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A vegetable garden isn't complete without tomatoes. After all, tomatoes are easy to grow and nothing tastes quite as good as a fresh-picked, garden-ripe tomato. Tomatoes are incredibly versatile, dressing up everything from a basic sandwich to your grandmother's secret recipe for sauce.
Growing Guide
Soil preparation: Tomatoes do best in loose, rich, well-drained soil, so make sure to work lots of compost into your beds before planting.
Planting: Tomatoes like warm soil and don't tolerate frost, so wait until warm spring days arrive and soil temperatures reach above 60°F to plant.
Spacing: Plant tomatoes deeply, so the lowest set of leaves is at soil level, and press the soil down gently. Stake your tomatoes, leave about 1 to 3 feet between the plants, and space your rows 3 feet apart.
Watering: Once all your plants are in the ground, water them well. To avoid problems with disease, water from the bottom and early in the day. Tomatoes need even moisture, though, so don't let your beds dry out. Once the tomato plants are established, apply a thick mulch of straw, grass clippings, or composted leaves.
Fertilizing: As long as you've added compost to your beds before planting, you shouldn't need to add any other fertilizer for tomatoes.
Pest Watch If your plants' stems are being chewed off, you might have cutworms. If you notice holes in the leaves of your tomato plants or big, fat, green caterpillars lolling on the plants, you're probably dealing with tomato hornworms. Curled-down leaves and small pink, green, or black insects on leaf undersides signal aphids.
Disease Alert If you spot speckles on any leaves (especially lower leaves) during the growing season, pinch off the affected leaves to reduce problems with early blight, late blight, and other leaf spot diseases. Blossom end rot is marked by a sunken, brownish black area at the blossom end of some of your tomatoes. At the end of the season, be sure to pull out and destroy or throw away (not on your compost pile, though) all of your tomato plants if they showed any signs of disease. Otherwise, the next season's crop may be infected by disease organisms that survive the winter sheltered in the debris of the old crop.
Harvesting Pick tomatoes when they just begin to change from orange to red. Gently twist the fruit off while holding the vine, then let the tomatoes finish ripening at room temperature out of direct sunlight. Don't store them in your refrigerator because the cold temperature will cause them to lose flavor and texture.
