Tomatoes are self-pollinating plants but that doesn’t mean that they won’t benefit from a little help. This is best done on vining tomatoes as pruning bush tomatoes can reduce their yield but even they can benefit from the careful removal of lower leaves that are close to the ground. Wait until your tomatoes are a few feet tall and then start trimming off the leaves that are closest to the soil. This helps to protect the plants from fungus that can be splashed up onto the leaves when it rains. One simple thing you can do to help your tomato plants grow well is to keep the leaves pruned off the bottom foot of the plant. The exception to this is if you are mulching with black plastic. If you mulch before the soil has warmed up you could actually keep your soil cooler for a longer time. But if you are starting from scratch making a garden in the spring wait until after your soil has warmed up to add the mulch for the first time. If you are using a no-dig gardening or Back to Eden gardening style then you’ll already have mulch added to your garden. Mulching can help the soil to keep an even temperature and hold in moisture. Mulching is an important part of growing a vegetable garden. After that, you can go back to watering at about 1 inch (2.54 cm) a week as needed. If you are facing these conditions water deeply, even if you have to do it over a few days. This helps them to grow into stronger plants. You really want the plants to grow deeper into the soil. If the top 10 inches (25.4 cm) of soil has dried out and you are only giving 1 inch (2.54 cm) of water a week to your plants it will encourage their roots to stay near the top of the soil. In dry conditions, you will want to make sure you don’t let the soil dry out too much. Tomato plants need an inch of water a week to grow well so keep an eye on how much rain you get and if it’s not enough supplement with watering. If you often grow huge tomato plants but don’t get many tomatoes it could be they are not getting enough phosphorus (the middle number on fertilizers) to encourage flowering. Nitrogen helps plants to grow a lot of foliage while phosphorus encourages root growth and flowers. While nitrogen is an important part of fertilizing for plant growth don’t forget to make sure your tomato plants have enough phosphorus. There are two ways you can do this you can dig a horizontal trench and plant the tomato seedling laying on its side with just the top left uncovered or dig a deeper hole and plant it deep enough to almost come up to the bottom set of leaves. Instead, try planting them deeper into the ground. If you have ever grown a tomato plant and forgot to trellis it then found it grew like crazy and formed roots where the vines touched the ground you’ll understand that those extra roots were helping to feed the plant.īut letting tomato plants sprawl on the ground makes harvesting harder and can cause more pest problems. Tomatoes will grow roots along their stem so planting tomatoes deeper into the ground can help encourage the plant to grow a better root system. Using floating row covers or plastic tunnels are great options to add warmth but if you have just a few plants to protect staking around them and using a clear bag cover like this one has really helped our tomato plants to grow quickly in the early garden season. This time of year we often worry about frost but even a cold wind can do a lot of damage to seedling causing the leaves to turn white and set back the plants. In the early summer you can still get cold spells and if you take the time to protect your tomatoes from cold temperatures and wind it can really help to give them a boost in the garden. If you want to get a jump on the growing season then using a black plastic mulch to warm the soil for a week or two before planting can help. When your soil temperature has reached 55 to 60 F (12.7 to 15.5 C) it’s warm enough to plant warm-season crops like tomatoes. Tomatoes are warm-weather plants and as excited as you are to get your garden planted in the early spring, tomatoes will do better if you wait until the soil has warmed first. If your tomato seedlings have already become root bound when you are planting gently tease the bottom of the roots apart to loosen them and encourage them to start growing out instead of curling around. While if you are buying tomato seedlings try to avoid buying ones that are heavily root-bound. If you are growing your own tomatoes from seed make sure to pot them up often so the roots keep growing normally. Plants that are kept in this condition for too long can struggle to grow quickly in the garden. When this happens they start to grow in circles around the edge and bottom of the container. When seedlings are grown in small cell packs or pots for two long their roots run out of room to spread out. Increase Tomato Pollination How To Make Tomato Plants Produce More Fruit Avoid Root Bound Seedlings
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