4 Mistakes That Are KILLING Your Tomato Production!

what's going on gardeners it's Sunday May 7th and it is a gorgeous afternoon here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina and on today's video I'm going to share with you four mistakes you may be making that are killing your tomato production and how to fix it if you're new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated the first mistake that many gardeners make is that they don't fertilize their tomato plants enough if you're relying on the soil to do the work for you or you're only using things like homemade compost and you're not adopting a regular consistent fertilizing routine there is no way that your tomatoes are reaching Peak Performance and you're leaving a ton of performance on the table the modern cultivars of tomatoes that we grow in our vegetable gardens today in no way shape or form resemble the old wild types of tomatoes that came about naturally from nature we as humans have spent so much time selectively breed and Crossing various varieties of tomatoes to manufacture plants with huge production and huge fruits that the fertilizer demand of modern Tomatoes is just enormous then we take these super demanding tomato plants and we plant them in high density in strange perfectly neat patterns in rows that you will never find anywhere in nature and when you add all of these things up there is no way that the soil itself can keep up with the nutrient demands of the plants unless you're Trucking in huge amounts of compost simply composting is not enough you have to add external fertilizer if you want good production the way I like to fertilize my tomato plants is every two weeks that's twice a month I like to give them some organic all-purpose fertilizer something around the 555 NPK but as long as all the NPK numbers are close together and represented it's close enough it can be a four five four four four four four you get the point and I also like supplementing it with bone meal which is a fantastic source of or organic phosphorus which will slowly break down and will help the plants develop more flowers and more fruit while strengthening the roots and by the way if you're interested in any of the fertilizer products that I'm using in this video they will all be linked in my Amazon storefront down in the video description and I'll also play some direct links as well just to make things easy for you the way I fertilize my tomatoes is every two weeks I come and I pull away the layer of mulch that I have around the plants and then I sprinkle about one tablespoon of the organic all-purpose fertilizer around the base of the tomato plant as well as half to one tablespoon of the bone meal and then once it is added I like to take my fingertips and lightly work it into the top inch or so of the soil and then I will simply Place The Mulch layer back on top then once the organic granulated fertilizers have been placed around the bases of the plant and the mulch has been put back I like to water them in with a water soluble fertilizer blend that I mix in watering cans and my favorite things to use are Alaska fish fertilizer 511 and Jack's all-purpose 20 20 water-soluble fertilizer I personally think this is the best of the synthesized water-soluble fertilizers and I have great results with it so what I do is I take my two gallon watering cans and I mix this Jax 20 20 20 in at a concentration of one tablespoon per gallon and then I supplement each watering can with about a two second pour which equates to about two to three tablespoons of the Alaska fish fertilizer after I mix them all together I then take them over to my garden beds and I water all around the plants each two gallon watering can is usually enough to water about six to eight plants the second mistake you may be making that is killing your tomato production is you are giving your plants the wrong kind of fertilizer mainly fertilizers that are too high in nitrogen at flowering time in terms of overall plant biology nitrogen is the macronutrient that is most responsible for leafy green growth on a plant phosphorus is most responsible for the flowering and fruiting cycle as well as the development of roots and potassium is most responsible for cellular Division and the overall metabolic health of the plant so if what you're feeding your tomato plants is something like Miracle Grow all-purpose fertilizer or only fish Emulsion you are probably giving your tomato plants way too much nitrogen Miracle-Gro all-purpose fertilizer has an NPK ratio of 24 816 so despite the name it is actually a high nitrogen fertilizer and is a terrible all-purpose fertilizer similarly while fish fertilizer is chock full of vitamins and minerals that are great for the overall health of the plant if this is all you give them it has an NPK of 511 which is a very high nitrogen fertilizer so while these fertilizers are great if you're growing something like lettuce where you really want to eat the leafy green growth or you're just starting out with seedlings that are very small and you want them to grow up very quickly and put on a lot of leafy green growth once plants start entering the flowering cycle these high nitrogen fertilizers can actually discourage flowering and fruiting and will prefer the plant grow leafy green growth instead so basically you will be growing foliage not fruits once your vegetables start entering the flowering and fruiting cycle it is critical that you switch to a balanced fertilizer like this Jax 20 20 because it has an overall nitrogen phosphorus potassium ratio of one to one to one it is not a strong nitrogen fertilizer even though it still has a good bit of nitrogen in it and when you switch to a balanced fertilizer like this you're basically telling the plant to have a very balanced metabolism and to split up its energy into leafy green growth and the flowering and fruiting cycle so that will generally give you a balanced and healthy plant that will continue to grow larger but it won't negatively impact the fruiting cycle however there is another strategy that can help you grow even more flowers on your fruiting plants and even your fruit trees what I actually like to do is when I see the first flowers start to develop on my tomato plants pepper plants eggplants cucumbers any of my flowering fruits and vegetables I like to hit them with a dose of this 10 30 20 Blossom booster because the high phosphorus helps boost the flowers I've seen this first hand year after year I really think it makes a big difference and earlier when I showed you myself watering my tomato plants I actually used this fertilizer in the watering cans if you can't find the Jack's Blossom booster in stores or you don't want to order online a good substitute is the Miracle Grow Flower Food 15 30 15. it works similarly but like I said I also have all of these items Linked In My Amazon storefront down in the video description underneath the soluble fertilizers list and I've placed direct links in the video description to all of these items and if you're wondering if it's still safe to give your plants fish fertilizer when they start to flower the answer is yes as long as you're blending them with the other fertilizers if all you gave them was fish fertilizer it would be too much nitrogen however when you blend it with things like 20 20 20 or 10 30 20 the much weaker organic fertilizers are usually a drop in the bucket when it comes to the actual nitrogen content so you won't be throwing off the ratio all that much but you will still be adding all of the great micronutrients the vitamins and minerals that are in the whole fish product so I love blending the fertilizers together for this reason the third mistake you may be making that is killing your tomato production is you are pruning your determinate style Tomatoes when you watch online tutorials on how to prune tomato plants they usually tell you to remove a lot of the suckers on your tomato plants in order to control their vertical growth and promote airflow however those tutorials often fail to say that is only true for indeterminate tomatoes if you are growing determinate tomatoes and you do that you will not have a harvest indeterminate tomato plants like the plant you see right here grow as a Vine so you can grow them up a trellis or a piece of twine like you see right here so for that reason it's often beneficial to remove some of the suckers otherwise the plants can grow out of control and they will be very difficult to actually support and that lack of airflow from all of the foliage and vegetation can actually help promote disease so when you remove the suckers they actually become easier to manage and less prone to getting some kind of disease that is not the case with determinate tomato plants determinate tomato plants grow to a predetermined height hence the name determinant they only get to be about two to four feet tall depending on the variety that you're growing they grow as a bush not a Vine so all of these suckers have to be maintained because this plant is only going to get to be about that tall and all of the flowers come off of the suckers so if I remove any of the suckers on this little tiny Stout Bush style plant I'm going to remove all of the areas where they will flower and I will get no fruit at all for that reason determinate tomato plants generally speaking shouldn't be pruned at all you never want to remove any of the suckers the only time it's okay to prune a tomato plant is the leaf nodes that come off 90 degrees from the main stem if they touch the ground at the very bottom of the plant you don't want to remove anything other than the foliage that may be draping on the ground the only other exception may be if you're starting to get a little bit of disease on your tomato plant I'm starting to see the signs of early blight form on some of these varieties because it's already getting hot and humid here where I live in North Carolina so you can remove a leaf here and there that may have disease on them but again generally speaking your determinate tomato plants start to naturally die back once the fruit starts to ripen so they usually require very little disease management because their natural lifespan is often shorter than it takes for the diseases to kill them off and finally if you're growing tomato plants from the dwarf tomato project regardless of if there are labeled as indeterminate semi-determinant or determinant I find you need to treat all of these as a determinate style tomato they tend to top off after about two to three feet in height and they produce all of their flowers and fruit before that they won't really grow much after so for all intents and purposes treat your dwarf tomato project Tomatoes like a determinant so it is very important to know if you're growing an indeterminate or determinate tomato before you start pruning your tomato plants now if you're growing your tomatoes from seed the seed packet always says whether they are indeterminate or determinate if you bought your plants as transplants and you only know the variety name and it doesn't say on the Tomato tag what they are you're going to have to Google that variety and figure that out every single seed website that carries that variety will say in the description if it's a determinant or an indeterminate and finally if you're growing tomato plants and you don't even know the variety name then you're going to have to basically wait until they're two feet tall because by then it should be be evident whether they're growing as a Vine or a bush if they are not growing as a vine do not prune them and the fourth mistake you may be making that is killing your tomato production is you are pruning your indeterminate tomatoes to the wrong number of main stems relative to your tomato plant spacing and I kind of blame the internet for a lot of this most of us are growing Our tomato garden vertically and for good reason that keeps the Tomato vines off the ground where they are more susceptible to pests and diseases however indeterminate tomato plants can grow into unruly Vines so for that reason a lot of gardeners want to manage the total number of main stems otherwise the plant can become too large and too difficult to manage and it can spread disease and hide pests but there are so many guides out there on the internet that will show you how to prune your indeterminate tomatoes some guides say prune them to a single stem others say let them Bush out because if you prune off too many of the stems you're going to get less flowers and therefore less fruit but what you really need to understand is you need to train your tomato plants for the infrastructure and the plant space that you're actually growing them to you can't just go out and say I'm going to single stem this plant or double stem this plant or I'm going to let it Vine out out of control because that could backfire and blow up in your face you need to understand why you're pruning your tomato plants the way you are the reason why you want to prune your tomato plants to a certain number of stems is because you want to maximize the output of your garden per square foot of the garden while also allowing the plants to have enough airflow that they don't prematurely contract disease so a lot of gardeners that train their tomato plants to a single stem are doing it because they are only spacing each tomato plant about 12 to 18 inches so because they are spacing them so close together they can prune their plants to one single main stem and still get great production because there are so many plants now me on the other hand I give my indeterminate tomato plants two feet of spacing so if I train them only to a single stem I would really harm my overall production because I'd have one plant here one plant way over there I'd have big gaps in between the plants so I'd get a lot less fruit so what I usually do is I train my indeterminate tomato plants to two main stems because I find two main stems are going to double basically the amount of flowers on my plant and because I'm spacing them every two feet two main stems per plant gives me the perfect amount of production per square foot while still allowing for enough airflow that they don't prematurely contract disease if your tomato plants are spaced even wider than mine then you'll probably want to allow your indeterminate tomato plants to grow to even more main stems otherwise you're going to get very poor production per square foot of your garden if you're spacing these plants three to four feet apart in all directions and you're only training them to one single main stem you're going to have enormous square footage of your garden where nothing is growing and you're going to get pretty poor production overall so so it's really important that you consider these things the more main stems you give your tomato plant the more flowers it's going to have but generally the smaller the fruit is going to be the less air flow and therefore the more disease pressure but on that note if you live in a climate where disease pressure isn't really a problem because maybe you have dry Summers and low humidity it may be in your best interest to just let the tomato plants grow as many main stems as possible let them sucker all over the place because if you are not susceptible to disease in your climate then why give your plants more airflow if disease isn't an issue as long as you're happy with the size of the fruits that you're getting from the plants why remove any of the suckers removing suckers only means less flowers and less fruit so you need to consider all of these things when you actually start removing the suckers on your tomato plant there is no one-size-fits all number of main stems that's all going to depend on your unique situation how large you want the fruit how much room you have to grow the plants how disease prone you are in your unique area Etc so consider that before you start doing any kind of pruning activities and that right there are four mistakes you may be making growing tomatoes that are killing your tomato production so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you're notified when we release more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that I featured in this video they are all linked Down Below in my Amazon storefront in the video description and I also Place some direct links in the video description as well for your convenience and while you're there check out my spreadshop for custom merch if you want to support the channel if you have any questions please ask them down in the comments section below and I will do my best to answer them thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video oh Dale dad got you a brand new Nerf ball because you've killed your other one it lasted it lasted almost five entire months which is really good for you so here's another one this is Dale's favorite toy in the world [Music] and look daily he's gonna go crazy he's gonna go crazy and there he goes thank you

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 102,606

Keywords: growing tomatoes, how to grow tomatoes, grow tomatoes, tomato growing, tomato growing mistakes, tomato production, fertilizing tomatoes, pruning tomatoes, tomato plant, tomato plants, tomato, tomatoes, garden, gardening, vegetable garden, vegetable gardening, raised bed, gardening tips, garden tips, gardening tips and tricks, gardening hacks, garden hacks, food forest, edible landscaping, growing, plants, vegetables, how to, diy, millennial gardener, the millennial gardener

Id: IsbGY7Aon_Q

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023