Do you want to grow the best tomatoes you’ve ever tasted? How about harvesting the biggest crop you’ve ever grown? Then make sure you put these special ingredients in your planting hole this season!
Homegrown tomatoes are delicious. The taste of a sun ripened tomato grown in your own backyard is far superior to anything you’ll ever find at stores. The thick juicy pulp is slightly sweet and acidic all at the same time, exploding with flavor with every bite. So it’s no wonder tomatoes are the most popular vegetable for backyard gardeners. (You can learn more about backyard vegetable growing here)
Grow the best tomato varieties for backyard growers:
- Italian Roma
- Sweet Million
- Super Beefsteak
- Tsifomandra
- Early Girl
1. Grow The Best Tomatoes With Baking Soda
Baking soda naturally sweetens the taste of tomatoes. It’s perfect to add as a fertilizer throughout the season and can be mixed into the soil at planting too. Just don’t use too much!
Add 2-3 tablespoons to the planting hole and mix into the soil thoroughly. Then sprinkle 1 tablespoon of baking soda around the base of each tomato plant and water in well just before fruit begins to ripen.
You’ll grow the sweetest tasting tomatoes you’ve ever tasted!
2. Add Plenty of Fish Guts
Some gardeners just use the heads of fish, but the guts, scales, fins and bones are all packed full of nutrients too. Toss everything into the bottom of your planting hole then chop them up with a spade as you mix in the soil.
The fish heads and guts are full of minerals and rich in potassium which will ensure an early and heavy cropping of big juicy tomatoes. Your plants will get a healthy dose of nitrogen, calcium and trace minerals over the growing season as the fish breaks down.
If you’ve dogs or wild animals then make sure you bury the fish heads deeply (at least a foot) to stop them from digging them back up and ruining your tomatoes!
Alternatively you can use this fish emulsion as a foliar spray throughout the growing season. Fish emulsion improves the growth of many more vegetables especially these 21 container grown crops.
3. How To Grow Tomatoes Without Blight
No this isn’t a hoax or even a clever marketing claim. Aspirin will actually help your tomato plants grow. The salicylic acid in aspirin is a powerful compound that will protect your plants from blight and other diseases.
If you prefer you can also spray the plants with aspirin dissolved in water but it’s more effective when the tablets slowly break down in the soil as the plant grows.
Put 2-3 tablets in the planting hole of each tomato plant and say goodbye to blight.
4. Eggshells Prevent Blossom End Rot
If you’ve ever grown tomatoes, then you know how frustrating blossom end rot can be. One day all your tomatoes are big and healthy and the next they’ve all started to rot.
Eggshells to the rescue! The high calcium content in the shells will ensure you grow the best tomatos and keep them well fed with all the calcium they need for the whole season. If you don’t have eggshells then seashells will also work just fine.
Mix a good handful into the soil around each of your tomato plants to keep them protected all season long.
5. Epsom Salts To Correct Magnesium Deficiency
Tomatoes can be difficult to grow in poor soil. One of the biggest problems gardeners face is a lack of magnesium in their soil. Without sufficient magnesium in the soil, your tomato plants won’t be able to efficiently use all the calcium they need to grow.
Low calcium can cause blossom end rot and ruin an entire season’s crop. Magnesium is also essential for photosynthesis and without it your tomatoes will be stunted and weak.
That’s why it’s always a good idea to add 1 to 2 tablespoons of epsom salts to the planting hole for each tomato. Giving your plants plenty of magnesium to grow, fruit and thrive!
6. Kelp Meal For Flavor
If you want to grow the best tomatoes with the best flavor you’ve got to feed them trace minerals. This is one of the reasons why store bought tomatoes never taste as good as homegrown. Kelp meal is full of trace minerals that will help your plants thrive and produce bumper crops.
Providing complete nutrition for hungry tomato plants ensures they get a big boost to their early development. Regular application of kelp fertilizer around the base of tomatoes ensures the plant has all the nutrients it needs to grow the tastiest tomatoes it can.
Apply 1 full cup into the planting hole at the time of planting. Then a quarter of a cup around the base of the plant as fruit starts to ripen to get the most intense flavors.
Kelp meal is great for improving new vegetable garden soil too. If you’re just starting your garden make sure you read this step-by-step guide.
If you want to grow the best tomatoes with the best flavor you’ve got to feed them trace mineralsClick To Tweet7. Bone Meal Increases Production
After putting all this effort into growing the best tomato plants possible you want to make sure they set plenty of fruit. Bone meal is full of phosphorous which helps the plant grow strong healthy roots to access all the nutrients you’ve given it.
The bone meal also improves the quantity and frequency of blossoms to you’ll harvest the most tomatoes possible from each plant.
I prefer using this fish bone meal to other bone meals because it includes more trace minerals and is absorbed more readily.
8. Bury Your Tomato Plants
Tomato plants can grow roots anywhere along their stems. The best way to plant your tomato is to bury it right up to the first few inches of the plant. Over the next few days your plant will sprout hundreds of tiny roots all along its stem.
When it comes to the middle of summer your tomato plant will have its roots so deep in the soil that you might not even need to water it. By forcing your tomato plant to establish a strong root system early on it’ll have more energy for fruiting earlier (and longer) in the season.
9. Pinch Your Tomatoes
Ever wondered where the saying “green thumb” comes from? If you’ve grown and pinched tomato plants, you’ll already know the answer and probably have green thumbs to prove it! One of the most important tasks when growing tomatoes is to pinch out suckers to force the plant to produce fruit instead of foliage.
You should always remove any shoots that come from the crotch joint (between the leaf and stem). These growths don’t produce any fruits and just take energy away from the plant so make sure you remove the early.
Use your thumb and finger to pinch or rub the young shoots off before they get to big. Or snap them off when they get to 1-2 inches in length.
Don’t forget to support your plants as they grow! These tomato cages can be used for multiple seasons and are rigid enough to support even the heaviest cropping varieties.
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Hi Ralph
Thanks for your comments. Pelletized fish or liquid fish will work great. I’ve used Neptunes Fish Emulsion in the past and it works great! Let us know how you go.
Mitch
Mitch: thank you very much for the edification on growing best tasting tomato’s. In my neighborhood, I live near abandoned golf course, and have wandering stray cats. The fish disembowelment fertilizer seems great, gonna have to substitute for organic fish pelleted or fish liquid fertilizer. All others you mentioned are no problem. Again, thank you.