Beautiful clusters of heirloom tomatoes cascade over the rock wall of a raised bed.
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10 Tomato Growing Tricks You Need to Start Using

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These ten tomato growing tricks will help you grow your best tomatoes ever!


Last updated: May 2, 2022 

If you’re like most people, tomatoes are probably the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a garden.

There are thousands of varieties of edible fruits, veggies, roots, tubers, rhizomes, herbs, edible flowers, mushrooms, and grains that might adorn your garden throughout the year. However, tomatoes have managed to capture the American gardener’s imagination more than any other type of produce.

Perhaps it’s due to the piles of showy, delicious fruit a tomato plant can produce in a relatively short period of time. Or perhaps it’s because tomatoes are quiet, juicy geniuses who have domesticated human beings so that we’ll take care of them and spread their seeds throughout the world.

Obligatory pile of perfectly-ripened, heirloom tomatoes. :)
Obligatory pile of perfectly-ripened, heirloom tomatoes. 🙂

Whatever the case may be, if you plan to have a summer garden, you’re probably going to be growing tomatoes. If so, here are our top-10 tomato growing tricks we’ve learned over the years that will boost your yields and save you time and money. These tricks span the lifecycle of the tomato, from seed to harvest time!   


10 Tomato Growing Tricks That Will Make You a Better Gardener

Mmm - fresh picked, organically grown heirloom tomato! 5 tomato growing tricks, article by GrowJourney
Mmm – fresh picked, organically grown heirloom tomato!

These tomato growing tricks are arranged chronologically based on the order in which you do them:

Tomato Growing Trick 1: Learn to start your own plants from seed

This might not seem like a “trick,” but once you master seed starting, it can save you more money than perhaps anything else you’ll ever do in your garden while also allowing you to grow any variety of tomato (or other food crop) you want, not just what your local garden center happens to carry.

A packet of USDA certified organic tomato seeds will cost you about $3-4 depending on how many seeds are in the packet. Most usually have at least 25 or more seeds. That means you could grow a minimum of 25 tomato plants that could each produce a pile of tomatoes for you in a few short months.

Considering that the average beefsteak tomato plant will produce 15 – 25 pounds of fruit, that single packet of seeds could give you a yield of 625 pounds of fruit. If you go to a store and buy a pound of crummy hothouse tomatoes, you’re going to pay $3/lb; if you buy a pound of certified organic heirloom tomatoes, you’re probably going to be paying closer to $6/lb.

So, if you’re able to use 25 seeds to grow 625 pounds of your own organic, heirloom tomatoes, you just grew $3,750 in tomatoes! 

Tlacalula tomato, an heirloom stuffing tomato from Mexico. Cost of the single seed that grew this beauty? About 10 cents. And the tomato was full of new seeds that we can grow in future years. 5 tomato growing tricks by GrowJourney.com
Tlacalula tomato, an heirloom stuffing tomato from Mexico. Cost of the single seed that grew this beauty? About 10 cents. And the tomato was full of new seeds that we can grow in future years.

New tomato seeds for future years

Also, if you’re growing heirloom tomatoes (which are always open-pollinated), you can save enough seeds from your tomatoes to give a seed to every person on earth after about two growing seasons (seriously, do the math!). See why heirloom/open-pollinated seeds are the gift that keeps on giving?

“Sure,” you’re thinking, “but what about the time and cost involved in growing tomatoes from seed?”

We grow our own tomato seedlings with minimal time and investment. We reuse our durable Bootstrap farmer seed cells and flats, so our primary cost is the organic seed starting mix.

Since we grow so much food, we built our own indoor grow light setup for about $300, but this is an investment that more than pays for itself each gardening season — and we garden in all four seasons every year.

Our indoor grow light setup. All the plants have graduated and gone to live outdoors for the summer.
Our DIY indoor grow light setup. All the plants have “graduated” and gone to live outdoors for the summer, but it will be full of fall seedlings by late summer.

Why not get tomato seedlings or plants from a garden center?

Now, consider this: if you go to a garden center and get a tomato plant/seedling, you’re going to pay somewhere between $4-10 per plant depending on where you live, the variety of tomato, and the size of the plant.

There’s a pretty good chance that you’re only going to be able to buy a hybrid tomato plant, which means you won’t be able to save seeds that will grow the same type of tomato again next year. There’s also a good chance the plant was treated with a systemic pesticide soil drench like a neonicotinoid, which over 800 peer reviewed scientific studies say kill birds, bees, and other beneficial critters even when used as recommended by the manufacturers.

That’s the most expensive tomato plant you could possibly grow in your garden.

Don’t know how to grow plants from seed? Check out our free seed starting video course


Tomato Growing Trick 2: Buried Stems = Better Roots

Young tomato seedlings growing under our grow lights in <a href=
Young tomato seedlings growing under our grow lights in Ladbrooke soil blocks. Tomato stems can develop adventitious roots when buried in soil, which means a more robust root system.

Tomato stems can form adventitious roots if they’re planted in the soil. Larger, deeper root systems mean less water and fertilizer inputs, healthier plants, and larger fruit yields.

Now, the first time you do this trick, you’ll feel like you’re murdering your plants, but it will pay off big time.

Here’s what you do when you’re ready to transplant your tomato seedlings:

1. Remove lower branches 

Cut off all the lower branches on your seedling, leaving only the top few branches and the growth tip.

2. Dig a trench 

Dig a trench large enough to lay your tomato seedling down sideway while still giving the first stems enough room to stick out a few inches above the soil surface.

By laying the plants sideways, you’ll help them develop better vertical roots. This is especially helpful if you have leggy seedlings.

It’s also better to dig a vertical trench rather than a deeper horizontal hole to bury your tomato transplants. That’s because tomatoes are heat-loving plants.

The deeper you bury the root ball and stem, the cooler the soil will be, which will slow its growth. A horizontal trench keeps the plant in the warmer, upper levels of the soil as it gets started. 

3. Bury the stem and lay the plant sideways 

Add some worm castings (these are the best quality and most affordable worm castings on the market) or finished hot compost into the hole. This will provide your tomato plants with biological fertility via beneficial microbes that also help protect the plants from pathogens.

Don’t use synthetic nitrogen fertilizer products since these are bad for the long term health of your soil and have also been proven to make your plants more attractive to pest insects. Once your trench is ready and you’ve added a good microbe-rich media (worm castings or compost), bury the tomato plant and stem up to a few inches below the first branches.

Here’s a visual summary of this process: 

Step 1: note the removed stems. Step 2: disrupting the soil as little as possible, dig a trench; fertilize with a slow release organic fertilizer or compost if necessary. Step 3: bury the plant sideways, covering the stem (which will strong new vertical roots). Put mulch back over the soil surface and add a stick next to the stem to prevent cutworms (the
Step 1: Removing the leaves. Step 2: Disrupting the soil as little as possible, dig a trench; add worm castings or finished hot compost. Step 3: Bury the plant sideways, covering the stem to just below the first leaves (which will help the plant grow more robust vertical roots). Put mulch back over the soil surface and add a stick next to the stem to prevent cutworms (the “stick trick” mentioned below).

Your buried tomato stems will soon produce new roots and you’ll end up with plants that will outgrow and outperform a shallow-rooted tomato plant.


Tomato Growing Trick 3: The “Stick Trick”

The “stick trick” is especially important if you’re growing your own seedlings rather than buying mature thick-stemmed plants at a garden center.

Cutworms are the bane of many farmers’ and gardeners’ existence. They’re the seedling-munching larvae of Noctuidae moths

Cutworms can make you think evil, murderous thoughts when you go out on a spring or summer morning to find your once beautiful, healthy seedlings chopped down and lying dead on the ground. Our first year of gardening, we lost a bunch of plants this way. So we set out for revenge…

Surely, our brains could outsmart a moth baby’s brain without resorting to using pesticides, right? Yep. And the solution is stupid simple, free and 100% effective if you do it right.

Here’s how to stop cutworms in your garden:

When you transplant your young seedlings, gently insert a stick (about the size of a toothpick or slightly larger) into the ground right next to the stem of your seedling.

The larvae will feel around the stem of your plant, detect the stick and be fooled into thinking that the plant’s stem is too tough to chew through. Then it will move on in search of another victim.

The stick trick to stop cutworms from eating seedlings.
The stick trick = no more cutworm damage to your seedlings! Here you can see a stick inserted directly next to the stem of a newly transplanted tomato. Cutworms will feel this stick with their mouthparts and assume the stem of the plant is too hard to chew, thus causing them to move on in search of a new victim.

We use the “stick trick” on all the spring/summer plants that we start indoors and transplant: melons, squash, cukes, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc. After over a decade, we have yet to lose a single plant to cutworms when using this technique.


Tomato Growing Trick 4: Got Mulch?

Many people talk themselves out of gardening by saying I don’t have time to till/plow, water, weed, fertilize, etc.

Great. Neither do we.

  • We haven’t plowed our soil in 10+ years. In fact, we don’t ever plan to till our soil again because of how destructive it is to the soil ecosystem.
  • We only water during periods of drought or when our seedlings are very young.
  • The only weeds we have are in the few patches of grass we have left, and many of those “weeds” are edible plants that we eat.
  • We don’t use conventional fertilizers; instead we focus on long-term biological soil fertility. This is because we have a pretty good appreciation for the living systems that make soil work (aka the soil food web).
Tomato plants in our mulched beds. We utilize the
Tomato plants in our mulched beds. We utilize the “shoes and socks” method when we plant our tomatoes in our landscape. This means we plant shorter, bushier plants like marigolds and basil in front of the bases of the tomatoes, which helps cover up the “feet” of the tomatoes as they get more bedraggled throughout the growing season.

We feed our soil what it knows how to eat and our soil feeds our plants what they know hot to eat so that our plants can feed us what we know how to eat.   

Soil is like the skin on your body: it’s a protective organ. Scrape off your skin, and a scab will form.

Likewise, nature does not tolerate having its soil scraped off and exposed to the elements. Uncovered soil will soon begin healing via “weeds,” nature’s scabs, aka the pioneer plants in ecological succession.

In your garden or farm, you have two options:

  1. always cover your soil with the plants and/or mulches of your choosing; or
  2. be prepared to let nature cover her own soil with the plants of her choosing.

You probably won’t like option #2, and it usually causes conventional gardeners and farmers to engage in perpetual chemical warfare.

We like using a combination of green mulches (cover crops), fall leaves, and wood chips that we get free from local tree service companies. All three types of mulch will drastically improve your soil biology/fertility, and may eventually replace your need to fertilize.

Especially if your soil is young, we’d recommend you take things a step further by also using some combination of worm castings, hot composted compost (aka using the Berkeley method), compost teas and really good mycorrhizal inoculants like this one.

Our personal favorite mulch to top-dress our garden beds with is wood chips, which you can sometimes get for free from local tree service companies. Because we have a barefoot toddler and barefoot ducks running around our yard, we opt to pay for triple ground mulch since it’s easier on everyone’s feet. Wood chips form an insulating surface on your soil surface, reducing soil temperature fluctuations and plant stress, while increasing water penetration and retention.

Lady Margaret Thrasher, one of our Welsh Harlequin ducks, forages in the mulch underneath our tomato plants. Mulch serves an additional purpose in our yard: duck enrichment! We have lots of worms in our yard.
Lady Margaret Thrasher, one of our Welsh Harlequin ducks, forages (barefoot) in the mulch underneath our tomato plants. Mulch serves an additional purpose in our yard: duck enrichment! We have lots of worms in our yard.

Wood chips also prevent weed seeds in your soil seed bank from germinating and growing in your garden beds. Less work + less inputs + less money spent + more and better food. That’s our kind of gardening!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Top Dress With Wood Chips, Do NOT Plow Them Into Your Soil!

We top-dress our beds with about 3-4″ of wood chip mulch twice per year (late winter/early spring & late summer/early fall). Then we let the soil microorganisms slowly convert the wood chips into bioavailable nutrients that they bring down to our plant roots for us. The plants also feed the microbes all kinds of goodies in return via their root exudates.

It’s very important to note that you do not want to plow the wood chips into your soil, or you’ll lock up the nitrogen in your soil as the soil microorganisms borrow it while they digest the carbon. Low nitrogen = plants that don’t grow. So, just put the wood chips on top of the soil surface and let nature do the rest of the work for you.

Mulch also reduces tomato foliar diseases

Many common tomato foliar (leaf) diseases are caused by rain splashing soil pathogens onto the lower leaves of the plants. Well, you’ll also be pleased to know that using wood chip or other mulches reduces or eliminates this problem too.

When transplanting your tomato seedlings into your mulched garden beds, simply pull back the mulch from the planting spot, make a small hole and plop it in the ground (see trick #2 above). You can do the same thing when you direct sow, but only make a hole big enough for the type of seed you’re planting.


Tomato Growing Trick 5: Don’t Get Suckered

What the heck is “tomato suckering”? As tomato plants grow, they’ll produce a branch and a “sucker” between the stem and the branch. The sucker grows like a new stem, producing new branches and suckers along the way.

A closer look at tomato suckers.
A closer look at tomato suckers via TyrantFarms.

Many people tell you that you have to remove the suckers to reduce plant diseases and get the biggest fruit from your tomato plant. The idea being that more air can flow through your plants and the plant will put more energy into fewer fruits.

If you’re trying to grow the world’s biggest tomato and you have the time to remove all the suckers as your tomato plants grow, then you might want to go ahead and sucker your plants. (If you do, only do so on dry days and be sure to sanitize your tools as you go so you don’t spread diseases between plants.)

However, if you’re growing more than one tomato plant and you’re into low-maintenance gardening like we are, you don’t need to sucker your tomato plants. You might end up with slightly smaller tomatoes on your beefsteak varieties, but if you’ve got good soil and healthy plants, you’re probably not going to notice a dramatic difference in fruit size.

Also, one of the fastest ways you can spread diseases throughout your tomato plants is by constantly touching them, cutting them with non-sanitized clippers or other tools that have pathogens on them, and/or leaving exposed wounds on the plants where you removed the suckers.

In our opinion: suckering simply isn’t worth the time and effort relative to the supposed benefits, so don’t be suckered into suckering! 

Tumbling tomatoes healthily grow amongst thyme, eggplant, and cucurbits in a rock wall.
Tumbling tomatoes healthily grow amongst thyme, eggplant, and cucurbits in a rock wall.

Tomato Growing Trick 6: Use foliar sprays 

The hot humid southeast (where we live) is a petrie dish of tomato diseases and pests. Many of these tomato diseases are foliar diseases that spread via wind, rain, and soil splash. 

How do you defend against microscopic bacteria and fungi that get blown in? Use biology to fight biology. 

Many organic farmers in the southeast and beyond have started using probiotic and nutrient drenches. These are applied as both foliar sprays (on the plant leaves) and root drenches early in the morning. (Early in the morning because it gives the biologics in the solutions time to get established before the the sun gets too intense.)

There’s no single “right” recipe. You can make a DIY compost tea made from worm castings, high quality compost, or other ingredients. 

If that sounds like too much time or work to make, you can also use commercial products individually or concurrently, such as:

These applications are safe to humans, wildlife, and pets. Apply them every few weeks (or more often if there are a lot of heavy rains and extreme heat). 


Tomato Growing Trick 7: Make your own sturdy, reusable tomato cages. 

tomato cage
Our DIY tomato cages are large, sturdy, and are likely to outlive us.

When we see the flimsy tomato cages sold at garden centers, we chuckle. Those cages may be fine for small determinate tomatoes, but there’s no way they’ll hold up a 6’+ tall robust indeterminate tomato plant. 

What to do? There are all kinds of tomato trellising methods, but they take a lot of work to set up and maintain as your plants grow. We’re lazy. 

Instead, we make our own DIY heavy duty tomato cages out of concrete reinforcing wire. Features:

  • they’re heavy duty and can stand up to large plants;
  • they can be customized to any sized plant, from vining peas to peppers to tomatoes;
  • they last virtually forever – ours are 10+ years old and still like-new! 

Check out our detailed guide showing you exactly how to make and use your own tomato cages


A sun-ripened heirloom Tlacalula tomato ready to be picked! One of our favorite things about growing heirlooms (other than their taste) - the beautiful shapes!
One of our favorite things about growing heirlooms (other than their taste) – the beautiful shapes! Pictured here is a Tlacalula tomato.

Tomato Growing Trick 8: Properly space plants for adequate airflow.    

When you have a small garden or growing space, it’s tempting to stuff as many plants as close together as possible. However, not only does this reduce the amount of sunlight your plants get, it also reduces airflow between plants which creates ideal conditions for plant diseases. 

What’s the ideal spacing for tomato plants in order to reduce disease pressure? 

  • For large indeterminate tomato plants grown in cages, we recommend at least 3′ apart from the outside of one cage to the outside of another. 
  • For smaller determinate tomatoes grown in cages, we recommend at least 2′ apart from the outside of one cage to the outside of another.   

This spacing helps keep air moving between the plants, which also helps to keep your tomato leaves dry, thereby reducing the likelihood of foliar diseases.   


Tomato Growing Trick 9: Keep wet leaves to a minimum and don’t touch plants when they’re wet. 

Speaking of wet leaves… In addition to having good air flow between plants, another way to reduce tomato foliar disease is to use drip irrigation rather than overhead irrigation.

Benefits of drip irrigation for your tomato plants:

  • surprisingly easy to set up,
  • far more water-efficient than overhead irrigation,
  • saves you time and money;
  • reduces plant stress;
  • reduces foliar diseases. 

If you absolutely have to use overhead irrigation, be sure to water early in the morning to reduce evaporation (and save money) and so that your tomato leaves have time to dry out during the day. 

Ok, fine but it’s still going to rain and make your tomato leaves wet. What then?

A good friend and regenerative farmer, Chris Miller, won’t harvest tomatoes when his plants are wet from the rain. Why? He doesn’t want to spread disease from plant to plant via the leaves or openings in the stems where the tomatoes were harvested. Instead, he’ll wait until his plants are dry before harvesting. You can do the same. 


Huge clusters of tomatoes ripen on the vine.
Huge clusters of tomatoes ripen on the vine.

Tomato Growing Trick 10: Consider crop rotation. 

Did you have a great tomato year? Wonderful! But don’t get cocky — especially if you live in the southeast. That’s because the longer you grow tomatoes, the harder it becomes to grow tomatoes as tomato diseases build up in your soil.

What to do? Crop rotation. Many organic farmers will wait at least three years before planting tomatoes or similar nightshades in the same spot again. That way, they effectively “starve out” any tomato pathogens in their soil. 

If you only have a small garden, crop rotation may not be an option for you. That means you’ll need to more heavily rely on some of the tips above, such as heavy use of compost, worm castings, and foliar sprays, wherein you use the “good” microbes to fend off the bad ones. 

If you do have the space in your garden, we’d recommend waiting at least three years before you plant the same bed in tomatoes again. (Also, refrain from growing other nightshade crops susceptible to some of the same soil-borne diseases as tomatoes, such as tomatillos and ground cherries.) 


We hope these tomato growing tricks help you have your best summer garden ever!

-Aaron @ GrowJourney

Additional Tomato Growing (and Using) Resources: 

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Salsa time at Tyrant Farms! Fresh-picked tomatoes, hardneck garlic and peppers ready to go into the blender.
Salsa time at Tyrant Farms! Fresh-picked tomatoes, hardneck garlic and peppers ready to go into the blender.

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67 Comments

  1. I need a printable version of these 10 tips please. I’ll never follow all this info…I have some sensory issues when reading, so I just need the facts easily printable so I can go back to access over and over again. Maybe a weird request this digital day and age, but I like reading info from paper, not a computer. Is this possible? Or is it possible to email me a printable version? Thank you

  2. After weeks of high heat and smoke we got a little bit of rain and a LOT of wind in Sparks, NV. My 6 and 8 foot tomato plants and their cages were blown over. Should I try and raise them up or just let them stay on the ground?
    Really weird year, the fruit is just starting to ripen thought the plants are full!

    Thank you

    1. Hard to say for certain without seeing the plants. If you can get the tomato plants back upright without ripping out/damaging the roots or tearing off branches, they’ll be happier and less prone to pests and diseases that way. However, if you don’t mind the mess of a sprawling tomato plant on your ground for the next couple weeks up until your first frost date (which looks to be Sept 20 for your location) then go that route. Given how little growing season you have left until first frost, whatever gets you ripe fruit fastest is the way to go. On that note, a tomato plant laying on the ground is a LOT easier to cover with a frost blanket than one that’s standing upright, so perhaps that’s the way to go if you’re trying to eke out a late harvest. Good luck either way!

  3. Hello
    The link you left us for the homemade cages does not work. We would love to know your DIY trick.
    Thanks and happy gardening

  4. I’ve been in a constant battle with Fusarium wilt. I sterilize, I solarize and now I’m trying Actinovate. But a couple of my tomatoes are showing signs again! Would it be worth trying to help my tomatoes build more root structure by raising soil level around trunk stem at this stage? They’re already flowering.

    1. Fusarium is a really challenging disease to mitigate on tomato plants. As you probably know, it’s a fungus that spreads the soil and/or via tools or other contaminated objects from previous years (like tomato cages, pots, etc). If you have fusarium in in-ground beds, your best bet is to starve it out by not planting nightshades in that bed for 3-5 years, e.g. doing crop rotation. If you’re growing tomatoes in containers, you’ll want to use new soil and thoroughly clean and solarize pots between seasons. Of course, it’s also important to make sure you do actually have fusarium as some other tomato diseases present similarly. Most university extensions allow you to send a tissue sample for analysis, which would give you a definitive answer. To directly answer your question: no, raising soil around the roots of infected plants likely won’t make any difference in keeping the plants alive.

  5. Great site learned a lot have tomatoes in greenhouse here in Ireland and had some of the problems covered. I will try. The laying method next year with my heritage tomatoes and keep my fingers crossed. Once again thank you for your knowledge sharing.

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