Plant Spotlight - Tomatoes

Here’s some tips I’ve found helpful in growing everyone’s favorite summer plant – tomatoes! Tomato plants grow pretty much like little trees, so you should trim them accordingly. Tomatoes should have one main “trunk,” so if it branches early on, pick the best one and cut off the other shoot. Then, maybe about halfway up, you’re going to want “branches” coming off. Cut any that are growing at weird angles or crossing into another’s path too much. Don’t trim the top third or so too much; let it grow and trim it as the plant gets bigger and there’s new top growth. This top growth is what is doing the photosynthesis for the plant, so you want lots of leaves up top to soak in the sun. So, basically, you want your tomato plant to look like an oak tree: one main trunk going straight up, little to no offshoots along the bottom half, a few big thick branches coming out at as close to 90 degrees as you can get and lots of smaller branches with lots of leaves on the top third. Pruning your tomato plant in this way will help distribute the weight of the fruit later on, without pulling on two separate trunks or weird-angled branches.

Tomatoes also need lots of calcium to have healthy skins, which will make them firmer and protect them from skin diseases. The first year we grew tomatoes we had tomatoes with a spotty skin disease. So my wife and I read that if you crush up some eggshells around your tomatoes from time to time it will make healthier skins. We had the best tomatoes in town the next year. Also, tomatoes need consistent watering. Even if they have a healthy root system that can get them water through periods without rain, once rain does come the plant will soak up so much water into the fruit that the skins will burst. Unfortunately we had that happen to us last year towards the end of the year. This year, we’re going to try to get them water every three or four days so that the plants won’t be so eager to suck up water when it does rain.

Lastly, I already mentioned this in a previous post, but tomatoes do really well with an ‘under-grower.’ We like to put lettuce under our tomatoes; it keeps down the weeds and shades the soil from the sun so that it retains moisture and nutrients longer. I’ve also read that basil works well too, just remember to keep it pinched down so it doesn’t get too tall. Borage is kind of the classic co-planter for tomatoes. We have some lovely borage by our tomatoes for the first time this year. We’ll see how the tomatoes react. On a concluding note… Lycopene!!!