6 Tomato Planting Mistakes To Avoid – Grow Great Tomatoes This Year! : Grow healthy and fruitful tomato plants on planting day by avoiding the largest and most typical blunders! You can almost guarantee a big harvest of luscious tomatoes this summer! Tomatoes are the most popular home garden veggie. The luscious fruits are eaten fresh and used to make salsa and hundreds of other tomato-based dishes.
6 Tomato Planting Mistakes To Avoid – Grow Great Tomatoes This Year!
Whether you grow tomatoes in a traditional garden, raised beds, or containers, how and when you plant them can make all the difference between success and failure.
How To Avoid The 6 Biggest Tomato Planting Mistakes
1. Planting Early
Prematurely planting tomato plants is one of the biggest blunders. Tomatoes need warm weather and soil.
Tender tomato plants might have several problems if planted too early. Early and as plants mature in mid- and late-summer. Tomato roots perform poorly in chilly soil.
Because of this, they absorb soil nutrients and water poorly. As they sit in the soil, they become susceptible to rot, mould, and other diseases.
Worse, planting too early can expose your plants to a late frost or fatal cold. Frosts can damage fragile foliage and hinder plant growth. A strong cold or freezing can destroy the plant quickly.
Before planting, soil temperatures should be 60–65° for best results. To verify soil readiness, use a cheap soil thermometer. Simply insert the probe into the soil to instantaneously measure temperature. Affiliate Link: AcuRite Soil Thermometer Probe
Simple as it sounds, planting in warm soil pays off big time. Smaller plants in warm soil will outgrow transplants twice their size in cool soil. Please wait until the temperature rises!
2. Rotating Plants To New Soil: Avoiding The 6 Biggest Tomato Planting Mistakes
Not rotating crops is a major vegetable garden mistake. This error is magnified while growing tomatoes!
It takes a lot of soil resources to grow tomatoes. Unfortunately, planting tomatoes in the same spot or soil year after year depletes the soil’s nutrients.
But the news gets worse when planting tomatoes in the same space. Beyond a lack of available nutrients, planting in the same soil leaves tomato plants vulnerable to two of the biggest ailments that affect tomato plants, blossom-end rot and tomato blight.
3 Failing To Support Your Plants Before Planting – How to Avoid the Top 6 Tomato Planting Mistakes
Your tomato support system must be ready before planting your first tomato plant. A stake, tomato cage, trellis, or anything you use to support tomatoes. Adding pegs and cages days or weeks after planting is disastrous.
The fragile tomato root system needs loose, compaction-free soil. The plant’s roots can easily take water, oxygen, and nutrients from the soil. Roots suffocate when soil compacts.
Driving supports in after planting or weeks later might compact the soil around them. You may damage plants and roots when you drive in the supports, and foot traffic compresses the dirt around the roots.
ALSO SEE
4. Shallow Tomato Root Planting: Avoiding the 6 Biggest Tomato Planting Mistakes
You must plant tomatoes deep! Strong, robust, and durable roots grow more easily with deeper roots. Deep planting reduces dryness and improves nutrient absorption.
Avoid shallow three- to four-inch holes that barely cover tomato transplants’ top soil! Instead, dig 8–10-inch planting holes. A post hole digger can dig a wide, deep hole in seconds, making this portion straightforward.
5. Not Filling Your Planting Hole With Power How to Avoid the Top 6 Tomato Planting Mistakes
Tomatoes absorb a lot of soil nutrients. This is why you must give them a lot of power when you plant them!
To do this, fill your planting hole with compost, worm castings, broken egg shells, and coffee grounds. A cup or two of compost helps plants absorb moisture and generate energy. A quarter cup of worm castings will release energy slowly as the plant grows.
6. Biggest Tomato Planting Mistakes: Not Mulching
Be sure to mulch your tomato plants too! A thick, protective layer of four to six inches of mulch, not just two inches.
Leaving bare dirt around your plants causes major problems. For one, it rapidly dries plant soil and roots. Tomato roots require water! Mulch keeps soil temperature from rising or falling on cold or hot days.
