I love tomatoes. Not only do I think tomato plants are pretty when they produce all that colorful fruit, but tomatoes are so dang versatile that I can’t imagine a garden without them. I love using them for tomato sauce, salsa, pizza sauce, in salads or just sprinkled with a little salt and pepper fresh from the garden {heirloom tomatoes are my hands down favorites, but I’ve included a full list of what I grow at the bottom of this post!}.
But let’s face it, not all tomatoes are created {ahem, or grown} equally! There really is a method to getting the best tasting tomatoes you’ve ever had. Here’s how:
Variety is the spice of life: This is so true when it comes to tomatoes. You’ll find that some varieties will thrive in your soil while others don’t. You’ll also find that a certain type of tomato grown in your soil tastes awesome {or not} compared to purchasing it at the store {no comparison!}. Plant a few that are known to do well in your region and see what takes. Here a post all about How to Know What Variety of Tomato to Grow.
Tomatoes like it warm and sunny: They’d basically be super happy sunning themselves on a tropical beach like most of us. Seriously though, they like warm soil, lots of sunlight and no wind. If you have a greenhouse, that’s their favorite place to grow, but if not, just make sure they’ll be in a well-drained, sunny area.
Soil matters: Tomatoes {depending on the variety} can be planted in all sorts of places like in raised beds, garden beds, hanging baskets, and containers. If space is an issue, you can grow your tomatoes upside down in hanging baskets or in a Topsy Turvy. You can pretty much plant them anywhere that has good soil. But good soil is key! Adding compost or well-rotted manure to your soil will really help.
How you plant matters: When you plant a tomato plant, plant them and their lowest set of leaves in the dirt. That will encourage better rooting. I like to trim up the rest of the leaves so that when I water, it doesn’t splash up onto the leaves and cause disease. Tomatoes hate to have their leaves wet.
Cage them: Throw that “don’t fence me in” saying out the window! They grow best with a cage. Put a tomato cage around the plant, being careful not to drive the wire into the roots. You can also stake the plants, if you have lots of plants or don’t want to buy cages.
Water well: Water regularly and deeply, but don’t let it pool. And remember to water the soil, not the plant. Tomatoes don’t like wet leaves and stems!
Water the roots: If you live in a super dry area, you can install a PVC pipe directly into the dirt by your plant. Send water down that pipe to get deep into the roots of the plant.
Pick the runts: Remove tiny tomatoes so the tomato plant can invest its energy in the larger, established fruit.
Remove the plant’s lower leaves: This will force the plant to put more of its energy into the tomatoes and not the leaves. Also, pinch out any shoots that grow between the stem and main branches because they’ll pull the same energy from the developing fruit.
Remove leaves around the fruit: Pluck the leaves around the larger tomatoes that have yet to ripen so it’ll let the sun hit the fruit.
Slow and steady: Tomatoes can be kind of finicky. You might have to use some trial and error to see what works in your climate and your soil. When you’ve found that your tomatoes are tasting delicious, duplicate the environment you created for a full tasty tomato harvest!
Here are the tomato varieties I love growing in my garden most years:
- Cherry Rainbow Blend {perfect for salads}
- Italian Roma {for eating fresh and sauce}
- Ace {for canning}
- Cherokee Purple {the best tomato on the PLANET!}
- Principe Borghese {for roasting and dehydrating}
- Green Zebra
- Sun Gold {My daughters favorite}
- Red and Yellow Pear {great for snacking and on salads}
- Bumble Bee Artisan Blend {sweet and oh so pretty!}
- Black Krim {The HH’s favorite}
So. What is YOUR favorite tomato variety to grow? Curious minds, we want to know.
~Mavis
Gardening books hold kind of a special place in my heart. Here are just a few of my favorites, although narrowing the list down to just 6 was tough.
My 6 Favorite Garden Books of all time:
- Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting
- The Complete Compost Gardening Guide
- Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre
- Sugar Snaps and Strawberries
- The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food
- The Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook
Nancy says
Thanks for including the tip about cutting the leaves right up the stem on tomatoes to prevent diseases! I’ve grown tomatoes for decades and use tip about cutting off the bottom leaves and sticking the leafless stalk way down in the soil. However, I had never heard of the other tip. I’ll try it up here in Canada if the snow ever leaves my yard!
Tracy says
The Early Girl variety has the best flavor in my opinion. The fruit is on the smaller side, but our plants have always produced a lot of fruit. I can’t wait for the first tomato sandwich of the year. Who needs the B & L, just give me the T!!
cat says
Tip about warmth makes sense! I put them against our car tent last year in full sun and they loved it. I ended up growing 80 pounds of tomatoes. Best thing was I even did it in container garden style.. six large plastic totes. Not bad for a gal whose only tried it twice!
Marcy says
Hi Mavis…I love, love, love Jelly bean tomatoes 🙂
Jeanette says
Campari tomato. Campari is a type of tomato, noted for its juiciness, high sugar level, low acidity, and lack of mealiness. Camparis are deep red and larger than a cherry tomato, but smaller and rounder than a plum tomato.
Campari tomatoes are my all time favorite! They taste so good.
Gigi says
They’re the only grocery store tomato that I will buy year around. Even in the winter they still taste great.
Paula says
I have been growing the Purple Cherokee for 3 years. I was given 2 plants at our farmer’s market 3 years ago. They were trying to get more people to grow them. They asked that you save the seeds and pass them on the following year. I did! I also grew a second year from my saved seeds. I am currently on my 3rd year from the original 2 plants. I plan to save some seeds again this year. They are currently our favorite tomatoes.
nancy says
We love Romas and Juliets. Juliets are a prolific grape tomato. My personal favorite is I think they are like the sun gold – oh so sweets.
nancy says
Personal favorite is Sun Sugar. Guess I should read before I hit the post button
Linda Anderson says
I love Principe Borghese for dehydrating, Roma’s for canning, and a heritage orange given to me by an Amish friend.
Mary Abbott says
My favorite in the taste category is Black Krim. My favorite for copious quantity is Kellogs Brreakfast Tomato.
Jennifer says
Thank you thank you! I love to grow tomatoes but watering is always an issue …. with the PVC pipe I am assuming you plant it down towards the roots ( similar to a stake ) so the water can reach the roots?
So excited for this garden season!
Mel says
Our favorite is Summer Cider. It’s a large gold beefsteak, so it’s juicy and a good slicer, but it’s still meaty. It’s sweet but also slightly tart and perfect for sauce, sandwiches, and salad. The plant is also a fighter–it withstands torrential rain, bugs, and anything else we’ve thrown at it without slowing production. Every year, we plant more.
Rebecca in MD says
My favorite cherry tomatoes are ‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’ and ‘Gardener’s Delight’. However, I am trying ‘Sun Gold’ this year since I have heard so many good things about it.
I have tried several varieties of Roma tomatoes, but haven’t found my favorite yet…… This year I am trying ‘San Marzano’. We also are growing ‘Amish Paste,’ a variety we have had good results with in the past.
In the beefsteak category we like ‘Mortgage Lifter’. This year I am also trying for the first time ‘Mrs. Maxwell’s’ and ‘Tonopah’,
In general I like to grow heirloom varieties, but ‘Tonopah’ was a free packet shipped with my order. It is an early variety that is supposed to yield in 67 days!
I look forward to exploring some of the varieties mentioned here.
Chyrl says
Our favorite is Black Krim, beautiful color and amazing taste!
Teresa says
I plant in both containers and raised beds. I always plant a lot of grape (chocolate sprinkles) and cherry tomatoes (sweet millions) for my grandchildren they eat most of them out in the yard while they’re playing very few make it into the house 🙂 for slicing I enjoy the Cherokee next would be Brandywine and I always plant a few early girls because it’s just so hard waiting on the Cherokees and Brandywines to ripen.
Jude DeWitt says
We have an agricultural college nearby that has a tomato tasting contest each year they call “Tomatah Paradah”. The public is encouraged to visit the gardens and sample about 50 varieties and VOTE! There are always other things to sample as well – peppers & watermelons especially. It’s a fun event that takes all afternoon. For the past several years Kellogg’s Breakfast has been the overall favorite. I, like you, prefer the darker, purple varieties personally.
Lewis Goudy says
Tolstoy has performed very well for me in central NM. I at one point had five 146′ trellises using drip irrigation. They consisted of cattle panels measuring 16’x54″ with 7″Hx5″V meshes affixed to steel T-posts set 8’O.C., with the bottom wire 16″ above grade. I was able to construct them by myself by setting the panels atop concrete blocks and then wiring them to the posts, then moving the blocks leapfrog fashion down the line. I placed them about 8′ apart running north and south. All five drip tapes were plugged into a single manifold (1″ soft black plastic) on the north end, which was provisioned at 12psi by a good quality 1″ garden hose running north to an outdoor faucet on my house. Except during heat waves (triple digits day after day) I watered every third day (10PM-6AM) but sometimes I had to water every other day. When I was getting started with this system I set the plants out every 14″ but after the first year every 7″. This variety is very disease resistant. It can suffer VW, a viral pathogen which is spread by a wind-borne sap-sucking insect. It is not contagious, and the primary reservoir hereabouts consists of our storied tumbleweeds, so like poverty it will always be with us. Because of the scattershot nature of the infection, the 7″ spacing worked well: if a plant weakened uninfected neighbors would just take over the space so the tomato wall would remain solid, and likewise hornworm damage. The key to managing the system was to go out at first light every day without fail and weave the growing shoots back through the trellis (and scout for hornworms). I harvested (and scouted) in the evening. I processed the fruit with a (motorized) Victorio strainer and reduced the puree in large open pans until it began to oil out. Then I would freeze in ice cube trays and store the supercubes in big plastic bags. By a happy coincidence this variety produces fruit that just fit through the hole in the strainer funnel. The setup would handle over a dozen per minute. I foliar fed (drenched) weekly with half-strength MiracleGro tomato food and epsom salt (1 heaping tbl + 1 rounded tsp/4 gallons).
I grew from seed single sown in M606 deep inserts (six sixpacks to a standard 1020 flat but 2.75″ deep rather than 2″) around Feb 20 (36 flats with 8 hours/day of bottom heat) and would be setting them out (a foot tall) about now, after a couple weeks of hardening-off (protected from excessive wind, cold, and assorted troublemakers). I used MiracleGro potting mix with 2tsp dolomitic hydrate of lime/gal loose but well-shook mix and waited two days after prepping it to sow. I got the seed from Park Seed Wholesale. They rock, and so do Orangesickle peppers!
The ground has had livestock on it for six months, and I’m going to be using flood irrigation, mainly classic Three Sisters (corn, beans, butternut) but also summer squash, okra, and a few other things. I have about 1000 square feet three steps from my back door for Palmer’s Amaranth aka common pigweed (almost twice as much potassium as bananas!), etc. Next year I am going back to Tolstoys (but with 10′ trellises and double driplines) and peppers (orangesickle, gypsy, etc., and maybe some bells–Karma rocks but the cubanelle types seem more productive).