Tomatoes often start people on their vegetable gardening journeys! While this gardening staple is often regarded as an entry-level plant, it’s oftentimes more complicated than we initially think to grow the juiciest, most flavourful tomatoes. Whether you’re growing in pots on your patio or in-ground in garden beds, there are several tips and tricks for encouraging your plants to produce the best tomatoes.
To help you have a successful gardening season, continue reading to learn our tips on how to grow the best tomatoes!
Choose the Right Variety for Your Growing Conditions
A key component of growing the best tomatoes begins before seeds ever touch the soil!
Choosing the right variety of tomatoes for your growing conditions is a great way to set your garden up for success. This also includes choosing the right tomatoes for how you intend to use them in your kitchen. Whether you’re looking for snacking tomatoes, tomatoes for slicing on sandwiches, or making pasta sauce, you’ll want to choose the tomato that will grow to serve your desired intention of how you want to use it.
Our friendly garden experts at Urban Roots Garden Market are here to help you choose the right varieties of tomatoes that work in your local growing conditions. Find the garden centre in your neighbourhood here.
Choose the Right Variety for Your Growing Conditions
A key component of growing the best tomatoes begins before seeds ever touch the soil!
Choosing the right variety of tomatoes for your growing conditions is a great way to set your garden up for success. This also includes choosing the right tomatoes for how you intend to use them in your kitchen. Whether you’re looking for snacking tomatoes, tomatoes for slicing on sandwiches, or making pasta sauce, you’ll want to choose the tomato that will grow to serve your desired intention of how you want to use it.
Our friendly garden experts at Urban Roots Garden Market are here to help you choose the right varieties of tomatoes
Seedling Support
After you’ve chosen your desired varieties of tomatoes, it’s time to nurture your seeds! If you’re starting your tomatoes from seeds, there are a few best practices that will help you grow the best tomatoes.
When it comes to setting your seedlings up for success, here are a few things you can do:
- Provide enough light when growing indoors: Unless you’re growing in a greenhouse, you’re most likely nurturing your tomato seedlings in your home under a grow light. During the shorter winter months when you’re starting your seedlings, make sure they’re receiving 14-18 hours of artificial plant lighting every day.
- Create an indoor breeze with a fan: Tomatoes need help developing strong stems, which can be done by turning a fan on them twice a day for 5-10 minutes at a time. This will help them be prepared to handle their growing conditions once they’re outdoors.
- Give each seedling enough room: Once your seedlings have sprouted, you’ll want to make sure that each one has enough room to grow. If you’re growing your seedlings in small starter pots, choose the strongest seedling in each pot and snip the rest. This means that your plants won’t be overcrowded or fighting for resources.
Starting your tomatoes from seed can be an extra rewarding but complicated component of this process. But, with a few intentional caretaking steps, you can be on your way to growing the best tomatoes!
Create Stronger Stems when Planting Your Tomatoes
Whether you started your tomatoes from seed or bought seedlings from your local garden centre, there is a particular way you can plant them that will create stronger stems. When planting your starter tomato plants, bury the stems several centimeters beneath the soil. This will encourage the plant to push out roots along the stem, which will create a strong base to support the heavy fruit it will produce.
Ideal Growing Conditions for Tomatoes
After you’ve done the hard work of sprouting and planting your tomatoes, there’s still more work to be done to help them produce the best fruit! In order to grow the best tomatoes, they need to be given their ideal growing conditions.
Ideal growing conditions for tomatoes include:
- 6-8 hours of full sun every day
- A cage, stake, or trellis to support their growth
- Consistently moistened soil- tomatoes do not like to dry out!
- Enough room to grow (check their tag for the recommended spacing)
Understanding what growing conditions your tomatoes will thrive in will help you set your plants up for success.
Properly Prune Your Tomatoes
Beyond providing tomatoes with their ideal growing conditions, they also love a good pruning!
One of the first tips for pruning your tomatoes is removing the lower leaves as the plant matures. Once your tomato plant has established healthy growth, remove the lower levels of leaves that are closest to the soil. These leaves are the older leaves on the plant, and they’re the most susceptible to soil-born illnesses from splashing when watering. This also ensures that the plant will receive a healthy amount of airflow and sunlight to its highest producing places.
The second tip for pruning your tomatoes is to remove the suckers and thin out the branches. Suckers won’t produce fruit, so this ensures that the remaining strong branches will receive enough air and sunlight in order to produce fruit. Unneeded leaves and branches are eliminated, meaning they won’t be sucking up much-needed resources from the rest of the fruit-producing plant.
Learning How to Grow the Best Tomatoes with Urban Roots Garden Market
From choosing the right plants to understanding the ideal growing conditions, our friendly staff at Urban Roots Garden Market is here to help you have a successful gardening season! From educational events to a wide variety of plants, find the garden centre in your neighbourhood here.
