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We are going to discuss how to grow tomatoes the easy way because tomato season is right around the corner.
Ahhhh the tomato. What a wonderful and healthy crop to incorporate into our natural gardens. The amount you grow and the variety you choose will come down to what you plan to do with your tomatoes and the space you have available. This is one thing we highly recommend you do before planning your garden. Decide what your family eats and how you are going to use that crop. For our family, we grow tomatoes primarily to preserve for sauce. And we grow enough to take us all the way through until the next tomato season.
We do incorporate a few plants for slicers/larger varieties. In this article, we will discuss the differences between indeterminant tomatoes and determinant tomatoes, different ways to trellis your tomatoes, soil preparations with amendments that tomatoes love, and some companion plants that will help with the flavor of your tomatoes plus help with disease and pest pressure.
So let’s dive in and get grooving!
Table of Contents
- Indeterminant Tomatoes
- Determinate Tomatoes
- Trellising
- When To Plant Your Tomatoes
- How To Properly Plant Tomatoes
- Tomato companions
Indeterminant Tomatoes
Indeterminate tomatoes are a type that keeps growing and producing fruit until the weather gets cooler. They grow very tall, so it’s important to give them support, like a trellis. Don’t worry, we will touch on a few ways to provide much needed support for your plants later. Putting in a bit of effort at the beginning will help you grow lots of tomatoes for many seasons.
If you want to learn more about different ways to support your tomatoes, let us know in the comments, and we can talk about what might work best for you.
Determinate Tomatoes
Determinate tomatoes, on the other hand, usually produce fruit just once. Sometimes you might get a second round of fruit, depending on the type and growing conditions. There are good and bad things about growing determinate tomatoes.
They’re great for growing in containers because they’re shorter and bushier. You’ll need to prune them differently from indeterminate tomatoes. If you plan to preserve all your tomatoes, determinate ones might be better because they give you a lot of ripe tomatoes all at once.
If you have a small patio or yard, determinate tomatoes might be the best choice for you. They grow well in containers and take up less space. Indeterminate tomatoes do better in the ground or in raised beds where you have room for them to grow tall with support. Providing support for your indeterminate tomatoes isn’t as hard as you might think.
I like indeterminate tomatoes because I enjoy picking fresh fruit all season, and we have space to plant them in the ground. We mainly grow enough tomatoes to make sauce to last us the entire off season.
Trellising
Let’s go over some different ways we can provide a simple trellis for your indeterminant tomatoes. There are so many ways when you use some creativity but, I will just go over a few options.
Tomato Cages
This part won’t take long to go over. Do not use them. They are too short and are not strong enough to hold up plants. Especially when they are loaded with fruit. Your plants will quickly outgrow these cages and then you will have to come up with plan b. This can be a P.I.T.A. when the plant is large and mature.
Hog Panels
Hog panels can be found at Tractor Supply or local farm and feed stores. This is one of the easiest ways to support your tomato plants. Simply pound in some T-posts along the length of your garden bed.
Then stand the hog panel up on its side against the supporting t-posts. It’s a lot easier if you have someone to help hold up the panel while you sink some T-posts. Now simply secure the panel to the posts with wire, zip ties, or t-post steel fence clips. Plant the tomatoes near the panels, and fasten them to the panels as they grow.
Lower and Lean
This method will take a bit more elbow grease. That can be an article all on its own, let us know in the comments if you’d like more detail. I really loved this approach but, like I said, requires some elbow grease. I am all about, the easier the better approach.
Florida Weave
Ah the Florida Weave. I loved the idea the first time I tried it. But, that was the first AND last time I used it. The Florida Weave is simply some t-post in the ground lined up and spaced out. Then, running some tomato string. Once your plants are in place, you simply weave the string down the line through the plants.
This requires a small amount of time to setup. This is a great design, in theory. However, if you don’t stay on top of this while the plant is growing, and they grow fast, you end up with a lot of work to catch up to the height of the plant. This can be a real pain depending on how many plants you have. I had about 55 plants and I waited too long in-between running the string between plants.
So, as you can imagine, I was huffing and puffing running this line through tall, bushy tomato plants.
Stringing Tomatoes
This is my preferred method so far. Pound some t-posts, I like to use 7 or 8 foot long posts. In this case my friends, bigger is better. Using longer posts will give your tomatoes more height to grow. Put one at the beginning of your bed and at the end. Depending on the length of your beds, you may need to add some more in the middle.
Checkout the Josh Sattin Farming video on YouTube. “A Trellis to Make You Jealous”. This is where I learned this trellis approach. And let me tell you, this is the one I will be using until I feel like another one is better. But, this approach fits the bill for me.
When To Plant Your Tomatoes
Two ways to determine whether or not your tomatoes are ready to be planted outside:
- They have two sets of true leaves.
- They have been hardened off properly. See our previous post about how to properly harden off seedlings and to learn how to identify true leaves.
Now that we have security measures handled, let’s get into…
How To Properly Plant Tomatoes
Ohhhhh here we go…..
So many schools of thought here. Put a fish head in the planting hole. Put some banana peels in the hole. Put egg shells in the hole. Put a raw egg in. Epsom salts etc. Many swear by their methods, and they may work but, I will just share what I do.
Dig a hole
The Secret is digging a deep enough hole so that the full length of the stem is buried up to the lowest leaves. We do this because roots will grow along the length of the stem. Last season, I started my seeds too early.
By the time the weather said it was safe to transplant into the ground, they were about a foot tall. I had to dig down about 7 inches to get the proper depth. Doesn’t sound like too big of a deal eh? But, I had 55 plants to plant, soooooo.
Add amendments
Adding amendments into the planting hole can be helpful to the health of your plant. I like to add Bone Meal, Blood Meal, epsom salt, Green Sand (this is not beach sand or play sand dyed green), Plant Tone, Tomato Tone, pulverized egg shells, pulverized dehydrated banana peels. Do I really have to buy all these just for one tomato plant. No you do not.
This is just the way I have been doing it for years and have great results every time. I also never feel the need to fertilize throughout the season. However, when I refresh a garden bed before planting a crop, I also add amendments to the whole bed during this stage. Check out our post on setting up fresh beds for more details.
Also, some think that egg shells are a quick fix. This is not correct. Think of egg shells as a very slow release amendment. Some simply crush up the shells, throw them in the hole and then wonder why their tomato plants are showing signs of calcium deficiency. Well, this is why we pulverize our egg shells creating more surface area which in turn will be absorbed by the plant faster.
Why banana peels? I don’t even eat bananas. Now I have to buy bananas that I wont eat just for the peels.
No. We eat and freeze a lot of bananas. And we know what a great fertilizer the peels can offer. Many will just throw the whole peels in. Remember, surface area. Although banana peels will become available to plant in less time than egg shells, I prefer to dehydrated them in the oven or freeze dry them and then pulverize in the blender making a powder.
Add, just short of a full handful, of each amendment and a handful of compost and mix it all together. I do tend to add a couple of handfuls of pulverized egg shells and banana peels because I have worked hard all year saving them for this very moment.
Time To Plant
After all the hard work you have done, it is finally time to plant that tomato. This part is pretty simple unless you forgot to make sure your hole was deep enough in the beginning. Now place the plant in the hole and add some of the native soil with some good compost and firm in, meaning slightly press down.
Don’t forget to water it in well and add a good layer of mulch on top. Tomatoes don’t do well with wet leaves from watering. So, be careful to water down below and not from up above. Mulching will prevent water from splashing up on the leaves and will also add the many benefits of mulching.
Tomato companions
There are many different companion plants that will benefit tomato plants. Last season I used Marigolds and basil. I planted marigolds along the whole length of the beds and on both sides and basil in between the tomatoes.
One thing I saw was that the abundance of Japanese beetles that came through, were covering the marigolds and not the tomatoes. Another thing, and this may have been out of sheer luck, is I rarely found tomato horn worms. This is unheard of. If you grow tomatoes, you are almost guaranteed to see hornworms.
This may seem like a lot of work. But, to me, if I put in a little extra effort in the beginning I end up with greater results and less work throughout the life of the plant. Great results never come from cutting corners and laziness. If you are naturally lazy and impatient, gardening can be your best therapist.
If you are looking to buy tomato seeds to get started we highly recommend buying seeds from Peaceful Valley at groworganic.com. We always get 100% germination rate with this company. Our favorite variety for making and preserving sauce is amish paste. San Marzano variety is also another great choice for making sauce.
Cheers to free therapy and big beautiful delicious tomatoes.
Until next time…
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