How to Grow Awesome Tomatoes!

It’s entirely possible to grow abundant tomatoes without artificial tomato food, or tricky fertiliser brews. Here are my very simple, tomato growing strategies – each one is a key thread, and success comes when they are all in action, together.

Set your tomatoes on the road to glory by meeting not one, not two, but all the conditions below. They may seem too simple by far, but trust me here, they’re tomato perfect.

A warm life

Tomatoes need warm air and warm soil – from the very beginning. Raise seedlings in seed mix that’s 20°C and transplant them into soil that’s atleast 18°C. Night temps should be steadily sitting at 13°C. Thermometers give you all the info you need – one for the soil and one for the air.

If it’s too cold to plant out, so be it. Wait it out. While you wait, transplant your tomato seedlings into slightly bigger pots and keep them toasty + warm + growing strongly until the temps are spot on.

Drainage

Poorly drained soil is no place for tomatoes. Heavy clay soil or god forbid wet soil, is cool and airless, the perfect haven for fungal disease. Beneficial soil biology vacates wet conditions, and when they are absent, pathogens fill the vacuum.

• The long term solution is to sort your water out. Don’t shy away from this task!, it informs the health of your whole garden, and in most cases, solutions are simple.
• Short term, grow in containers.

Raised beds atop poorly drained soil may seem a good solution, but they wont ever reach the low disease, low pest, high production garden we’re aiming for. That’s because the health of the soil beneath informs the health of the soil above. There’s no getting away from it – it’s all connected. Check out my simple solutions for too much water.

Err on the side of dry

If tomatoes had to pick between too wet and too dry – they’d choose dry. Not that dry is their optimum, but it’s better by far than wet! Barely moist, is tomato perfection.

Get to grips with how much water, your tomatoes need at each different phase – from seed through to teenager to fruiting mumma. Watering sounds simple, but its a nuanced art and when done well, makes an enormous difference to the overall health of your garden.

Strong seedlings

For the best adults, you must start with the best babies. This doesn’t mean the biggest, it means the sturdiest and most vital – a robust stem + strong new growth + flat, dark green foliage.

Be choosy when buying seedlings. Beware leaves with purple or yellow tints or contortions. Pick the pot up and if the roots so tightly fill it, there’s no squeeze left, put it back down.

Fungal allies

A living soil, with strong fungal (mycorrhizal) connections is the answer to healthy crops. Tomatoes flourish in the presence of fungal allies. They handle weather extremes better, crop stronger and show good disease and pest resistance.

Encouraging beneficial fungi is simple. Homemade compost + mulched ‘fungal’ paths + biological sprays + diverse groundcover + soil that’s rarely disturbed + soil that’s always covered.

The big hitters that break our fungal networks and open the space for pathogens to wade in are: over feeding, over watering, digging, bare soil, artificial fertilisers and spray drift.

Good companions

All crops benefit from a diverse living mulch. A variety of roots brings a variety of soil biology which in turn strengthens our soils and plants. Above ground, this mixture can, if chosen with intent, provide food and habitat for a range of predatory insects + pollinators. Gold stars all round with this one simple action!

Tomatoes, being tall, vining plants suit low growing companions at their feet. Be sure to retain good light and airflow for best health, especially in cooler or humid places.

• sow a mixed greencrop before planting, and then when soil temps are right, simply make pockets in the greencrop and plant away.
• plant/ sow low growing companions like marigolds, basil, coriander, dwarf beans, saladings, calendula, nasturtium when you plant your tomatoes out
• plant tomato seedlings amongst finishing saladings, phacelia and herbs, as I do in the spring greenhouse.

Local varieties + Home saved seed

What a difference when you grow a variety that’s suited to your climate – not all tomatoes will love your conditions! To this end – always grow a variety of varieties, and in this way, no matter how the summer rolls out, one or two of your tomatoes will grow happily.

Discover best suited, heritage varieties through community networks – local gardeners are your go to. And when you find tomatoes that thrive in your garden + that you love to eat – save your own seed.

Home saved seed germinates faster, sails on through with less pest and disease, and crops better and for longer. That’s because a savvy seed saver chooses the best fruits on the strongest vines – good genes for the win! Year on year, your own saved seed adapts to your environment, growing stronger over time.

Homemade compost

There are more recipes and magic potions for growing tomatoes, than any other crop, but you don’t need any of them if you have your own awesome compost to hand. Yip, good old homemade compost is all you need.

Spread a fine layer on your garden bed – not loads. Ideally over the whole bed, but if you are short, then a spade per plant is fine. Saturate the ground pre planting with a biological brew.

• Vermicastings are an excellent option if you have them – add a good handful with each seedling as you transplant. If you run out of homemade compost, they would be my preference if I needed to buy my fertility in.
• If you’re short on homemade compost, bolster it with seaweed, well rotten manure or vermicastings – mix a brew together until you have enough.
• Greencrops sown as a living mulch over the ground provide excellent ongoing fertility – go for a mixture.

Light + Air

In cooler climates and short growing seasons, tomatoes need really good light distribution, and in damp or humid environments they need excellent airflow. In both cases, pruning them as single leaders is the way to go.

Most tomatoes you’ll come across are indeterminate, or vining. When fully grown and covered in a handsome crop, they’re very weighty, and tall! A 1.8 – 2m frame will maximise the potential of the crop.

My favourite 2 ways to support tomatoes is on reinforcing mesh attached to sturdy stakes, or by growing them up strings – which is what I do in the greenhouse. The string is tied to overhead wires and the bottom of the string is planted beneath the seedling.

Either way, pruning your tomatoes as a single leader works brilliantly – allowing plenty of airflow and light for best health and ripening, as well as easy management – easy to harvest, to spot problems and to spray (biologically, that is).

Trouble shooting

If things go awry, check back through this list and figure out your weak spot. Don’t go guess fertilising or adding individual minerals – you’ll only fracture the web, making things heaps worse in the long run. Don’t bother trying to kill the pathogens – you’ll kill the good guys too. Keep ticking away with building a biologically alive garden, and all will come together.

Sometimes, perspective is all that’s needed. Stand back and take a wider view. 10% blemished, does not a problem make – a few curled leaves and spotty bits are tickety boo, and par for the course with sensitive tomatoes.

A plant-wide problem, however, lets you know that something isn’t working, but no matter how dire the plants reaction, the solution is always simple. Always!

If you get stuck, I’m here to help.