How To Jump Start Tomato Plants: Who doesn’t want better, locally grown tomatoes early in the season? Learn how to grow tomatoes faster from organic farmer Jenna Rich.
How To Jump Start Tomato Plants
Every spring in New Hampshire, zone 5b, I eagerly anticipate the last frost date to safely transplant seedlings. Long before plants are planted, tomato season begins. Starting seeds indoors is a labor of love that pays off all season.
Choose the Right Varieties
Select types that suit your climate, soil, and garden. Set achievable objectives. Choose tomatoes that are good for freezing sauces for winter, but if you prefer cherry and cocktail tomatoes for salads, choose these.
It’s tempting to buy too many tomato kinds due to new trends and colors, but stick to what you like and will utilize. Focus on these aspects when browsing seed catalogs:
Start Seeds Indoors
A seedling’s initial few weeks are critical to its success. Start-up tomatoes need heat, water, sunlight, and nutrients. This ensures healthy root, leaf, and flower growth. A stressful start inhibits these vital processes, which affect a seedling throughout its life.
For indoor seeding, use an adjustable heat mat. From 68 to 85° (20 to 29°C), tomatoes germinate best. Use a strip tray to maximize space. Sow 15-20 seeds per row, lightly cover with your medium, push it down, and water from below to keep them in place. Avoid full soil drying.
Don’t Push It
If you don’t have a high tunnel or protected growing environment, keep seedlings indoors, semi-heated, or heated outdoors. Provide large pots, water, well-balanced soil, and sunlight to keep seedlings happy, healthy, and stress-free.
If your seedlings overstay their welcome by a few days or a week, they’ll recover faster than if they’re squeezed into shock soil and exposed to frigid overnight lows. Plants in survival mode cannot grow, however they can grow in a greenhouse or cellar pot.
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Lights, Soil, Action
Positioning tomatoes in your garden can make or break their success. Life principles:
Assess and improve soil. Phosphorus helps plants grow healthy roots. This helps plants absorb water and nutrients efficiently, making them healthy and productive.
Get pH right. To absorb nutrients, tomatoes prefer 6.0–6.8. Plant them in full sun for eight hours a day.
If your tomatoes have struggled, move them, examine the soil, and adjust your watering schedule. Get back to fundamentals.
Protect Your Babies
In their early stages, tomatoes and other tropical crops need protection from wind, rain, and direct sunlight. Stressed plants are in survival mode and won’t grow. Seedling stems can break and become infected or die.
Young plants can potentially die from frost. In northern latitudes, where April and May are cool, this is crucial. Watch the weather and keep them indoors longer to get over the worst.
The intense summer sun can cause sunscald, which causes sunken patches, weak spots, or black mold on tomatoes. Sunscald exposes plants to additional diseases. Give them shade cloth when needed.
Prune and Sucker
Pruning and sucking tomato plants directs energy to fruit growth and ripening!
Pruning removes wasted, unwanted, or superfluous foliage, including empty trusses, yellow or dry bottom leaves, and abnormally long arms. This opens up the soil surface, enhances airflow, and reduces disease transmission.
Remove the axis—new growth between the main stem and leaves—by sucking. Instead of growing suckers, this concentrates the plant’s energy on the main stem and fruit. To reproduce, the plant sends forth shoots whenever and wherever it can. Gift a sucker to a friend or plant it in your garden for late-season tomatoes. Keep shears clean and sharp to avoid disease.
Ward Off Diseases
Healthy plants produce. To guarantee your plants are healthy and grow more tomatoes, try these tried-and-true methods:
The less disease-prone your tomato plot, the faster it will grow and yield more tomatoes. Indeterminate cultivars can produce through the first frost under optimal conditions!
Follow a Schedule
Remember your tomatoes after they’re grown and producing! Maintenance is key to their longevity.
