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One benefit of growing your own tomatoes is that they have a flavourful taste that can’t be beaten. Store-bought tomatoes can’t compare to a juicy, tasty tomato from your garden. But is there a way to make these tasty tomatoes treat even better?
How your tomato plants taste will depend on their variety, how well you care for them, and how they are put together. These things can change so much that tomatoes from two different plants can taste very different.
Every year, you can make the tastiest crop possible by controlling and maximizing the factors that affect the taste of your tomatoes. Growing tomato plants is always a good gardening project.
If everything goes as planned, you’ll have a huge harvest of flavorful tomatoes to use in a wide range of tasty summer meals. But a few mistakes could lead to tomatoes that taste bitter, are soft, or have cracks in their skin.
We put together a list of tips from horticulture experts to help you start growing the best tomatoes you can.
Methods for growing tasty tomatoes
If you know what your plants need to grow as big, healthy, and juicy as possible, it will be easy to grow flavorful tomatoes.
With these tomato growing tips, you can grow beefsteak tomatoes that are mild and savory or sun sugar cherry tomatoes that are as sweet as candy.
Here are the methods for growing tasty tomatoes.
1. Try to get between 7-8 hours of direct sunlight
Because tomato plants love the sun, the best place to grow them is where they can get as much straight sunlight as possible. Tomato plants need 7-8 hours of full sunlight each day to grow well, though they can survive with as little as 6 hours.
Choose the area of your yard that has the least amount of trees, fences, or other structures blocking it. Don’t forget to use tomato cages or stakes to keep your plants standing up and facing the sun.
2. Check your soil and change it
We can promise that if you buy new potting soil, it will be healthy and well-balanced enough to grow tomatoes in pots. If you want to plant them in your garden, the soil may need some work after the long winter and the last growing season.
A soil test can tell you if there aren’t enough minerals or if the pH level is just a little off. The best soil has a pH of 6.5 to 6.8, which is slightly acidic.
3. Give your plants good fertilizers
Given how fast tomato plants grow, it makes sense that they would need a lot of food to keep going. Use a nutrient that is water-soluble and made for tomatoes for the best chance of success. If your soil test showed that it didn’t have enough nutrients, you could buy a mix that includes these important minerals. Consider using a transplant fertilizer and applying it once a week to help the plants adjust to being in the ground.
4. Water them Regularly
For your plants to make big, juicy tomatoes, they need a lot of water. But consistency is key to getting the best results.
If you aren’t consistent with when and how much you water your tomatoes, their shells will split or they might get blossom end rust. Depending on the weather, we recommend watering every other night in the evening.
Drip irrigation systems or soaker hoses are the best ways to keep your plants moist without giving them too much water. Always water your tomatoes at the soil level to strengthen the roots and prevent plant diseases.
5. Do mulching
Cover the soil’s surface with a layer of mulch to keep soil moisture from evaporating too quickly in the sun. Use bark chips or mulched leaves as natural mulch that doesn’t have any dyes added to it. Mulch will help keep weeds from sprouting, which can happen if there isn’t enough mulch. Weeds can end up taking a lot of soil nutrients from your growing vegetables.
6. Do pruning
Do you want to know how to get your tomatoes to grow faster? The key is to cut off the suckers. As your tomato plants grow, you’ll see that tiny new stems start to grow from where the larger branches join the main stem.
These so-called “suckers” use up a lot of your plant’s energy. Pinch them off with your thumb and forefinger to help your plant put more energy into making more and better tomatoes faster.
7. Put your tomatoes down in a deeper spot
Did you know that if you plant the main stem of your tomato deeply, it will send out more roots? This is helpful because tomato plants tend to get leggy and may fall over even when they are young.
Plant them just deep enough so that the bottom set of leaves is 1 to 2 inches above the soil line. Some gardeners swear by the method of planting tomatoes on their sides because it “hooks” the plant into the ground, spreads the root system over more ground, and strengthens the main stem as it grows straight toward the sun.
8. Parctice Pollination
Bees, beetles, butterflies, and other garden pollinators are happy to help with pollination tasks, but it doesn’t hurt to help out as well. If your tomatoes are growing in a greenhouse, you must pollinate them by hand.
You can use a new paintbrush or cotton swab. As soon as you see that a flower has opened, gently tap it with your brush to get the male pollen to land on the female pistil below. Gravity will do this on its own, but with a little help from people, the fruit will be even better.
9. Get rid of dead and infected parts.
If you keep letting old, dead leaves stay on your plants, they might lose energy. Fungi can grow on damaged plant parts and spread to other parts of your plant, making it sick. Cut off the pieces with clean shears and then throw them away in the trash.
10. Think about the rotation of crops.
Rotating your crops is one way to keep viruses and fungi away from your tomato plants as they grow. Spores can sleep through the winter and come back to life in the spring, ready to do more damage to your plants.
If you move your tomatoes to a different spot in the garden, the chance that the same pathogens will hurt them as they did last year will go down. Also, as you might have guessed, tomatoes without diseases taste much better than those with diseases.
Conclusion
Taste is the most important thing for home gardeners about a tomato. No one wants to be stuck with a bunch of tomatoes that they don’t like. If you follow these simple tips, you can have plenty of the best tomatoes to eat all season long.
