Tips for Growing Tomatoes - Especially the BIG Ones!
1. Seed Selection - Start with good seeds! Particularly if your goal is to grow giant tomatoes, any old seed from the big seed catalogs just won't do. Get your seeds from DOCUMENTED genetic lines. A claim such as "The Biggest Tomato Ever Bred" just won't cut it: pictures on scales, actual weights, certificates, witnesses and such. All tomatoes on this website are weighed, and certification is available for many of the larger specimens.
2. Proper Soil - For tomatoes, this means LOTS of organic matter. Shoot for 20-25% by volume, maybe even more! This is far more than the 5% recommended for "fertile soil". Shoot for loamy, "fluffy" soil and a pH of around 6.5.
3. Amendments - Mycorrhizal fungal spores, applied at the roots while transplanting, should greatly increase mineral uptake by the root system. Whether your goal is big yields or big fruits, mycorrhizal fungi is a must. A complete, balanced fertilizer program is critical as well. One of the best set of products on the market, used even by the world record holder Dan MacCoy, is Dunkel's line of fertilizers and foliage sprays.
4. Watering - Make sure the soil has good drainage (dense, heavy clay is not a good medium) and is kept moist, but not soggy all season long. Even the surface of the soil should be kept damp, unless you want to encourage blossom end rot. It's the fine feeder roots in the top 1-2" of soil that take up calcium ions. If the soil at this root zone is allowed to dry out, calcium uptake will be severely reduced and blossom end rot will likely follow in short order, especially for susceptible tomato varieties. Many "tomato experts" recommend watering deeply only once per week. I disagree! The natural, native habitat of tomatoes vines is moist, but not saturated soil. Once the main crop of tomatoes starts ripening then yes, watering can be reduced to help encourage ripening and improve fruit flavor. But if your goal is to grow BIG specimens or produce BIG yields, withholding water is counter-productive.
5. Temperature and Sunlight - Ideally, night time temperatures should be in the 55-65°F range, and daytime temperatures in the 70-85° range. Upper thresholds are 74° at night and 94° during the day. Higher temperatures leads to malformed blossoms and poor, if any pollination. The blossoms just wither and dry up instead, by the thousands (speaking from experience...). But tomato vines also love sunshine! At least 4 hours per day, but 8 or more is even better. However, too much intense sunlight, especially ultraviolet radiation, can cause tomatoes to get sun scald or ripen prematurely. The fruits themselves can get quite hot. For those who live at higher elevations, UV radiation can become a real problem. SHADECLOTH is extremely helpful for those who live at higher elevations or where daytime temperatures frequently exceed 90°. If your climate is really hot, consider installing a misting system as well. Maybe you can grow tomatoes in July in Phoenix, Arizona!
6. Plant Care - Pruning cherry tomato vines is unnecessary. Ditto for determinate and dwarf varieties. But nearly all tomato varieties that produce huge yields or huge fruits are indeterminate. For most of these, pruning is very beneficial. For high yields, remove up to half of the suckers and allow all blossoms to pollinate. For large fruit size, thin to just one tomato per truss, usually the biggest, unless you have objections to lobed or irregularly shaped tomatoes. But if you're growing for GIANT, competition-sized tomatoes, you need to thin to only one, or perhaps two stems per vine. The pruning itself stimulates production of fused blossoms (megablooms); and without an impressive megabloom, you have very little chance of producing anything over 2, or perhaps 3 lbs. If you have a really promising specimen growing, then remove all other tomatoes and blossoms on the vine, and at some point terminate all additional growing. This should focus all the resources of the plant into making that one special tomato grow as fast as possible. Of course you'll need to provide support for BIG tomatoes - get a sling under it once it reaches tennis ball sized or so.
Growing HUGE tomatoes has become a very competitive sport, with elite growers doing things like installing climate-controlled greenhouses, setting up a misting season on a timer, taking plant tissue samples regularly and submitting them for laboratory analysis, hand-pollinating megablooms up to 10 times per day, using very scientific formulations of compost teas and foliar sprays, applying mycorrhizal fungal spores and other beneficial microbes, protecting plants with shade cloth, putting slings under big tomatoes to keep them from ripping off the vine, installing specialized fencing to keep out pets and other critters, applying precisely calibrated chemical fertilizers, using plant hormone growth regulators, using systemic insecticides, using supplemental lighting at specific wavelengths, using air conditioning units near tomato vines, etc.
These elite growers also share tons of ideas online, and the best of the best hang out at the Giant Tomato Forum:
BigPumpkins.com
[My screen name here and at many other gardening forums is SEAMSFASTER; though regrettably, I rarely have time to contribute to online discussions anymore]
Best of luck growing GIANT tomatoes!
2. Proper Soil - For tomatoes, this means LOTS of organic matter. Shoot for 20-25% by volume, maybe even more! This is far more than the 5% recommended for "fertile soil". Shoot for loamy, "fluffy" soil and a pH of around 6.5.
3. Amendments - Mycorrhizal fungal spores, applied at the roots while transplanting, should greatly increase mineral uptake by the root system. Whether your goal is big yields or big fruits, mycorrhizal fungi is a must. A complete, balanced fertilizer program is critical as well. One of the best set of products on the market, used even by the world record holder Dan MacCoy, is Dunkel's line of fertilizers and foliage sprays.
4. Watering - Make sure the soil has good drainage (dense, heavy clay is not a good medium) and is kept moist, but not soggy all season long. Even the surface of the soil should be kept damp, unless you want to encourage blossom end rot. It's the fine feeder roots in the top 1-2" of soil that take up calcium ions. If the soil at this root zone is allowed to dry out, calcium uptake will be severely reduced and blossom end rot will likely follow in short order, especially for susceptible tomato varieties. Many "tomato experts" recommend watering deeply only once per week. I disagree! The natural, native habitat of tomatoes vines is moist, but not saturated soil. Once the main crop of tomatoes starts ripening then yes, watering can be reduced to help encourage ripening and improve fruit flavor. But if your goal is to grow BIG specimens or produce BIG yields, withholding water is counter-productive.
5. Temperature and Sunlight - Ideally, night time temperatures should be in the 55-65°F range, and daytime temperatures in the 70-85° range. Upper thresholds are 74° at night and 94° during the day. Higher temperatures leads to malformed blossoms and poor, if any pollination. The blossoms just wither and dry up instead, by the thousands (speaking from experience...). But tomato vines also love sunshine! At least 4 hours per day, but 8 or more is even better. However, too much intense sunlight, especially ultraviolet radiation, can cause tomatoes to get sun scald or ripen prematurely. The fruits themselves can get quite hot. For those who live at higher elevations, UV radiation can become a real problem. SHADECLOTH is extremely helpful for those who live at higher elevations or where daytime temperatures frequently exceed 90°. If your climate is really hot, consider installing a misting system as well. Maybe you can grow tomatoes in July in Phoenix, Arizona!
6. Plant Care - Pruning cherry tomato vines is unnecessary. Ditto for determinate and dwarf varieties. But nearly all tomato varieties that produce huge yields or huge fruits are indeterminate. For most of these, pruning is very beneficial. For high yields, remove up to half of the suckers and allow all blossoms to pollinate. For large fruit size, thin to just one tomato per truss, usually the biggest, unless you have objections to lobed or irregularly shaped tomatoes. But if you're growing for GIANT, competition-sized tomatoes, you need to thin to only one, or perhaps two stems per vine. The pruning itself stimulates production of fused blossoms (megablooms); and without an impressive megabloom, you have very little chance of producing anything over 2, or perhaps 3 lbs. If you have a really promising specimen growing, then remove all other tomatoes and blossoms on the vine, and at some point terminate all additional growing. This should focus all the resources of the plant into making that one special tomato grow as fast as possible. Of course you'll need to provide support for BIG tomatoes - get a sling under it once it reaches tennis ball sized or so.
Growing HUGE tomatoes has become a very competitive sport, with elite growers doing things like installing climate-controlled greenhouses, setting up a misting season on a timer, taking plant tissue samples regularly and submitting them for laboratory analysis, hand-pollinating megablooms up to 10 times per day, using very scientific formulations of compost teas and foliar sprays, applying mycorrhizal fungal spores and other beneficial microbes, protecting plants with shade cloth, putting slings under big tomatoes to keep them from ripping off the vine, installing specialized fencing to keep out pets and other critters, applying precisely calibrated chemical fertilizers, using plant hormone growth regulators, using systemic insecticides, using supplemental lighting at specific wavelengths, using air conditioning units near tomato vines, etc.
These elite growers also share tons of ideas online, and the best of the best hang out at the Giant Tomato Forum:
BigPumpkins.com
[My screen name here and at many other gardening forums is SEAMSFASTER; though regrettably, I rarely have time to contribute to online discussions anymore]
Best of luck growing GIANT tomatoes!