Top Tomato Tips

Get The Best From Your Tomato Crop

Dreaming of a BLT sandwich made with vine-ripened tomatoes from your garden? Or how about colourful cherry tomatoes garnishing your summer salads? America's plant doctors offer guidance for growing terrific tomatoes.

"Buy healthy tomato transplants to avoid disease and plant them in a sunny garden site. Water your plants as required by local soil conditions. Practice crop rotation by flip-flopping the garden site each year. These important practices can ensure a healthy and bountiful crop," Thomas Zitter, plant doctor and research scientist at Cornell University, said.

Tomatoes can be infected by a number of different blights (early, late, and Septoria leaf blight) that limit the quality and abundance of fruits or sometimes totally destroy the plant. To banish blights, follow these tips from the plant doctors:

• Inspect transplants and purchase healthy plants. Select wilt and nematode resistant varieties.
• Choose a range of varieties that mature at different times. The earlier the tomato matures, the more susceptible it is to early blight.
• Practice crop rotation by planting tomatoes and related vegetables in a different spot in the garden every year. Do not plant tomatoes and potatoes next to each other since they both are susceptible to early and late blight.
• Allow adequate spacing between plants. Remember, they grow pretty big late in the summer.

• Water only at the base of the plant and early in the day. Long periods of moisture on foliage encourage blight.
• Stake plants and remove suckers to increase air movement through the plant and to reduce moisture on the foliage. Staking also improves fruit quality and helps prevent soil rots.
• Mulch to keep plants evenly moist and to reduce watering, weeding and cultivation and to reduce blossom end rot.
• Monitor the leaves, especially lower ones, for the first symptoms of tomato blight. Remove infected leaves and begin application of a labelled fungicide.
• Remove all plant debris from the garden in the autumn. Many tomato blight organisms overwinter on dried plant tissues.
  

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