How to Grow Better Tomatoes
2010 Version
By: Cynthia Sandberg
Tomatoes are the number one edible plant people grow in their yards. Unfortunately, many people think you just plop a plant in the ground and with water it will grow. If you’re really lucky, and the planets and stars are in alignment, then this may be true. That unusual occurrence doesn’t duplicate itself, because tomatoes will deplete the soil of nutrients pretty quickly. I wouldn’t risk just winging it if this is your first year growing, as you can do a lot to ensure you get a fabulous and healthy tomato garden. If you weren’t born with a green thumb, however, don’t despair. With just a bit of knowledge and perseverance, you can have loads of wonderful tomatoes.
TOP 10 DO'S
1. Choose the right type of tomato for your growing conditions.
Every garden, even if right next door to each other, may have differing needs. Your tomato might get less hours of sunlight than your neighbor across the street because of a tree shading part of your garden. You may not be able to grow a large tomato if you are too close to the ocean and get a lot of coastal fog. You might have to wait later to plant your tomatoes if you are at a higher elevation (even a slight elevation can make a difference). You may only be able to grow a tomato in a container on your deck because you don't have any ground to grow in.
The good news, however, is that there are varieties of tomatoes for all growing conditions. Tomatoes, particularly heirlooms, come in all sizes: cherry, small, medium, and large. One of the things I was surprised to find out when I started talking to a lot of customers about tomatoes, is that many people think that tomatoes are either cherry-sized or big, no in-betweens or different shapes.
If you are lucky enough to be able to plant your tomatoes where they will get 6 or more hours of direct sunlight, then you should be able to grow a big tomato. With less than 6 hours (or in coastal areas) choose medium to smaller-fruited tomato varieties. Some good medium ones are Nyagous, Stupice, Bloody Butcher, Green Zebra, Northern Lights, Siletz, Julia Child, Black Prince, Jet Star, Jetsetter, Golden Jubilee and many others. The colors of these run the gamut from red, yellow, orange, bi-color, purple, pink, and black.
Some good small and cherry-sized tomatoes are Sungold, Rosalita, Black Cherry, Blondkopfchen, Black Plum, Yellow Pear, White Cherry, Black Ethiopian, Matina, and Jaune Flamme. Cherries also come in all shapes as well: pear, plum, grape, and round.
Large tomato varieties include Purple Dogcreek, Henderson's Pink Ponderosa, Marvel Stripe, Cherokee Purple, TC Jones, Pederson's Beefsteak, German Red Strawberry, Green Giant, and Texas Star. There are many more examples of fine tomato varieties than those above, but these are some of my personal favorites.
Although many of you yearn to grow a gigantic tomato, you just may have to admit that your growing conditions cannot handle it. Learn to love smaller fruited varieties. Some of my customers swear that they are tastiest, anyway!
For those who only have space for one small plant on an apartment balcony in a pot, try a dwarf variety or a cherry tomato. Pots should be at least 15 gallons (or a half wine barrel will do nicely), and use only the very best potting soil (I like Sunland Organic Potting Soil found at Mt. Feed in Ben Lomond). You may need to water pots every single day when it's warm and fertilize once a week if you grow in a pot. We fertilize all our plants with a tea we easily make out of Worm Castings. We sell those here at the farm, and they are an excellent deal. Plants in pots cannot search out moisture and food, you have to be their sole provider. So if you must grow in a pot, do it right!
Please don't limit yourself just to those varieties listed above. If you can't find those specific ones, just read the descriptions of varieties and choose which type you want to grow: small, medium or large (and if you have all day sun, you can grow all three!).
2. Try something different.
There are thousands of varieties of hybrid and heirloom tomato varieties, in “normal” colors like red, yellow, and orange. Then there are “kooky” colors such as black, purple, pink, bi-color, green, and white. There are also different shapes than the standard round tomato. Also available are pear, plum, heart-shaped (called “ox-hearts”), ruffled, and elongated.
Why not try something that none of your neighbors have, or something that opens your eyes to a wonderful new taste sensation? How about showing off a Japanese Black Trifele, Marmande Vert, Chocolate Vintage or Hippy Zebra? Don’t turn your nose up at different-colored tomatoes thinking you won’t like them as much. Many blind taste tests are won by non-normal tomato colors. Each of the tomato colors seems to have different flavors - all delicious. I know many people who swear the tastiest tomatoes are white or green. I brought a basket of different colored tomatoes to a taste test one season, and the white beefsteak beat out all of the other colors that day. Who knew?! Green Giant, a big green-when-ripe tomato, won a few national taste tests recently, and has set the tomato world buzzing.
I also love collecting tomato seeds from all over the world. I've had customers bring in seeds from Australia, South Africa, Greece, France, Croatia, Russia and Italy. It seems the love for tomatoes is worldwide, and every region has favorites. Finding out which favorite is grown in Japan, and why they consider it special, is part of the fun of heirloom tomato gardening.
On a more somber note, many wonderful old heritage or heirloom types of tomatoes are being lost forever due to non-use, merely because people are limiting themselves to what is most popular. Seek out small nurseries, seed exchange groups such as www.seedsavers.org, or maybe ask your Auntie or Grandpa to share some seeds of their favorite old variety with you. If none of your relatives have seeds, why not ask the nice old lady down the street with that fabulous vegetable garden in her backyard? I bet she's got some favorite seeds she'd love to share, along with lots of tomato growing advice from years of experience.
3. Choose the sunniest spot.
Tomatoes thrive on sun. It will be almost impossible to grow your tomatoes in the shade, or with less than 3 hours of direct sunlight. Even with up to 5 hours of sunlight, it may only be worthwhile to grow medium, small or cherry tomatoes. If you have 5 or more hours of sunlight, you should be able to grow a large tomato.
Unwittingly, some people plant their tomatoes up against a solid fence, which serves the nefarious purpose of blocking out several hours of precious sunlight in the morning or afternoon. If you’re serious about growing tomatoes, you might need to trim some trees, take out that pesky eucalyptus or acacia, or even cut out a space right smack dab in the middle of your lawn to get the maximum amount of sunlight. Hey, make your edible garden the spotlight of your backyard!
I have also seen people cut out strategic sections of solid fences and replace with wire fencing in order to receive more sunlight on their vegetable patch. We call this "stealing" sunlight from your neighbor. Don’t be timid about losing some privacy. My neighbor loves to look through the wire fencing at my tomato patch and imagines that it’s his (he told me so). Opening up our closed spaces can also have the happy effect of making a friend out of someone you may have barely known before.
4. Soil health is key.
Starting with great soil is one of the biggest factors in growing a healthy tomato. Would you start out your new puppy on fries and peanut brittle? Of course not. You need to figure out beforehand how healthy your soil is. In a perfect world, you would get a soil test a couple of months or more before you plan on planting. I like to get my soil tests done at www.timberleafsoiltesting.com or at A & L Western Laboratories in Modesto, CA. Once you know in what nutrients your soil is deficient, be it nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, organic matter, or a myriad of other important micronutrients, you can amend it in order to bring it up to snuff.
So let's get your soil up to snuff: I like to advise gardeners to add a healthy layer (2 to 4 inches) of aged horse manure to their tomato beds in December or January. This only works if you don't have a winter vegetable garden taking up all the space! You can get free or very cheap horse manure at most local stables (check your phone book under "stables"). If you don't have a pick up truck, you can bring several or more disinfected trashcans for hauling.
At the same time as you put down the manure, sprinkle some humic acid, such as John & Bob’s Soil Optimizer, following label directions, on your beds. If you have your own compost, mix a couple of inches of that in too. I'm not a big advocate of purchased compost, unless it is Sunland brand organic compost. A few bags of that in a 50 square foot bed would be fabulous.
Another amendment I like to use is worm castings, and a little of this goes a long way. It's a bit pricey in the nurseries, but some say its worth it's weight in gold. We sell worm castings at Love Apple Farms, or you can get them plus all the other amendments listed in this booklet at Mountain Feed and Farm in Ben Lomond. Otherwise, seek them out at a good local nursery.
Once all your amendments are on top of the soil, turn them over into the soil below. Since you're doing this in December or January, you don't need to spend much time mixing, because the winter rains and time will serve to drive the nutrients down into the soil below.
If your beds are going to be overflowing with all this new material, then you may need to remove some existing soil first in order to accommodate the 4 or 6 new inches of material.
If you haven't planned your soil amendments in advance, I would still recommend using everything above, but ensuring that you use well-aged horse manure instead (at least 9 months out of the horse), and only use half the recommended amount. The rest of my suggestions can still hold, but realize that it is not as optimal as doing this in the late fall or early winter, to allow for the leaching and composting effect I noted above.
5. Plant them using our famous planting hole directions.
Tomato plants want to be planted deep, so get at least two thirds of that stem under the ground. A lot of people are skeptical about it, but Sunset Magazine did a great experiment one year with a photo spread of two tomatoes, one planted deep and one planted at the same depth as its pot. Three months later, with the exact same care, the one planted deep was several feet taller than the other. This is because all of those tiny fuzzy hairs sticking out of the stem turn into roots once buried. The more roots there are, the better able the plant is able to uptake more nutrients. You can either dig a deep hole, or use the “trench” method, which works particularly well with long seedlings. Dig a narrow trench, about four or five inches deep, then lay the plant in sideways, bending the top up and out of the end of the trench. Make sure you water all along the length of the trench for a while, in order to get the root ball wet.
I add a lot of fabulous ingredients to each of my tomato planting holes to ensure they get lots of nutrition. First, we dig a two-foot deep hole. That's important! Because the thing we put at the bottom of the hole is a big fat fish head. Yes, a raw fish head. If the fish head is not two feet deep, then raccoons or dogs will dig it up. If you're unable to find fish heads (usually from a restaurant, butcher, or fish monger), then add two handfuls of fishmeal. Fish emulsion is not a good substitute, as it just washes away rather quickly. The fish head will slowly decompose over time and be an excellent source of both nitrogen and calcium. I then add two or three crushed chicken eggshells. We save eggshells all year long in a plastic garbage bag, so that when I plant out my tomatoes, there's plenty to go around. The value of eggshells is that it's a cheap, organic method of adding calcium to your soil. There is a nasty and fairly common ailment that bothers tomato fruits called "blossom end rot" or BER. If your tomato fruits have ever had their bottoms turn black, this is what you've got. It is caused by both calcium deficiency and inconsistent watering (water is the way that calcium is taken from the soil up into the tomato plant. If watering is withheld during a time when your plant needs it, then calcium is unable to get up into the plant). If your soil is calcium-deficient, then adding the fish head and eggshells will be a good start to correct it.
The other thing we add to ensure we don't get the dreaded BER is a good handful of bone meal. Bone meal is also high in phosphorus, which aids in both root formation and blossom production. The more flowers you get, the more fruit you get!
I also put two handfuls of a good dry, all-purpose organic fertilizer in the bottom of the hole. We use Sustane brand 4-6-4. There are others on the market as well. Make sure it's organic and that it is a dry fertilizer. "All-purpose" means that all three macronutrients are represented in similar quantities. The macronutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
A tablespoon of worm castings also goes into the hole. We then add several inches, or more, of garden soil to the hole as we gage how tall the tomato plant is that we are trying to bury 2/3s down. As we pop the seedling out of its pot, we'll sprinkle a quarter teaspoon of Root Zone on the root ball. Root Zone is a mychorrhizal fungae that attaches and spreads as the root ball develops, helping it ward off verticillium and fusarium wilts.
Another thing I recommend doing is to put two regular aspirin table a few inches into the soil about 6 or so inches away from your planted tomato seedling. Aspirin contains salicylic acid, which has been shown in recent years to boost yield (number of fruits per plant produced) and the immune system of tomatoes, making them more disease resistant. More on this later.
As far as spacing is concerned, at the time of planting, I see a lot of people crowding their tomato plants too close together, or too close to other plants. They see this tiny seedling, and don’t realize it will grow to six feet or taller, and just as wide if happy and well cared for. Crowding your tomato plants will backfire and give you less fruit, not more. Tomato plants also need a free flow of air around them to keep down foliar diseases, and crowding them will inhibit airflow.
You will also find it much easier to harvest the tomatoes if they are not locked together in an impenetrable thicket. I like to plant my tomatoes three feet apart, but if you just don’t have that much space, and you can’t control yourself, you might be able to get away with putting them two feet apart, but that is the bare minimum.
6. Stake them.
We like to call tomato plants “vines,” although technically they are not. They don’t cling naturally to a stake or other structure. It’s important, however, to keep the branches and fruit up off the ground. If you allow the tomato plants to sprawl all over willy nilly, then they are more susceptible to soil-borne diseases, and the fruits that are touching the ground will often end up ruined by either crawling insects or rot. Believe me on this one, it's important!
There are as many methods of staking as there are gardeners, it seems. The conical cages found at most nurseries simply do not do the trick for most types of tomatoes. If you are growing what are called “indeterminate” varieties (and most heirlooms are indeterminate), then that plant is going to get really big. You can use a single-pole method, which involves driving an eight-foot wooden or metal stake (such as bamboo or rebar) into the ground at the same time you are planting your seedling, then tying the plant to the stake as it grows. I don't really like this method, as it requires that you smush the branches together around the pole, thereby encouraging foliar diseases by lack of airflow. And if you prune off branches, my theory is that with less foliage, less photosynthesis takes place, and that is what is needed to sweeten the fruit.
A preferred method of staking among many experienced gardeners is to build your own cages out of concrete reinforcing wire. It’s available at most big lumberyards and home improvement stores in rolls of 5 feet tall by 50 feet long. We use the 7-foot tall wire for our tomatoes. Simply cut six foot lengths, attach them into a cylinder using either narrow gauge wire, or bend back and twist the cut ends together to secure. These cylindrical cages can then be placed over your plant (one per cage). Drive a six-foot length of rebar or bamboo two feet into the ground next to the cage, then tie the cage to the rebar at several intervals. As the tomato plant starts to grow out of the cage, gently push back the growing tips inside the cylinder, training the plant to grow up inside the cage.
7. Feed them.
Please feed your tomatoes an organic fertilizer every three weeks (every week if growing in a pot). I don’t like using synthetic fertilizers because they are not going to do anything to improve the health of your soil in the long run. I equate synthetics like Miracle Grow with fast food. Would you raise your child feeding them only McDonald’s hamburgers?
I particularly like using worm casting tea to fertilize with. It's simple to make: throw a handful of pure worm castings into a five-gallon bucket of water. Let "steep" for two days. Then use as it, or dilute it up to four times with water. It tends to settle to the bottom of the bucket, so stir it up before watering at the root zone.
An even better way to feed your tomatoes is by starting and maintaining a foliar feed regimen of strained worm casting tea along with aspirin. Get yourself a 2-gallon garden sprayer and add one and a half regular aspirin in the bottom. Put cheesecloth over the top and add 2 gallons of diluted worm casting tea. Spray this elixir once a week, but at least once every two weeks on the leaves in the morning. This mixture has been shown in agricultural university testing to do three valuable things: feed your plant, protect it from disease and protect it from pests.
8. Disease-control.
Tomato plants are susceptible to a host of different blights, wilts, and other aggravating diseases. It’s best to start off pro-actively, rather than waiting for your plant to show signs of disease. Starting off with healthy, fertile soil is the best disease control. Staking them is essential. Not watering the foliage, and spraying with the above mentioned aspirin and worm casting spray will also help keep down the diseases.
If your tomatoes have suffered diseases in the past, and you are at your wit’s end, try growing hybrids with the initials V, F, N, T or A after the name on the label. These initials mean that that variety is less likely to get a particular disease (V for verticillium wilt, F is for fusarium wilt, N is for nematodes, T is for tobacco mosaic virus (T) and A is for alternaria).
If you notice a gray or blackened patch at the bottom of your tomato fruits, this is called blossom end rot, and usually indicates a calcium deficiency. See the section 5 above for how to correct this. If you didn't do anything at the beginning of the season to add calcium to the soil, then you can do this at the first sign of blossom end rot. I recommend Foli-cal as the quickest way to correct low-calcium soils and prevent the rest of your season's crop from this quite common malady. There are other liquid calcium supplements, however, and some of them can be found at either good nurseries or at hydroponic grow stores.
If all else fails, and every year you are experiencing dying plants, then I recommend growing in pots. Make sure they are 15 gallons, one plant per pot, new Sunland organic potting soil each year, and disinfect them before use each year. If you place the pot on top of your infected soil, then make sure to put down a plastic barrier, like a tarp or clear plastic sheeting, between the bad soil and your pots (otherwise, the roots will grow out of the pot, into the bad soil, leach the wilt up into the pot, and you have the same old problem all over again!).
9. Protect them from varmints.
If you have pesky gophers, you MUST reduce their numbers, simply using a gopher cage around your root ball is not enough. A female gopher can have three or four litters each year, with 7 or 8 young per litter. Figure out the math on that, and you can see why gophers must be killed! Sorry, PETA people, but if you've ever seen a six foot tall prize Brandywine plant get literally sucked through a gopher hole a la Alice in Wonderland, after you've sweated blood trying to get your plant to its healthiest stage, you just might be tempted to use weapons of mass gopher destruction to save your crop.
The best gopher traps are called cinch traps, and can be found on line or at really good nurseries. Buy the cinch trap for moles (it’s the smaller version). The ones that say “for gophers” are for the larger gophers they have in other parts of the country, rather here in California.
For those of you who simply cannot stand to kill gophers, I'd recommend a professional gopher hunter, Thomas Wittman at (831) 336-2852. He has a website: www.gopherslimited.com. Another thing you can try is growing in containers (at least 15 gallon size). Only use premium potting soil for containers, yes it does make a difference!
Deer can be another problem. In my opinion, deer sprays are ineffectual, and you need to re-apply constantly. You need to fence off your plot, or use deer netting. The higher the better. A catalog company called Farmtek (find them on line at www.farmtek.com) has some good cheap deer fencing materials and information.
Opossums, squirrels raccoons, birds, and mice can also eat your tomatoes. You can trap the mammals with a Hav-a-Heart trap (available on line or at a really good nursery) and release them way out in the boonies, but the birds can be a real pain. Cats do a decent job of scaring them away, also try plenty of bird feeders, which will satiate their appetite and leave you to your tomatoes. Covering your vines with bird netting is a last resort, because then you will have to deal with the plant growing through the netting, making it difficult for you to harvest the fruit. I've heard of using an owl statue on top of a post to scare away birds. There is also a product on the market called "Terror Eyes," sold by an on line company called www.safehomeproducts.com. It's an inflatable orange ball with owl eyes on it, which has proven to scare away birds when dangling in your tomato patch. It costs about $50, but if you look at that website, you can probably figure out how to make your own out of a beach ball or yoga ball. I've seen vineyards use these types of owl eyeballs to deter birds from eating their grapes.
If your main varmint turns out to be the thievin' neighbor next door or in your community garden, try growing off-color tomatoes, such as pinks, greens, blacks and whites. Your neighbors won't know whey they're ripe, but you will,
since you'll know that those varieties are fully ripe when they yield to gentle pressure like an avocado.
Some of the worst varmints are bugs. I fight fire with fire. Since I grow organically, I use parasitic bugs (also called "beneficials" to get rid of the bad bugs). In my garden, the worst offenders are tomato fruit worms. These are not tomato hornworms, which can also be a problem. Tomato fruit worms can decimate your tomato crop. If you find tiny black specks on the top of your tomato fruit, then the worms aren't far behind. Once they hatch, they bore into the fruit surrounding the stem, causing the unripe tomato to fall to the ground. If you see small green worms, around one inch long and skinny, these are probably tomato fruit worms (also called cabbage loopers or corn silk worms).
The best organic method for controlling tomato fruit worms is to buy some parasitic wasps, called trichogramma wasps. Don't worry, all you receive are the eggs on a card, and when they hatch, they are too small to see. They're not like the big buzzing wasps you're used to. A website called www.planetnatural.com carries these as well as other beneficials.
If your tomato problem is white flies (tiny flies that become airborne when the plant is disturbed), then a nice beneficial insect to order through the mail is called whitefly parasite (Encarsia Formosa), also available through www.planetnatural.com. They also carry aphid predators and house fly predators.
I had an awful problem with houseflies last year due to a fresh manure delivery I had received. Once my order of fly parasites arrives, my house fly problem was eliminated within three weeks. The other nice thing about the house fly predator, called Muscidifurax zaraptor, Spanglia spp., is that I've heard some people swear that their apple crops no longer had bugs in them.
Mites are another problem that can attack tomato plants. Invisible to the naked eye, russet and spider mites can cause spotting and wilting of tomato leaves, often resulting in yellowed leaves and stunted plants. I like to have a 10x hand magnifier in my bag of tricks (my garden apron). Once I see these tiny spider-like creatures hanging out in the underside of my tomato leaves, I order a supply of predatory mites, called Phytoseiulus persimilis. Again, www.planetnatural.com is a good source for these.
You'll be amazed at how easy, cheap, and effective using beneficial insects are. You get the peace of mind in knowing that you're not infecting your precious tomato fruits (not to mention your precious children and pets) with harmful chemical pesticides. Once I started using beneficial insects, I quickly became a convert.
10. Save seeds.
If one or more of your tomato plants turn out extra fabulous, try saving the seed from one of your most luscious fruits. This only works, though, with heirloom varieties. Hybrids have two genetic parents; when you save the seed from a hybrid tomato, you are most likely to get a plant showing the characteristics of one of its two parents, not necessarily bearing any resemblance to the fruit you loved the season before. Seeds saved from heirloom varieties, however, usually grow true to type the next season.
If you continually save seeds from varieties that grow well in your garden, you may eventually, by localized adaptation to your specific environment, create your own strain of a particular variety. Different strains of probably the most popular heirloom variety, Brandywine, have been developed by astute gardeners who have identified extra productive, extra tasty or extra disease resistant offspring. Over the years, when these special offspring continued to produce the same unique traits, these savvy gardeners were able to claim and name their own strain, such as Sudduth's, OTV and Croatia. With this type of seed selection and saving, you can become that Auntie or Grandpa who hands down your own wonderful family heirloom variety of tomato to future generations. You might even be able to name it something completely different, like Aunt Gertie's Gold or Grandpa's Minnesota (both wonderful old heirloom tomatoes).
TOP FIVE DON'TS
1. Planting too early.
It seems to me that the more inexperienced the gardener, the sooner they want to put in their summer crops. Tomatoes need warm soil and warm weather to thrive and ward off diseases. In the California Bay Area, there are many microclimates, and the closer you get to sea level, the earlier you can get away with planting. Waiting until the soil warms up to 60 degrees is a good indicator (use an instant-read meat thermometer inserted into the soil at a depth of six inches to test it).
If you must go by a date, then not planting before April 1st is a good recommendation. If your garden still gets frost in April, like mine does, then wait until May 1st to plant.
Yes, sometimes it works to plant early, and the downside (buying another plant to replace an ailing one) isn't too onerous, but why spend good money and your precious time tending a plant that is unhappy in cold, damp soil and pounding rain? Just because you see tomato plants in the local nursery or your gung-ho neighbor has his plants in the ground, doesn't mean you are procrastinating. More experienced gardeners (we've all learned this the hard way) wait to plant tomatoes until the soil has sufficiently warmed up. Many times you can put in a tomato plant a good month after your too-early one, and find the later-planted seedling quickly catching up and surpassing the other deprived, stunted one you nursed along during a too-cold spring.
You can speed up the season by using raised beds (which warm up faster than ground-level beds) or you can place clear (not black) plastic on top of your growing area for about three weeks before your wished-for planting date. Be sure to fasten down the plastic with soil around the edges, or landscape staples. Once the soil is sufficiently warmed up, you can cut a foot wide hole in the plastic, and plant your tomato (using my planting method outlined above). You can keep the plastic on top of the soil the entire season, however, at some point, when the weather turns hot (like in mid June), you MUST cover the plastic with a mulch, otherwise it will overheat your soil and your plants will suffer. I like to use a straw mulch on top of the plastic, because it's attractive, cheap, and effective. You can buy a bale of straw (make sure it's not hay, there is a difference) from a local feed store (look in the yellow pages under "Feed").
If you just can't stop yourself from putting in your plants earlier than you should, I also recommend covering them up during the night with something like an inverted bucket, tub, or an extra-sturdy cardboard box (just make sure it can withstand the rain). Go out at dusk, cover the plant (try not to let the plant make contact with the inside of the container), and uncover it in the morning before the sunlight hits it. Do this until the low nighttime temps are consistently above 50 degrees.
2. Over-watering.
Most people water their tomatoes too much. It makes for watery tasting tomatoes, more diseases, and less fruit. The only time that a tomato needs to be watered every day, is if it's in a pot and the weather is consistently warm. One of the most frequently asked questions I get is how often to water. There is never a set schedule. It depends on whether you have sandy or clay soil (more water with sandy soil), what the weather is like (cloudy days and mild temperatures mean you should back off on watering, maybe altogether), and how old your plants are (just-planted seedlings need more often watering).
You should observe your plants every day and see how they are doing with moisture. If the ground is wet, they don't need watering again for a while. If the plant is wilting, it may not be water deprived, it just may be hot for a few hours in high heat and will perk back up in the cool of the evening. Also some diseases cause the plant to wilt, and no amount of watering will cure that.
Tomato plants prefer to be watered in the morning (but not every morning unless they are in pots), and watered for a good long slow time, like a hose placed on the ground (please no splashing or sprinklers!) on a slow trickle for half hour or an hour. If this isn't practical, create a large round wall of soil around your tomato plant, and fill that up with water several times each
watering. It takes a lot of water to reach down three or four feet into the ground.
You can also use a drip irrigation system (although I don't recommend soaker hoses because they get clogged with soil too quickly). We use what is called an emitter line, with a perforation every 6 inches. We run two lines on each side of our plants, one line about 6 inches from the stalk and another line a foot away from that. This gives about 10 emitters per plant, which is essential if you use a drip system. Once the lines are in place, we can lay our tomato cages directly on top of these ¼" thick lines, and then add mulch later when the weather gets hot.
3. Trying to grow in the shade.
You can refer to tip number three above for details, but yes, many people's biggest mistake is attempting to ripen a tomato with only a few hours of sun. It just doesn't work. If you are desperate, try cherry tomatoes. Love Apple Farms usually offers more than a dozen different kinds of cherry tomatoes, in every available color and shape: black, white, red, pink, yellow, orange, bi-color, green, round, grape, pear and plum. You can still have a wonderful rainbow-colored heirloom tomato garden with just cherry tomatoes. Three or less hours of sun are usually fruitless (no pun intended) however. Perhaps you can score a community garden plot, or ask a neighbor or family member to let you grow some tomato plants in their sunnier backyards.
4. Using too small containers if growing in a pot.
Some people like to grow in containers, whether because of gopher problems, soil problems, or sun issues. I find too many people trying to grow tomatoes in 5-gallon containers or less. Tomatoes need a lot of root space. I recommend 15-gallon containers, which are the biggest you'll find at a good nursery. Growing in half wine barrels is nice too, and you can get away with putting two plants in one barrel. Limit yourself to just one plant in a 15-gallon pot, however.
Buy only good quality potting mix. I like Sunland Organic potting soil. I don't recommend mixing in your own compost or yard soil. Doing this seems to increase the diseases potted tomato plants get. You will need new potting soil each year (because of disease issues) and you should disinfect the pots with a bleach solution (one part bleach to 10 parts water, and then rinse with clean water) prior to placing the new soil inside. You'll need a 2 cubic foot bag for each 15-gallon container. Believe it or not, but you should STILL put all the soil amendments in the pot. Just leave out the fish head.
Plants in containers require more watering and more frequent fertilizing. Once a day watering when the weather gets hot, once a week fertilizing with the worm casting tea. This is essential!
You'll still need to stake a tomato plant in a pot. If you make your own cages per my instructions above in the staking section, the two-foot diameter cage fits nicely over the entire 15-gallon pot. Be sure to use a rebar or other stake alongside the cage to affix it to the ground, or else once your plant grows up and into the cage, a good wind will come along and push the whole mass over.
If the pots you get are black plastic, shield the pots (not the plants sticking out) from the sun with shade cloth, other smaller potted plants, or anything that will keep the sun from cooking the root ball inside the black pot. This is a VERY important tip.
5. Giving up.
If you are unhappy with your tomato crop your first or second time out, don't give up! Try to figure out where you went wrong. Find resources on line to ask specific questions of. Master gardener programs often have telephone help lines. Love Apple Farms on line at www.LoveAppleFarms.com always welcomes questions on tomato growing. Another wonderful on-line resource is www.gardenweb.com. It's worth it to troubleshoot your gardening problems and try again next year.
