TOMATO GROWING 101
If it is Mid-March to September, choose a grape or cherry variety. During these months, the high temperatures prevent "back home" tomato varieties from setting fruit. Settle for the smaller fruit of indeterminate varieties during the summer instead of being disappointed.
Ready to plant?
- Plant late in the day or on a cloudy day so the sun does not fry your new plant.
- Water the tomato plant, in the pot you bought it in, if dry.
- Carefully remove at least half of the lower leaves by pinching with your fingers or using scissors.
- Remove pot by placing the base of the stem between two fingers, turn the pot upside down, and gently but firmly smack the bottom of the pot. DO NOT PULL PLANT OUT OF POT. This might damage the plant. Cut it out of the pot if you have to.
- If the tomato plant is root bound (the roots are long and all wound up in the bottom of the pot) gently pull them apart so they can expand in all directions into the soil after planting.
- Select a planting location in full sun.
- Mix in some compost and egg shells (provides calcium to prevent blossom end rot) into the area that you will be placing your tomato plant(s).
- Dig a hole deep enough so that your tomato vine is mostly underground. Deep planting allows the plant to form many roots along the hairy buried stem. This is more necessary in the dry winter months than the summer, but I do it year round to keep the plant as compact as possible.
- Place tomato plant in hole and water the hole well.
- Gently back-full in the hole with soil and apply gentle pressure so that the stem and roots are in contact with the soil and not with an air pocket.
- Water again.
DETERMINATE tomato is a bush type that has a crop all at once. Commercial growers use determinate tomatoes. They have short to medium vines and their suckers are not normally removed.
INDETERMINATE tomato is a vine that will keep growing until something kills it. These will continue to grow here in Lehigh until bugs, disease, or drought kill them. These grow great rambling on the ground in the winters here. However, I have found that they need to be staked, trellised, or caged once the summer rains set in to get them off the ground and prevent rot. Removing suckers is usually done if the tomatoes are staked or trellised.
SUCKERS are the small shoots that grow between where a leaf meets the stem. These can be removed on tomatoes to keep the plant under control size-wise and to provide earlier and larger tomatoes.
Tomatoes are semi-easy to propagate from suckers if they are indeterminate. I snip them off just below a node, snip off all but a few leaves at the top, dip in rooting hormone, then plant in moist, sterile soil.