I love growing tomatoes and plant them every year, but my plants never seem to have the fruit production I hope for. Any suggestions? JD

Tomatoes have to be the #1 home garden crop in the U.S.A. Almost everyone who has a garden, grows them with varying degrees of success. Let’s talk about a few things you can do to improve your chances for a great crop of tomatoes.

The first thing we need to talk about is the type of tomato you want to grow. Tomatoes are broken down into two categories: determinate and indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes produce a single crop in a year. They are a good choice if you want a large quantity of tomatoes at one time to either can or make into salsa or pasta sauce. Indeterminate tomatoes continue to produce all season long. These are good if you want to have a supply of tomatoes to eat all throughout the growing season.

There are also heirloom and hybrid tomatoes. Heirlooms are those varieties that have remained the same for many years, passed down from generation to generation. Hybrids are tomatoes that have been cross-bred to increase yield or perhaps disease resistance. These are great if you’ve had problems with plant disease in the past as some of these have built in resistance to fusarium wilt among others.

Tomatoes do best in full sun, so your planting location needs 8-10 hours of sun each day. A little protection from that late afternoon sun wouldn’t hurt either.

Fortunately, tomatoes are not picky about soil, but they do best in fertile, well-drained soil with a good supply of organic matter. A slightly acidic pH of about 6.5 is preferred, but not required. To find out your soil pH and nutrient levels, you can get a soil test from the OSU Extension office. We have instructions for this on our website (www.tulsamastergardeners.org).

Tomatoes do best with a fertilizer that is low in nitrogen, high in phosphorus, and medium to high in potassium. If you are not able to get a soil test, prior to transplanting, spread between one to two pounds of 10-20-10 or similar fertilizer for each 100 square feet of your garden.

When deciding how many tomato plants to plant, a good guide is about 3 - 5 plants per person if you are wanting fresh fruit season long. If you are wanting to can or process your tomatoes, 5 - 10 plants per person is a good guide.

Many of us start our tomato plants from seed indoors before planting outside. That ship has pretty much sailed, but whether you grow your own, or purchase transplants from local nurseries, there’s not really any need to plant before soil temperatures are above 60 degrees. Cooler temperatures negatively affect plant growth. This brings up the question: how do I know my soil temperature? To find out soil temperature, you can purchase a soil temperature gage, but most of use the Mesonet which is a cooperative venture between OU and OSU. There are testing sites in every county and you can find out a wealth of weather information, including soil temperature (www.mesonet.org).

For those of you who started your tomatoes from seed, if your tomato plants are kind of leggy (long stalks) you can plant your tomato plants in a shallow trench, laying the tomato plant’s stalk in the soil with only a few inches of the plant above the ground. This will allow roots to grow from the entire buried stalk.

Spacing of your tomato plants is critical and varies with variety, but the general recommendation is to plant tomatoes in rows at least 3 feet apart and 2 to 4 feet between them in a row.

Mulch is always a great idea for your garden, so once your transplants have started to take off, add a 2 - 3-inch layer of mulch. This will help minimize weeds, water evaporation, and help keep soil temperatures manageable at the height of our Oklahoma summers.

Most tomato plants will need some type of support and there are a variety of ways to accomplish this. Many of us are familiar with the standard tomato cages, but if you are growing indeterminate tomatoes, those plants can get 4 - 6 feet tall and cages of that size can be expensive. Personally, I hammer a 1” pvc pipe next to each of my tomato plants and secure it loosely to that, but there are a variety of ways to support your tomatoes. We have a video on the Vegetable page of our website that goes into some of these methods.

As a vegetable gardener, you need to be familiar with the term “side dressing.” Side dressing is the process of sprinkling your fertilizer in between the plants rather than right up next to them. This allows the nitrogen to migrate naturally to all the roots rather than being concentrated in one area.

The best time to side dress is when the first fruits are about 1/3 grown. You should use a nitrogen only fertilizer at a rate of about one pound per 100-foot row or about one tablespoon per plant. A second application of fertilizer should be applied about two weeks after the first fruit are ripe and then a third application about a month later. Be sure to water after fertilizing.

We have an abundance of information on growing tomatoes on our website. To dig deeper, just check it out. Good luck.

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org.

Photo: Oklahoma State University Agricultural Communications Services