Tomatoes

Growing Tomatoes

Tomato plants transplant very well, as long as they receive enough sunshine, water and heat.

Tomatoes must be started indoors where I am at, with only a maximum of 100 days of growing, we can start them indoors as early as 8 weeks before the first frost. This will give me an effective growing season of 160 days. Tomatoes need the time.

Spring Planting

Starting seeds
Seeds are usually started by sprinkling on a sterile soil mix in a solid pan/plate/container. Then after the first true leaves appear, they are gently plucked out of the soil and replanted separately into individual containers. Then its just a matter of watering and giving them light and heat to grow until the frost is gone.

Once the new seedlings are 4-6 inches, replant them deeper into the pot up to the first set of true leaves. The tiny hairs on the stem will form new roots and will make for a much more rigorous plant. This can be done a couple of times during the seedling phase to make for a very healthy plant.

Pollock Tomato Seedling. with fine hairs.

Transplants
Once tomatoes are ready to transplant, and once the risk of frost (2 weeks after last frost day) is gone and temperatures will support the tomatoes, its time to transplant.

Transplant by first digging a trench where you want the tomato plant to grow equal or a little longer than the tomato root bundle. Tomato plants are best planted horizontal or laying down. Once they are laying in the trenches, mound them with dirt. This allows for any buried stalk to form roots, as well as the entire root ball to form larger anchoring roots. It may look funny having your tomatoes laying down however they will very quickly turn up to get the best sunning angle. I have never grown a tomato without transplanting horizontally.

Square foot gardening rules calls for one tomato plant per 4 square feet. I think that value is based on a warm climate where the plants will meet their 1m-3m optimal size, however here they are lucky to break a meter in height. Here I grow them one per foot, which seems to be about the optimal use of space where I live.

Cherry tomatoes, which tend to vine aggressively, may need more space or, as I do, aggressive clipping and tying to a vertical support.

Summer 

Here in the north, with a limited growing season, the main technique for getting tomatoes to vine ripen is pruning, pruning and more pruning. As the plants grow they shoot off main leaf branches, then between the main leaf branch and stem they produce sucker branches. Typically these will just take energy away from producing the fruit. I remove them as soon as I find them which allows as much energy into fruit production as possible.

Once you start pruning you have to make sure the plant is supported (cage, stake, netting) as they will become top heavy.

When the first flower pods appear, its usually safe to prune out all the branches below the flowering branch – this can be done gradually if you are worried about to few leaves all together. Pruning below the flowers promotes them to grow more which, now that they are flowering, will also have a higher percentage of flower branches. They will at times almost look like little palm trees. In addition lower branches will naturally turn yellow with age and these as well can be pruned out.

The last major prune occurs about a month before first frost date. Since at this time you want full energy into ripening fruit, pruning the apex bud (point where tomato plant grows vertically) thereby halting vertical growth of the plant. At this time you can also thin out the main leaves. All additional new flowering branches should also be clipped as they will not have a chance to ripen. Unless of course you want small green tomatoes. So now you should have a nice thinned out tomato plant with some nice fruit ripening.

Harvesting

In my opinion, the stress of all that pruning actually promotes the ripening off of tomatoes in a survival effort. Like using the plants own biological need for reproduction to drive the fruit ripening. The final step is of course a final pruning of the tomato plant. This final pruning occurs about 2 weeks before last frost date (or sooner if need be). Simply take a knife or small garden spade and prune the roots on one side of the tomato plant.

If you’ve planted the plants horizontally, simply visualize where the main root is underground. About 1 – 2 inches from where it is, sink the knife/spade parallel to along the length of the root; This effectively severs the side roots on one entire side of the main root. This will stress the plant but not kill it. This stress however seems to tell the plant to put as much energy as possible into ripening, and they do. I’ve always had problems with green tomatoes at the end of the season until I started the heavy pruning and with the edition of root pruning i can actually time when they will all ripen. Root pruned plants seem to take 1 to 2 weeks to ripen off however I’ve noticed a difference in a couple of days.