Everything You Wanted To Know About Tomato Plant Care

So when it comes to tomato plant care, there are several things we need to understand right from the get-go. The first is that tomatoes are mostly water - so you have to keep them well-watered or you'll pay the price. The biggest price is a sunken, blackened spot on the bottom of what looks to be a ripe tomato (this problem is called Blossom End Rot) When you restrict the water, the amount of calcium going to the fruit is restricted and this problem happens. Many gardeners think the "cure" is to add calcium to the soil when in fact, the remedy is much simpler - make sure there's adequate water all summer long.

The second is that feeding is important because this plant is a greedy feeder. Doug's first rule of gardening is you only have to feed your plants if you want flowers, fruit or lots of green leaves. I use a weekly dose of fish emulsion on mine but you can add any form of organic fertilizer available in your area.

The third is that temperature is critical because too cool or too hot temperatures create problems. For example, even if you water adequately but it's cold when the blossom is being pollinated, you can easily wind up with blossom end rot. Yes, temperature is also a cause of this problem and that's why we often see it on the first fruit set and not subsequent fruit sets. Cool temperatures created this problem.

Here are the main topics under discussion

Click on the links below to see the information and add your questions and comments.

Tomatoes from the Compost Pile
My compost pile sprouts more seeds than I start indoors, can I use them? In a word, technically “yes”. As long as you have enough time to obtain a …

Epsom Salts and Tomatoes
I’ve read about using Epsom salts, but you don’t mention it. Why? Epsom salts are simply Magnesium sulfate. If your soil is deficient in magnesium, …

Four Tomato Care Questions
Here are four tomato care questions you folks asked. And here are my answers. :-) Can I dig up my tomato plant and move it indoors? Or can I grow …

Tomato Problems
While not a fully comprehensive list of problems and their solutions, this series of charts will start you (using simple diagnostics) on the course to …

Black Rotting Bottoms on Tomatoes
Blossom End Rot is a rotting and blackening of the end of the tomato just as it starts to ripen. The top of the fruit looks fine but the bottom is black …

What Do You Want to Know About Tomato Care?
Here's the main starting page - feel free to ask your tomato plant care questions in the comment sections below. One question per comment box please …

Special Tomato Fertilizer
What about special tomato food or putting some extra food in the hole? Fertilizer is fertilizer. Putting a tomato picture on the box doesn’t make it …

Avoiding Tall Spindly Plants
If you want plants that grow well in your area - or heirlooms or anything other than the generic plants sold by the big box stores and most garden centers, …

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New Articles

May 18, 2013

A LOT of Plant Reviews Coming

Friends - in the next week, I'll be adding upwards of 25 new posts about review plants in the garden. So you'll get a lot of email updates about them - my apologies. What I do is post how-to-grow information about each plant - and then as the season and trials get underway, I make ongoing notes about them.

This system also allows you to comment on these plants if you've grown them or are growing them. It becomes a review partnership between us all to get the best sense of these new plants.

And as they bloom and grow, I'll be adding pics to each post.

This is the best way I can devise for getting good info about each plant to you as I see it happening. But it does mean a ton of email over the next week or so as I add them to the garden.

Thanks for your patience - let the planting begin. :-)

Continue reading "A LOT of Plant Reviews Coming"