How to Plant and Grow Tomatoes and Peppers

hey guys it's the day we plant our tomatoes and our peppers so I'm excited about it it's been put off for way too long well the peppers had to be because of the weather um we've been it's still it's June it's still we've got cool weather cloudy days had some rain a couple days ago and you really want to wait until your nighttime temperatures are well into the 50s 55 and above if possible because putting Peppers out too soon just stunts their growth and sometimes they never recover from that tomatoes on the other hand I've just been putting it off for much too long um you know I planted them quite a while ago I sowed the seeds in the Solo cups and they're ready I mean we're producing tomatoes in these Solo cups and the leaves are looking a little bit purple which is just a nutrient deficiency so getting these in the ground will definitely help and kind of get rid of that but they'll be okay tomatoes are very resilient pepper plants are the same I brought them out maybe a little bit too early they have some Leaf curl which is basically just a symptom of kind of some Shock they have a little purple veining as well so they need some more nutrients and for both of these just getting them in the ground is going to make a world of difference and they're going to take off and do just fine so I'm going to gather these plants up get to the planting site and we'll talk a little bit further all right so I've got a few different varieties laid out here I've got super steak super sauce uh Sun gold pink princess and [Music] of course Kellogg's breakfast my favorite tomato and then a friend of mine gave me um Bush steak which I believe I talked about these in the video best tomatoes for your zone for your area I'll put a link up here for that but uh he brought me four of these he grew from seeds and these are a steakhouse type tomato a beef steak tomato that grows on a small plant like a determinate plant so that brings us to the types of tomatoes there are and that is determinate indeterminate and then there's a semi determinant which is kind of in between the two and then a cherry tomato which mostly is indeterminate there are a few smaller types that are determinate so what does all that mean a determinate tomato like these Bush steaks like Roma those grow to a certain height generally about three feet tall and then they produce all their Tomatoes pretty much at one time and then they're done the season is over for them an indeterminate tomato is one that and this is probably most of the tomatoes that you can grow those are tomatoes that continue to grow and they produce and they continue to grow taller produce continue to grow taller produce and keep going until cold weather comes to kill them now if you have a really long growing season like I do where we have tomatoes that grow through the winter even indeterminants are great because they will produce through that whole time now they will slow down in the winter cool weather they won't be like they're producing in summertime but they will keep going now I don't prune my determinate Tomatoes I don't prune my cherry tomatoes unless they're getting too big and they need to just be kind of wrangled in a little bit but I definitely do prune the indeterminants and I will show you how to do that once I've got these planted so we're going to start with tomatoes first and then we'll do peppers now most tomato plants need to be supported however the bush steak only grows a couple of feet tall and so it doesn't need maybe any support I've never grown this variety before so we'll see I'm not going to start out with any support but for most of your determinate types of tomato like if you're growing Aroma tomato a general you know tomato cage from the hardware store or wherever will work make sure they're sturdy though a lot of tomato cages are so flimsily put together that they start to the Rings start to break off before you even get them home so I'm going to plant this right here in this bed I'm not going to plant it with all the rest of the tomatoes to save space I'm just going to plant these because they're fairly small just in some little pockets that I've got throughout the vegetable garden so with tomatoes no matter what kind they are you want to plant them deep now the problem is these beds here are only six inches deep now they have the smaller Roots can access the native soil below however because I have Gophers I have to put gopher wire which is it's now six inches under this so I can't dig a hole any deeper than six inches The Roots can grow further down than six inches because they can grow right through that go for wire and the thing with tomatoes is they will develop Roots all along their stem so unlike most things you want to plant them deep because if you plant them up to here they're going to grow roots all the way along the stem under the ground and that's just going to develop a much stronger more productive plant but in a six inch deep bed you can't really do that so there's a little trick pop these out here just mess up the roots a little bit and we're going to lay it on the side in this hole so we get all that stem under the ground now it's only a few inches deep but it still is going to allow for more root growth I want to put in some fertilizer and I use Neptune's Harvest crab and lobster and Neptune's Harvest kelp meal I like the the crushed crab and lobster shell it the way it's crushed it makes different sizes in the crushing and so you can see large pieces of shell you can see Tiny powdery pieces of shell but the thing is those small pieces the smaller the piece the faster they're going to be dispersed and taken up by the plant and then the bigger the pieces they're going to slowly break down over the next couple of months and give a kind of a slow release fertilizer as well but it's all natural those crab and lobster shells are great sources of nitrogen and phosphorus and calcium which is really important a lot of tomatoes if they don't have enough calcium they will get Blossom and rot now typically that's not because there's a lack of calcium in the soil it's just a lack of being able to draw in that calcium and the best remedy for blossom end rot is more even watering because when it's not watered well it cannot bring the calcium up into the plant and therefore you'll get blossom end rot now one thing people swear by for blossom end rot is Epsom salts now people may swear by it but there's actually no evidence that this works I did a whole video on it I'll leave a link up here and down below in fact the magnesium in the Epsom salt can actually block some of the calcium that's in the soil from being absorbed by the tomato plant which is the exact opposite of what you want to do so I will put Epsom salts in a tomato plant in a pot because you can't guarantee the Magnesium is going to be in that pot and tomatoes do need magnesium but in the ground it's very rare that a soil will be deplete of magnesium so I won't be using Epsom salts today Neptune's Harvest also has kelp meal and kelp is a really great source of potassium which tomatoes really need and it's also got a natural growth hormone that helps produce a really strong root system so now that we've got our fertilizer in there we're going to lay the plant on its side and just cover all of that up and just kind of gently bend the stem so that last bit is out of the soil and you can take the leaves off of that part we're burying or not it doesn't really matter and then I'm going to replace the mulch mulch is so important for for your whole garden but tomatoes are moisture lovers and this keeps the moisture in the soil and it keeps the weeds down and then remember to label it so you know what it is typically you're going to plant determinate Tomatoes about three feet apart to give them good air flow through the plant and between each other to keep down diseases now there's a little more to talk about when it comes to indeterminate tomato plants for one it's a much bigger plant if left to grow how it wants to like I mentioned before indeterminate tomato plants are going to grow and grow and grow until the cold weather comes to kill them so how do we maximize the Harvest for that amount of growth well first of all it's important to know that they're going to produce a lot more leaves than they are fruit if left to grow naturally if you've left an indeterminate tomato to grow in its natural way along the ground it's going to take up a space that is probably I mean it could be 10 feet in diameter one plant but out of that 10 feet you're not going to get a ton of fruit you're not going to get 10 feet worth of fruit because a lot of the plant's energy is going into producing that plant and what the plant wants to do if it was you know in nature is take advantage of that ability to put down Roots along the stem and so as it grows and flops over it's going to put down roots in that area where the stem touches the ground it also wants to grow as far as possible because every once in a while it's going to put on a truss of fruit and wherever it has traveled to it's going to drop that fruit on the ground or it's going to be laying on the ground so the fruit is going to rot fast or be taken by rodents or whatever and it's going to drop its seed and be able to kind of reproduce that way so that's its goal it's not its goal is not to feed us and a lot of people argue with me on this it's a very well known practice pruning indeterminate tomatoes and taking out the side shoots which I'll show you but people want to argue with me and that's okay but I have produced so many tomatoes in tiny little beds like this at my last house I produced over 300 tomatoes in one year from about 50 square feet in raised beds so let's plant one of these and I'm going to show you how to prune it and trellis it to produce maximum amount of fruit for the least amount of space and when we're done you will see I'm going to be planting these about a foot apart and pruning your Tomatoes is not just to focus the energy on tomatoes rather than leaves it's actually going to say especially if you live in a humid climate it's going to save you from a lot of disease that will take your tomatoes out in humid weather because you're going to get a lot more air flow through the plants than you will if it's left to grow like a jungle so these are going to be planted the same exact way as we did the other one gonna throw in some fertilizer and this bed had peas growing in it all winter long so peas are a legume and they leave some nitrogen in the soil so you should have a little bit of extra nitrogen then we're going to take the plant and I'm going to pull off some of these just for demonstration because I want you to see kind of how much is going under and I'll leave it at that this is a super steak really good root system there trying to mess The Roots up a little bit so they can it stimulates more root growth and it gets them out of the shape of the cup and get some going into the soil so now we want to just gently kind of Bend this up a little bit fill that hole back in kind of remember where this was so you don't plant the next one right on top of it now if you can see here you've got the main stem going up it goes straight up and you've got another stem coming out here where the leaf meets the main stem I call it the armpit so right in that Junction there is this growth coming out and that's going to happen all the way up the main stem now each one of these is going to take off and produce a ton more leaves with very little fruit so every single one we're going to pinch off just like that now you can put these in water and start a whole new plant if you'd like now the flowers actually look very different they come off of the stem they are not in an armpit they come directly off of the stem we're going to leave those of course because those are what's going to become our tomatoes so now how are these Tomatoes supported well with this trellis structure overhead now I've been very fortunate to have the number one tomato growing video of all time on YouTube it's got close to 12 million views now I believe and so I've been able to have people send me pictures from all over the world of my trellis system here in their own yard and they've and a lot of them have their own take on it you know so it's not exactly the same and this coming week on Next Level Homestead our other channel and I'll put a link up here and down below and on that channel we do more of kind of the building of the gardens not necessarily gardening but I will be putting a third section here on this top Terrace for tomatoes or cucumbers I grow cucumbers the same way and so I'll be building that part of the trellis but in a nutshell we've got vertical supports we've got two by fours going across the top with two by threes going the other way and then we use these tomato hooks which are available on our website and as far as I know we have the best quality and the lowest cost of any out there now it's always difficult to show I've always had a problem showing how these work at this time of year because the plants are so small so I'm just going to insert a tiny bit of video here of a video I did a few months ago when we still had tomato plants growing here full size so you get a little bit better idea of how these work once the tomatoes are up and growing typically depending on your length of growing season for tomatoes uh you if you grow them one stem let's say up a string or up a bamboo cane whatever you can use anything once it gets to the top of that structure it starts to flop and either break off or cause disease or just start looking unsightly growing in different directions it's hard to maintain so typically what you do is you cut it off and what does that do that stops your tomato production now obviously you can't raise your trellis that would be pretty difficult to do to get more time on your tomato tomato Vines but with the hooks once your tomato reaches the top all you have to do is unhook the string let out a string or maybe turn a turn or two and hang it back up now you've gained that much more space to let your tomato grow if the season continues and it gets back up to the top again guess what let out some more string and give them some more space to grow so there's a couple of ways to do this I use landscape staples and I just put it right there at the base of the plant try not to stab the the stem as you go down if you've laid your plant in the ground like I have you can also bury the string Under the root ball that's another way of doing it and then you take the plant and you just gently twist it around the string now the best time to do this is midday when they're kind of a little more floppy because they have less water in them and there are clips that you can use for this but I find it's just an extra use of plastic and an extra cost and this works just fine so now the only job would be other than to keep it watered and fertilized which we'll talk about is let this plant grow up this string so every few days come through your tomato patch pluck out the side growth that are coming from the armpit and give them a Twist around the string as long as you do that every three four days maybe even longer depending on the speed of growth they're going to reach the top and then like in the video I just showed you you'll be able to lower them down and keep them growing so in terms of watering and fertilizing I highly recommend drip irrigation for a few reasons it saves water you get to only get water right where you want it and it doesn't get the leaves wet a problem with tomatoes is getting leaves wet they start to become susceptible to fungal disease like blight especially in humid climates now obviously you can't control the rain it will rain but let's control what we can number one by not spraying them ourselves with water and number two by keeping them pruned so that that airflow can come through there and dry those leaves off if it does rain I also have an aspirin prevention program video that I will link I think it's the same video as the Epsom salt video and that will show you a really quick solution that you can do to prevent disease in your tomatoes and then the only other thing I do is every three weeks or so I will use Neptune's Harvest tomato and veg formula it's a great mixture of nutrients and minerals for your tomatoes to keep them growing strong and to keep them productive throughout the season now a couple years ago I think it was 2020 we actually did tomato Tuesday and every Tuesday I had a tomato video and I banked a lot of those in a playlist that I will link down below so you can get all the information you could ever want about tomatoes but right now let's switch to peppers and then I'll come back at the end and show you all of these planted with the strings attached now I've found through this channel that a lot of people didn't know that peppers are actually perennials now in zones 9 10 and 11 they can just stay in the garden all winter you do have to cut them back a little bit in the fall and possibly in zone nine protect them a little bit but we actually had a lot of frost and a lot of hail this winter that's completely uncharacteristic and they did have a harder time and they did take a while but they are coming back strong now so if you plant peppers with me right now you're going to want to save them even if you live in zones one through eight you can still keep your peppers year to year and I have a video that I will link up here and down below that will show you how to do that so make sure you watch that because why plant again and wait for the baby plants to grow when you can winter them over and already have Buds and even some peppers hanging on them at this time of year or earlier now I've got three different varieties of peppers here I've got red Knight I've got Cupid and I've got shishito now if you notice most of these pots have two peppers in them growing side by side I planted two seeds per pot and most of them if not all of them came up with two now a lot of times for most plants I would want to thin them to just one and so you could just cut it off or you could kind of slowly tease it out and replant it somewhere else but with peppers they actually like to have a partner growing right alongside them so I won't be doing any thinning here I'm going to plant them just like this now even though peppers are nightshades just like tomatoes they don't want to be planted deeper than what they already are growing so we're not going to dig a deep hole and bury the stem they also don't need much nitrogen in the beginning because Peppers will take nitrogen any amount and run with it and produce a ton of leaves and you guessed it not a lot of fruit so I'm not going to be using the Neptune's Harvest crab and lobster there's just too much nitrogen in that I am going to be using the Neptune's Harvest kelp meal by itself because that's a great source like I mentioned earlier of potassium and natural growth hormone to really make the root system grow and then give back in Fruit let's dig just a little hole here the size of that pot so the first number on any fertilizer is nitrogen the middle number is phosphorus the last number is potassium so we have one zero two so very little nitrogen does have potassium we don't need a ton of it we don't have any phosphorus in this so I'm going to add that to the hole but then for phosphorus I'm going to add a handful of bone meal and bone meal is pretty much all phosphorus all right we're just going to put that in the hole cover it all up with the soil and then replace the mulch now in three or four weeks I will start to fertilize with the tomato and veg is a two four two so it's lower in nitrogen and potassium but higher in phosphorus and it's also got some really great materials in here it's got humates that nice black stuff that you get from compost it's got that in here it's also got Yucca extract which is a wetting agent it holds moisture in the soil which is what tomatoes and peppers need to avoid that blossom end rot because they both get that issue so this is a great product it's what I use every three weeks starting about a month after planting in the ground now peppers like a lot of sun they like a lot of heat like I said if it's not 50 55 degrees at night or above don't bother putting them out yet now when it comes to Sun they technically like full sun however too much sun can cause the fruit to get sun scald and so that hot afternoon sun when I live by the coast that was my Nemesis that hot afternoon sun so I would shade one side of them the afternoon sun side with either plants or shade cloth or whatever to keep that sun off of them in the afternoon however when I moved here last summer was our first summer growing here I found that even midday Sun all the way to the afternoon was too hot and so I would throw some shade cloth over kind of the top and this the sunset side so they got good morning sun and they got it was 30 shade cloths we got just a little bit of sun for the rest of the day and they did much better I did that halfway through the season after the first batch almost all the fruits got Sun scalded but then the second batch and later flushes of fruit were just fine now another thing about Peppers one of the reasons they like to be planted two at a time is because they can kind of hold each other up but they will need to be staked because they will get top heavy once they're loaded with fruit and so any type of steak it doesn't need to be heavy duty mine has to be thin enough to fit through the Gopher wire so those little bamboo Stakes at the Garden Center that come in a bag they only need to be about two feet tall stick six inches or so in the in the ground or you can just use a stick from something you've pruned and then tie them to that with you can use the green tape but green tape doesn't biodegrade maybe in a few hundred years but this is something I found it's an elastic I guess it's for making clothes or something but it's elastic and this will biodegrade in a much faster time period so you can cut it off it still has the stretchiness so it will grow with the plant um but it's going to offer good support and be a little more environmentally friendly and you really most the time won't need to tie them on and on throughout the season when they're up about a foot if you tie both of the main stems to the stake that's pretty much going to hold them up for the rest of the year one more thing I would recommend especially if you're in a longer growing period if you have a really small growing window if you have a short season you may not want to do this but everybody else I would say once you've got about six leaves on your plant pinch out the top growth and that is going to send the rest of that energy back down to the plant to produce more branches which is going to give you more fruit and it's not going to be as top heavy but like I said if you're in a super short growing season you may want to skip that part all right so I've got all of the tomatoes planted the strings strung I've got the peppers planted and staked everything got a really good watering in and now we just watch them grow I think this has been quite a long video so if you're with me right now thank you so much you guys are awesome if you can share this with a gardening friend that would be great if you learned something or like the video please give it a thumbs up subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys next time

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 215,363

Keywords: how to plant and grow tomatoes and peppers, how to grow tomatoes, tomato growing tips, growing tomatoes, organic, fertilizer for tomatoes, tomato plant growing, gardening, how to grow tomato plants, how to prune tomatoes, tomato growing secrets, how to grow organic tomatoes, planting tomatoes, tomato tips, how to stake tomatoes, how to grow peppers, how to grow bell peppers, next level gardening, pepper growing tips, pepper pruning, how to plant peppers

Id: uNFN4Q1DiUI

Length: 25min 11sec (1511 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023