Tomato Growing - Your Online Source for Information on Tomatoes
All About Tomato Growing
Tomatoes are one of the most popular of all garden vegetables and everyone tries tomato growing at one time or another. Some gardeners grow rows of tomatoes for eating fresh and canning while people with limited space often try tomato growing in containers. Either way, the resulting tomatoes are so delicious that they hardly bear any resemblance at all to the hard, pale tomatoes that are found in supermarkets.
There are many superb kinds of tomatoes that produce well and that are disease resistant. Among the most popular varieties are Beefmaster, Better Boy, Big Girl, Jet Star and Celebrity. Tomatoes take anywhere from seventy to ninety days from planting to harvest so most people transplant ones bought at a gardening store or started inside. Plants should be approximately six weeks old and eight to ten inches high before transplanting. If you live in a location that is warm year round, tomato seeds can be planted directly into the garden.
Tomatoes need to be planted in an area with lots of sun and they like to be fertilized and watered regularly. You will need to wrap a little piece of newspaper around the base of the plant so that it covers the stem at least an inch below and above ground. This is called a cutworm collar and prevents a cutworm from slicing off the stem of the plant right at surface level. A good way to keep out weeds is by mulching with grass, straw, newspaper or black plastic.
Tomato growing requires dealing with any number of diseases and pests which can destroy the plant and/or the tomatoes. Blossom End Rot is a disease that causes a black spot to develop on the bottom of the tomato. The black portion increases in size and becomes leathery as the plant grows. Early Blight is a fungal disease that causes blackish-brown spots on the tomato plant. The leaves will drop off and any fruit on the plant will start to look sunburned.
Fusarium Wilt, Mosaic Virus, and Nematodes are all problems that can be eliminated by buying disease-resistant varieties of tomatoes. They all cause discoloration of the tomato plant and stunted growth. Flower drop is another problem and it’s caused by too cold temperatures at night or too warm temperatures during the day. Tomatoes don’t like temperatures below 55 degrees at night or above 95 degrees during the day. If these temperatures continue for any length of time, the tomato plant will lose its leaves.
Dealing with insects is another part of tomato growing that can be a cause for concern. Most can be eliminated with regular spraying and dusting of plants. Among the worst insects are aphids, which appear on the undersides of leaves and suck out sap from the plants; cutworms, which will cut off plants at the surface usually early in the season; flea beetles, which make little holes through all the leaves; and hornworms, green worms that can grow up to four inches long and eat both the leaves and the fruit of the tomato plant. Other insects to look for include spider mites, leaf miners, stalk borers, stink bugs, and tomato fruit worms. Ask your county extension agent about problem insects and treatments for your particular location.