5 Tips for MORE Tomatoes, Not Just More Tomato Plants
Posted March 08, 2024
Looking for more tomatoes and not just tomato plants? Here are 5 tips to get your tomatoes off to a good start!
- Don't plant tomatoes out to soon. Soil temperatures should be 60° or warmer. Cooler soil temperatures will cause the tomato plants to just sit there until temperatures do warm up. If in the cool ground to long, they will stress and not get a healthy start. Soil thermometers are inexpensive and a great way to hone in on the right time to plant.
- Use a well balanced fertilizer to get your tomatoes off to a good start and don't use a high nitrogen fertilizer during the growing season. Nitrogen is important, but to much later in the season will cause all leaf green and little bud set.
- Save your eggshells and pulverize them when they are dry. Eggshells are loaded with calcium and tomatoes need calcium to be able to uptake nutrients. Calcium also helps control blossom end rot. A great substitute for eggshells is oyster shell. Oyster shell should be ground when adding to the soil so the microbes can break it down in time for the plants to uptake it this year. Add 1 tablespoon of either eggshell or oyster shell to the planting hole at planting time.
- Plant pollinator friendly plants in the garden to encourage beneficial insects. A diverse landscape is a healthy landscape. Nasturtiums are a great defense against beet leaf hopper that causes curly leaf virus and borage helps repel the tomato horn worm.
- Planting a cover crop of hairy vetch before planting tomatoes increase plants resistance to soil borne pathogens and increases yields. Sow seeds 6-8 weeks before planting out tomatoes. Once the plant reaches 6-12" tall, chop, drop, and turn under the soil once the foliage of hairy vetch has dried.
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