| Sweet-Talk Your Tomatoes into a Bountiful Harvest Everyone knows there is nothing like biting into a garden-fresh, sun-ripened tomato. They’re sweeter, juicier, and just plain tastier than anything you can purchase at your local supermarket. Growing organic tomatoes in your backyard or patio containers is a great way to capture that amazing flavor, even if just for a few short months.
Maintenance and Care: Even your Mom’s best tomato-growing advice may not prepare you to tackle the common hurdles faced by tomato growers. So how do you coax your tomato plants into producing the most bountiful harvest possible? Start with a few good maintenance routines.
Water deeply and often
Tomato plants love their water, especially on hot days. Keep the soil moisture consistent by adopting a regular, deep irrigation system that’s best-suited for your particular climate and soil conditions. Adding a thick layer of mulch around your plants 4 or 5 weeks after transplanting will help maintain even moisture levels (think straw or grass clippings work too).
Maintain healthy soil Keep your tomato plants happy with nutrient-rich soil by amending your soil with fresh compost on a regular basis. A compost stimulator like Compost Plus, which you add to your compost bin or pile, has beneficial microorganisms to speed the production of finished compost. Top- and side-d ress the soil with your finished compost by digging (shallowly) it into the soil around the plant to avoid disturbing the roots. As you water the plants, the nutrients will be carried deeper into the soil to the roots. Cover crop mulches are another excellent method of improving your soil without the use of chemicals.
Train and support Many tomatoes are actually vines, and as such, they require support to keep their fruit off the soil and to prevent rotting.  Our Tomato & Vegetable Gardening Kit comes with Stake it Easy™ Garden Staking system together with our Tomato & Vegetable Insect Killer to help you promote healthy, pest-free development of your tomato plants.
Prune Indeterminate plants (those that continue growing throughout the season) Indeterminant tomatoes are the vining variety. Common ones include beef steak, big boy & cherry tomato varieties. Prune away some of the leaves once the plant has been growing for at least 4-6 weeks and fruit are starting to form. This will ensure the fruit have enough sun to ripen.
To harvest larger sweeter fruit - pinch away the suckers that form where the leaf stem meets the main plant stem. To harvest as much fruit as possible - do not pinch away the suckers.
Determinate plants (those that grow to a fixed mature size) Determinant tomatoes resemble a bush more than a vine but they should still be staked to support the fruit when the plant reaches maturity. The most common type of determinant tomato plant is the roma tomato (AKA plum tomoatoes).
Do not prune or sucker as they have a built-in growth check. End of Season Care With both determinant and indeterminant plants, as the season begins to come to a close, you’ll find that some of your plant’s leaves will die as they concentrate on developing the fruit. Removing dead leaves will allow the plant to keep its focus on creating sweet, nutrient rich tomatoes until first frost. Garden Pests and Disease Solutions:
Getting your tomato plants to be their most productive is one thing, but you may also need to overcome pests and diseases that strike throughout the season. Of course, the key to avoiding such problems is prevention by developing healthy soil, choosing the hardiest plant varieties, and following the maintenance tips above. If, however, you’re faced with a destructive disease or a pesky pest, remedy the problem with a few simple steps:
Define the Problem
First, you’ll need to determine exactly what it is that’s plaguing your tomato plants so that you can treat them with the least  trauma possible. Our Plant Disease Library and our Garden Insect Library provides a pictorial overview of the most common problems experienced by home gardeners, making this process easy.
Plant Diseases There are generally two types of plant diseases: foliar diseases are those that affect just the plant’s leaves, and systemic diseases are those that affect a whole plant. The most common diseases to plague tomato plants are blight, leaf spot, and wilt disease such as verticillium and fusarium, problems our Garden Fungicide Concentrate can control. To speed healing, remove the diseased leaves. If the disease is widespread, only remove the most diseased leaves, taking care not to prune more than a third of the leaves at a time to prevent plant-shock and possible death. Be sure not to add diseased plants to your compost pile.
Pest Problems You may need to attack your tomato problem with an organic pesticide. But remember, not all bugs are bad! In fact, many are integral  to a healthy garden. You can encourage these insects to inhabit your outdoor space by creating inviting habitats. Introducing beneficial bugs is also a great way to get those populations growing. Using a natural pesticide can also help with common pest problems. Insect Killing Soap works well for combating soft-bodied insects and is compatible with beneficial insects. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is one of the most common biological controls used for backyard pests and is effective for most leaf-feeding caterpillars, yet won’t harm worms or beneficial bugs. New strains of this substance now allow you to target problems more specifically, which is good if you want to get rid of one type of caterpillar but not others (some caterpillars are the precursors to butterflies you’ll want to attract to your garden). Our Caterpillar Killer  Concentrate and Garden Dust are two great products for ridding yourself of the most common pest caterpillars. If you have a problem with beetles or other hard-bodied insects eathing your leaves; Tomato & Vegetable Insect Killer will kill them on contact with a powerful Organic Pyrethrin & Insecticidal Soap combination. If you have introduced beneficial bugs to your garden, do not use this method as it will kill them too.
With these tips to care for your tomatoes you’ll be ready to fill a salad bowl to brimming with your fresh tomatoes in no time! Yum.
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