Tomatoes come in many varieties—so many choices!

Tomatoes cages can help plants stay vertical.

Tomato hornworm  (Manduca quinquemaculata) with parasitic wasp eggs in its back.

Tomatoes come in many varieties—so many choices!

Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicon) can be quite productive! Guinness World Records recognized a “tomato tree” at a Walt Disney World greenhouse that yielded 32,000 tomatoes in a growing season! Perhaps you do not need as many tomatoes. But you probably have a favorite tomato sauce, a family recipe, a special pizza sauce made even better with homegrown tomatoes. My secret is to add fresh basil after cooking fresh tomatoes and freezing the sauce. There is instant magic when it is thawed! Tomato is one of summer’s favorite fruit (yes fruit!) and is the queen of the garden.

To grow tomatoes successfully, remember that tomatoes need a lot of sun (8 hours a day) and warmth at all stages of their development. The name “tomato” comes from the Aztec word tomatl; the plants were domesticated in Mexico.

Growing tomato from seeds will give you hundreds of varieties to choose, from round to heart shaped, from red to white to yellow, orange, black or multicolored. Yellow pear tomatoes are hands down my grandkids’ snack of choice! You may also choose if you want determinate tomatoes, which set all their fruit at once, or indeterminate, which only stop bearing fruit (and stop growing taller) when cold weather sets in. There are paste tomatoes, and ‘Beefsteak’ (large tomatoes) which are perfect for sandwiches. You can pick old-fashioned heirloom tomatoes, or hybrids which resist some common diseases (such as fusarium wilt, verticillium wilt, mosaic virus).

If you’re starting from seed, sow your selected tomatoes indoors in a sterile soilless mix, about 6 weeks before your last frost date. Tomatoes take a long time to set fruit, about 100 days. Remember, they need warmth, at least 70 degrees to germinate. Using heating mats will speed germination. Grow lights will help keep plants from getting spindly. Reduce watering to harden off before replanting outside.

If you want to skip the seeds, nurseries have now a great selection of ready-to-plant seedlings. Wait for the soil and weather to warm up to at least 60 degrees during the day and 50 degrees at night before transplanting outside. Colder temperatures will stunt growth and can result in cat facing (malformed fruit) and promote blossom end rot later.

To sustain their growth, tomatoes can grow roots along all parts of the stem in contact with the soil. If you plant your seedlings sideways in a trench with only the top leaves showing (remove the other leaves), your tomatoes will grow more roots and will be more productive. The roots also will appreciate being closer to the surface where it will be warmer.

Do not plant tomatoes after potatoes, eggplants, or peppers—they are all from the nightshade family, carrying the same pests and diseases. Give your tomato plants plenty of air circulation, 3 to 4 feet in between.

A soil test will help determine if you need amendments. Tomatoes grow best in humus, which is a rich soil. The soil test results will include fertilizer recommendations. Instead of chemical fertilizers, you may want to consider the following natural options: compost, bone meal, and greensand. Consult your local Master Gardeners for recommendations on how much of these additions to use according to your garden area. A mulch of (non-treated) grass clippings or cut cover crop (hairy vetch or purple clover) will help smother weeds, preserve soil moisture, and add nitrogen. If you do not have space in the garden, tomatoes can be grown in pots if the pots are large enough.

Tomatoes cages can help plants stay vertical.

Up they go! The tomato plant is a vine that can sprawl freely on the ground, however lots of the fruit will be lost to animal predation and rot. Keeping plants off the ground is best. Some favorite trellises are collapsible metal squares cages, round towers made with rolls of fencing or even simple 5-foot stakes. A friend of mine grows hundreds of tomatoes that way. That involves lots of pruning to keep them growing from a single stem. Shoots or suckers are constantly growing from leaf junctions at the stem. With big cages, or with determinate varieties, pruning is not necessary, only to keep growth under control. If using stakes, pinch the suckers to keep a couple of stems and prune regularly. After identifying the main stem, it is a good sanitation practice to remove all of the leaves six inches from the soil. Many diseases come from spores in the soil carried by splashing rain.

Biting into the first tomato of the season is one of the first joys of the summer! Harvesting regularly will increase yield.

Time to cook your pasta sauce! For picky eaters that only eat cooked food, tomatoes do not lose their vitamins when cooked but for vitamin K and A. They offer plenty of vitamins C, B and lycopene (antioxidant).

Beside a lot of sun, tomatoes need regular watering to avoid blossom end rot caused by calcium deficiency in the part of the fruit furthest from the stem. Mulching the soil, not overfertilizing and planting resistant cultivars can resolve the issue.

Temperatures over 86 degrees will create uneven coloring of the fruit and there will be no fruit set above 92 degrees.

Tomato hornworm  (Manduca quinquemaculata) with parasitic wasp eggs in its back.

Tomato hornworm, a big green caterpillar can be found in the vines. Pick them up and kill them in soapy water. If they are covered with white cocoons, they are dying from a small parasitic braconid wasp (Cotesia). Let them be, more wasps will infect more hornworms.

During the season and in the fall, good sanitation practices will go a long way to grow healthy plants, especially against early and late blights that come from fungal spores in the soil and on diseased foliage. Promptly remove all diseased, yellowing leaves. Do not compost any infected material. In fall remove any fruit or parts of the plants from the garden. Carefully sterilize cages, stakes, trellises with a solution of 1 part bleach to 9 parts waters. Sanitize tools when working with tomatoes

At the end of the season, before the first frost hits, remove all the fruit, even fruit that is still green. The extend the season, let green tomatoes ripen slowly in a basement and inspect every other day. Light is not necessary for ripening. Those tomatoes are great for comforting soups, especially with butternut squash or apples and some of you will like some green fried tomatoes. Enjoy!

Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.

Error! There was an error processing your request.

Weekly recap of your favorite B section columns, recipes and kids’ content.