

Blossom End Rot and cracking. Watering inconsistently can also cause the flowers to drop and the fruit not to set. Avoid watering your tomato plants overhead. Irrigate at the base of the plant.

Staking is important because it keeps your plant upright which allows even exposure to sunlight and helps produce more fruit. As your plant grows, pinch off any suckers that form in the crotch of two branches. They won’t produce fruit and they take away energy from the plant. Go easy on pruning the rest of the plant. Removing too many leaves can damage your fruit due to sunburn.

Apply some dusting sulfur. It’s organic and will help control disease and ward off insects. Lightly dust the leaves and the soil around the plant.

Other supplements include Blossom Set to help your plant set fruit and Calcium.

Calcium is available in concentrate and ready to use sprays. Calcium will help reduce the fruit ripen more evenly and help reduce Blossom End Rot problems. Doing these things now and through the course of the growing season will help you grow better tomatoes.  

Get them ready for the real world

 

It’s important to take your time when it comes to moving your new seedlings to the great outdoors. This applies whether you grew your own vegetables and flowers from seed or bought them from a greenhouse. Moving your plants from the house or greenhouse directly into the garden without giving them time to adjust will mean you'll lose most, if not all of them.  At the very least, you’ll set the plants back weeks due to transplant shock. This slow transition from indoors to the outside is called “hardening off”. Hardening off plants gradually exposes them to outdoor light, wind and temperatures. The process is easy, but it takes time. In fact, you should plan on a week or so to get your immature plants ready to transplant into the garden. 

On the first day, pick a sheltered, shady spot under a tree or on the patio and leave them there for 3 or 4 hours. Bring them in that night. The second day, leave them out 5 or 6 hours, the third day 6 or 7 hours.

On the fourth day, set your plants in a place where they will receive morning sun. Morning sun is not as harsh as afternoon sun. This will help your plants adjust to direct sunlight. Gradually increase sunlight exposure over the next few days. After 7 or 8 days, your plants should be ready for the outdoors. Even then, you'll want to keep an eye on the forecast. The average last day of frost is May 10, but this can vary greatly. Be prepared to bring your plants back in if the night time temperatures fall.

Products like Wall-O’-Water will protect your plants into the low 30°’s. N-sulate is a frost blanket that will help protect your plants at night.

If plants are small enough, throw a box or bucket over them to keep the frost off. Make sure you keep your plants watered during this hardening off process. Being outside means they will dry out faster, so keep an eye on the watering. Finally, when you’re ready to plant, pick a cloudy day. This will help your plants make the transition from container to the garden even easier.