How To Grow A Tomato Plant

Gardening is relaxing and has the added benefit of providing fruits and vegetables for your family to enjoy. Gardening requires some careful planning and commitment of your time. The amount of time spent on your garden equals the quantity and quality of the produce grown. This is especially true for the growing of tomatoes. Tomatoes are a tough and hardy plant and will grow without much attention but if you want great tomatoes then here are some tips to make that happen.

Tomatoes require lots of room as they grow. Space out plants about 12 to 18 inches apart with the idea that they will grow very large and tall with proper care. The area you choose for your tomatoes must have lots of sunlight so place them where they can get 14 to 18 hours of direct sunlight. Tomatoes love heat and sunlight so much that if you cover the ground with plastic sheet several weeks in advance this will pre-heat the soil. This in turn will provide you with earlier in the season ripe tomatoes for your enjoyment. The next key step to great tasting tomatoes is water regularly and deeply while they are developing. Once the plants are starting to bear fruit you then cut back on the water as this makes the plants concentrate their sugars.

The next major step in producing large and juicy tomatoes is to regularly prune the plants. The idea here is to let the plant grow to about three feet tall and once they have reached this height to prune the bottom foot of the plant stem. This helps retard the growth of fungus as the bottom third of the plant gets the least sunlight. Pruning is a must for large tomatoes. Tomatoes typically try to grow small new branches called suckers at the joint of two main branch stems.

The knowledgeable gardener prunes these suckers as they do not bear fruit and take energy from the rest of the plant. The final step in the process of growing a large harvest of big tomatoes is to keep the tomato plant growing straight and upright. The use of wooden stakes about 5 to 6 feet in length will allow you to access the plant for pruning and keep the plant stems strong.