Berry’s Picks

Time to Plant Tomatoes-Maybe

Tomatoes are probably the most planted vegetable grown by home gardeners, especially in the South. Almost anyone can and does grow a tomato plant or two.

They grow well in containers and beds, so you do not need a large area to grow them, just sunlight. Regardless of where you grow them, everyone wants to be the first to get their tomatoes in the ground. Many of us are over enthusiastic and plant as early as possible, this often results in losing your first settings to frost.

Because tomato plants stop setting fruit once the nighttime temperatures reach the mid 70’s, which is usually around the first of July, it is important that we get our tomato plants in the ground as close to the last frost date as possible.

This will help to insure we get the most harvest days as possible before the first of July. Depending on which source you use, our last frost date is somewhere between March 15th and April 1st, of course this is just an average. Looking at the current 10 day forecast there are no frost predicted, but there are some very warm daytime temperatures. Going out on a limb I would say we are close to the point where we should be planting our tomatoes.

Here are some methods that you can use to help protect tomatoes in case we do get another cold snap. Hoop houses or low tunnels, which are reusable, are an option, and you can purchase these from various garden supply retailers or make your own.

These need not be fancy you just need a frame to hold plastic over the plants. It maybe a little late to take on one of those options, but here is a fast relatively easy method of protecting your tomatoes that anyone can do.

Cage your tomatoes and wrap the cages with plastic this will offer 2 to 4 degrees of frost protection and will help protect your plants from insects and the wind. If you have 100 tomato plants this may not be practical, but for a homeowner with 5 to 10 plants this is a very viable option that will increase production.

You will want to remove the plastic once the daytime temperatures are consistently in the upper 80’s and low 90’s. Be sure to secure your cages well, or the wind may move them to the neighbor’s garden.

I like planting large healthy, vigorous transplants. These larger plants can tolerate colder weather than smaller transplants, and they will grow much faster.

Plant the plants horizontally, except for the top 6”, in other words you are going to lay them in a trench and cover all but the very top 6” of the plant. Incorporate 1/4 cup of a slow-release complete blend fertilizer when planting. Be careful here, too much starter fertilizer applied when planting can kill the plant. Just utilizing this planting method and plastic wrapped cages can increase your tomato production by up to 30%.

If you want to really push you tomatoes for high production, use the following nutrient plan or something similar. Apply a weekly foliar spray of a water-soluble fertilizer, there are lots of these available that you apply with a hose-end sprayer, Miracle Grow is an example.

When you see the first cluster of fruit set, work in 2-3 tablespoons of a high nitrogen fertilizer. Finally, once your plants begin producing add 1 tablespoon of 21-0-0 per plant every two weeks. This would be a Cadillac fertilizer plan, if you cannot do all this, just do what you can, any stepup in nutrient management will increase yields.