May is Tomato Month

When soil and air temperatures warm up later this month, it’s time to plant tomatoes. Here are 10 tips to make sure this year’s tomato crop is the best ever.

Ten Tips for Great Tomatoes

1. Tomatoes love heat, so warm up the soil before you plant them. Cover the planting area with black or red plastic a couple of weeks before you intend to plant. Those extra degrees of soil warmth will translate into earlier tomatoes.

2. Plant your tomato plants deeper than they come in the pot, all the way up to the top few leaves. Tomatoes will develop roots all along their stems and more roots will make for a stronger plant. You can either dig a deep hole or simply dig a shallow trench and lay the plant sideways. The plant will quickly straighten itself up and grow toward the sun. Just be careful not to drive your stake or cage into the buried stem.

3. Put a banana peel in the planting hole. Banana peels provide much needed potassium.

4. Mulch – but not until after the ground has had a chance to warm up. Mulching conserves water and prevents soil born diseases.

5. Remove the bottom one foot of leaves once your tomato plants reach about three feet tall. These are the oldest leaves and are usually the first to develop fungus problems.

6. Prune judiciously. Remove suckers that develop in the crotch joint of two branches to maintain one strong central stem. Thin out a few leaves to allow the sun to reach the ripening fruit, but it’s the leaves that are photosynthesizing and creating the sugars that give flavour to your tomatoes.

7. Water deeply and regularly. Irregular watering leads to blossom end rot and cracking. Once the fruit begins to ripen, ease up on watering to coax the plant into concentrating its sugars for better flavour.

8. Feed your tomatoes. Tomatoes are heavy feeders. Choose a fertilizer that is higher in phosphorus (the second number on a fertilizer label) because too much nitrogen will encourage leaf growth at the expense of big fruit. Whatever you use, it’s better to give your plants a steady stream of weak fertilizer than big doses every other week or once a month. Consider cutting the fertilizer dose in half or quarters and feeding every week.

9. Plan for success. Have a staking system in place before plants start to bear fruit; provide a sturdy enough staking system to hold up heavy plants.

10. Watch the temperature if you are growing tomatoes in a greenhouse. Tomatoes won’t produce flowers – and that means no fruit – if the temperature is over 32º C. That’s usually not a problem here on Vancouver Island for tomatoes grown in the garden, but if you have them in a greenhouse, provide more ventilation and shade during the hottest parts of the day.

Dig This: In Sidney, 9813 Third St.; In Broadmead, 480-777 Royal Oak Dr.