Tomato Plant Care - Secrets to great tomatoes

Tomatoes are one of the most sought after vegetables in the large and varied world of vegetable items. There are so many uses and recipes for this fruit/vegetable that the demand for home grown tomatoes is incredible. In order to be successful in growing tomoatoes the vegetable gardener must understand how to care for the plants. Vegetable gardeners around the world have suffered great anquish when their best laid plans do not come to fruition with a bountiful crop. If you plant to buy vegetable plants you also plan to harvest a worthwhile crop at the proper time.

There is no point planting tomato plants if you do not understand how to properly care for them as it will cause you to prematurely decide you are incapable of a beautiful tomato garden full of luscious red fruit. Vegetable gardeners with years of experience know how tempermental this plant can be. Growing tomato plants is something with a continuous opportunity to learn and improve.

In this hub I will help you become a respectable vegtable gardener in the area to home grown tomatoes by giving you tips oncaring for tomato plants. The information about tomato plants shown here will be invlavuable to you as you strive to enjoy your tomato garden. Your tomato garden will require a fair level of attention to receive the great reward of delectable fruit during the summer, but I feel it is well worth the effort.

What do I mean by pruning a tomato plant? Well quite simply the experienced vegetable gardeners realize a tomato plant that has the right conditions will grow very fast as the weather warms up into the summer months. Tomatoes like to develop shoots or suckers in the nooks of their branches. If left untrimmed, these shoots or suckers will grow and grow and you will have quite an unruly plant.

I know you want to be a successful vegetable gardener when you gow your tomato plants, so you need to understand how the pruning of tomatoes is properly done. In the following videos you will see what can be done to try to help your tomato plants reach their full potential, It may look like I am making the plant ugly, but in fact this will cause it to get stronger and produce some really nice tomatoes as you can see are formning in the picture further down in this hub.

If you will prune your tomaotes properly you will accomplish a couple of things. First you will have a plant that is easy to manage as you can keep it properly secured to a tomato support as will be described in the second half of this hub. Maybe more importantly the tomatoes you have on the vine will be larger, which is preferred rather than a multitude of small ones.

If you would like to have a later crop of tomatoes you can take these suckers that you prune and plant them to make another plant. When you pull the sucker or trim a branch off you will notice numeroud hair like fibers on the stem. Each one of these is a root ending just wating for the change to come in contact with dirt and do its job.

For the support of my tomatoes I like to use some solid aluminum poles my father game me many years ago. They are wether proof, solid enough that they will last forever. These things are about seven feet tall, so even when driven in the ground far enough to provide adequate support they are plenty tall enough to accomodate my tomato plant's height.

There is two basic schools of thought in tomato plant supports, either using stakes ot tomato cages. I have tried both and prefer stakes because they are easier to insert into the ground and seem to hold up to the wind better than the cage. With a stake you have less mass for the wind to come in contact with as opposed to the boxy shape of the cage.

Ultimately it is purely a matter of choice as either of the tomato plant supports will accomplish the job. I suspect many of the choices we make are based on our experience with our ancestors or whoever taught us to love gardening as vegtable gardeners love to pass on their wisodm to any younger vegetable gardener.

It is best to keep your tomatoes from coming in contact with the ground as the moisture left from a summer rain will cause them to rot. Also there is the risk of animals or other pests getting to them. I cannot stand to go to the garden and see my prized vegtables ruined in this way.

Another important consideration is that as your tomatoes begin to mature they will begin to add weight to the vine. Some tomato varieties, such as the Beefmaster can weigh up to 32 ounces each. That is right, two pounds! If you have six or more of these on a plant your are talking about a dozne pounds of weight pulling on your tomato vine. The joints that join the branches are o match for this stress.

Also, if you live in a warm enough climate for tomatoes you are going to have summer storms. These storms, which are usually accompanied by wind, can have a negative effect on your tomato vines if they are not secured they will be torn apart by the strong storm induced winds.

So what do you use to tie the tomato to the stake? Well there is no hard and fast rule about what you should use, except it should not be somethihng that will cut into the stem of the plant. Ideally you need something storng enough to last through the season, so keep that in mind when making your selection.

I have used cloth strips, fodder twine and now have graduated to jute twine. This twine is strong enough to hadle all my needs and available at many hardware and department stores. With a sharp knife this is easily cut for use.

 A successful tomato garden is the pride of any vegetable gardener. My dad and his neightbor were competing vegetable gardeners who challeneged each other on an annual basis to see who could produce the first ripe tomato. Unfortunatley i have no such friendly competition to drive me as both these people are gone. Instead I have a date to challenge me, which is July 4th. That was always my dad's target date and I want very much to have a ripe juicy tomato to enjoy on that day.