Tips for Better, Redder, More Robust Tomatoes

Tastier Tomatoes

This is what the home gardener wants his tomatoes to be: big, blemish-free, red as fire trucks, and dripping with juice and flavor. It’s a gardener’s dream to show up at a summer picnic with a basket full of his own tomatoes glowing like rubies and say, “These beauties are from out back. How about that!” Then he waits for the gathered crowd to reply with profound admiration, “Well, my goodness. How on God’s green earth did you do it?”

Gardeners who’ve done well and gotten a bumper crop of beauties off their tomato vines are full of advice. They’ll say things that, to novice gardeners, sound like koans, the Japanese Zen brain twisters the most famous of which translates to: "what’s the sound of one hand clapping?"

“Hunh?” The novice gardener says, “What is the sound of one hand clapping? I want to know what the heck that has to do with my tomato plants – they’re taking over the stoop. It’s a jungle. What should I do? Help!”

Easy Tips for Better Tomatoes

Help is here. Five simple, koan-free things to know to raise better tomatoes:

1. Buy them as seedlings and avoid the hassle of husbanding seeds. Go to Home Depot, K-Mart, Wal-Mart – any place with a garden center - and look for patio variety plants that look robust.
2. Tomatoes are vines. Know this: if allowed to spread far and wide they will do so with the passion of frontiersmen and frontierswomen.
3. Prune frequently. The plant’s efforts must be redirected away from spreading far and wide into new lands and into making luscious, plump fruit that will impress the neighbors.
4. Tomatoes love sun, 6-8 hours a day, full sun.
5. Today’s tomatoes, being the descendants of tropical plants, like the soil evenly moist; not too wet and not too dry. To get this effect, put mulch around the base of the plant to keep evaporation at a minimum.

Garden Accessories

Here is the bonus tip: number 6. Stake your plants. Even patio varieties have that genetic urge to spread. It is best to build a fortress around each plant. Tomato stakes (or cages or ladders depending on which catalog; every one has its own vocabulary) can be purchased or they can be made from this and that lying around in the yard. The online gardening forum You Grow Girl has lots of ideas for do-it-yourself accessories.

The best garden accessory is, of course, you. The Lou Erickson adage is right on: "Gardening requires lots of water -- mostly in the form of perspiration." Get out there and get growing!

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