When Planting Tomatoes
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If you buy transplants or start seeds indoor early, your plants will get a better start in the garden when warm weather finally arrives, and it will save you several weeks in growing time. If you transplant your tomatoes when there is still a high risk of damage from freezing, be prepared to cover early set plants overnight to protect them from frost. For best results with minimal risk, you should plant when the soil is warm, soon after the frost-free date for your area.
Care
Planting tomatoes needs a starter fertilizer when transplanting. Hoe or cultivate shallowly to keep down weeds without damaging roots. Mulching is recommended, especially if you wish to maintain your plants for full season harvest.Water the plants thoroughly and regularly during prolonged dry periods. Plants confined in containers may need daily or even more frequent watering.
Training Your Tomato Plants
Many gardeners train their tomato plants to stakes, trellises or cages with great success.
Hundreds of varieties
are now available for the home gardener. Choose a variety suitable for staking and pruning. Tomato cages may be made from concrete-reinforcing wire, woven-wire stock fencing or various wooden designs. Choose wire or wooden designs that have holes large enough to allow fruit to be picked and removed without bruising it. Some tomato plants can grow to 3 to 4 feet tall and some can even reach 6 feet in height later in the season. Use cages that match in height the tomato plants in your garden and firmly anchor them to the ground with stakes or steel posts to keep the fruit-laden plants from uprooting themselves in late summer windstorms.
Trellis-Weave System
These have recently been developed for commercial operations and can work just as well when planting tomatoes in your garden. Tall stakes are securely driven into the tomato row about every two or three plants. Use stakes tall enough to accommodate the growth of your tomato varieties and make sure they are driven very securely into the ground to prevent wind damage. (The woven rows of tomatoes can catch much wind.) As the tomatoes grow upward, strings are attached to the end posts and woven back and forth between the supports, holding the tops of the plants up and off the ground. The fruit is held off the ground as with staked or caged plants; but the foliage cover is better than with staked plants, and the fruit is more accessible than with cages.
Harvesting
Tomatoes are of highest quality when they ripen on healthy vines and where daily summer temperatures average about 75°F. Air temperatures of 90°F or more will reduce the quality of the fruit. For this reason, during hot summer weather, pick your tomatoes every day or two, and harvest the fruits when color has started to develop. You can then ripen them further indoors (at 70 to 75°F).On the day before a killing freeze is expected, harvest all green mature fruit for later use in the fall. Wrap the tomatoes individually in paper and store at 60 to 65°F. They continue to ripen slowly over the next several weeks. Whole plants may be uprooted and hung in sheltered locations, where fruit continues to ripen. This will let you enjoy your tomatoes several weeks after the gardening season is over.
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