How To Grow Huge Tomatoes

By: Harold Oke

So you want that slice of tomato that can cover an entire slice of bread when you make your hungry man sandwich. Well, if you follow some 'gardeners secrets' you'll have that giant tomato in no time!

You need to first garden in an all day sunny location on the best soil available to you for gardening. Tomatoes need all day sunshine, but can be grown in half a day areas, but you're not likely get that elusive ‘big one’. Your variety of tomato comes next and without saying a marble tomato will never grow big. You can choose any of the beefsteak types. I like one called ‘Big Beef’. In heirloom tomatoes, ‘Brandywine, Ananas Noir, or Aunt ruby’s German Green are very large tomatoes. Of course, German Green ripens green, Brandywine ripens pink, and Ananas Noir ripens all colors of red, yellow, green, purple, orange and pink. This said, a Brandywine has been the largest tomato I have ever grown.

You must start your seeds in advance or have someone with a greenhouse do it for you. The seeds are planted around March 15th and transplanted into a large cell flat in good potting soil one inch high. One application of water soluble 15-30-15 fertilizer at half strength will get them growing. Place in full sun to grow in the greenhouse as they love it. Water regularly, allow the soil to stay on the dry side, so plants will not grow tall and spindly. Three weeks before planting outdoors, set the trays outside in sunshine a few hours each day. If no frost is predicted, leave them out overnight just before planting around May 10 to 24th in my area (Southern Ontario). If you plant and frost predicted, cover the plants with cardboard boxes. The box acts as insulation and holds the frost away from the plant. Do not remove box until the day time temperature rises above freezing.

While the plants are still in the flat and before planting is your easiest and best time to spray them for blight. If any of the leaves curl on a tomato plant, it is being attacked by blight. Best home remedy for blight is to make a ’Bordeaux Mixture’ of one tablespoon heaped of copper sulphate (bluestone powder) and one heaping tablespoon of white hydrated limestone in a gallon of water, stir and spray immediately while particles are suspended in the water. Spray over all the tomato plants. Let the plants dry and then spray them again after stirring the fungicide mixture. When plants dry you can plant them out into the garden and at this point spray the mixture on the plant and a foot of soil around the plant as viruses are carried in the soil. You have now got your plant off to a clean start and should not need any more spraying of any kind. This amount of copper is not dangerous to you, but I do recommend washing your hand well every time you come out of the garden.

It is important to give each transplanted plant two cups or more of 15-30-15 plant starter solution. Do this ahead of the copper spray.

Tomatoes use a lot of fertilizer effectively and the right balance for growth, stem strength, and ripening is needed. Go to your nearest farm fertilizer co-op and order one to five bags farm fertilizer depending on the size of your property. House and lot = one bag, half acre = 2-3 bags, acre plus get 5 bags. Ask for 6-24-24 analysis. You will pay approx fifteen dollars plus taxes as you are not a farmer perhaps. If you need five bags order three of 6-24-24, one of 16-16-16 and one of Urea. You will not use urea or triple sixteen on tomatoes as it has too much nitrogen. I will explain the use of these fertilizers on other topics to come.

You can hoe around your tomatoes for only a short time as the roots spread rapidly outward beyond the foliage. In the top two inches of soil will be a mass of fibrous rooting (little white roots). The trick with the 6-24-24 is to apply one large man’s handfuls around each tomato plant in a two foot circle around the plant before the fibrous rooting takes place and work this into the top two inches of soil. Providing there is regular rainfall and lots of sunny days, you have just insured that you will have a fantastic crop of tomatoes that will begin ripening in early August.

If weeds persist, you must skim them off at soil surface, so as not to disturb the fibrous rooting of the tomato below. Pull them out by hand before they get too big or if you have many plants, try a Dutch hoe. You do not chop with a Dutch hoe, but skim along the surface cutting the tender little weeds off at soil level. Mine cost me sixty-five dollars, but it is the best tool ever to keep ahead of garden weeds easily.

If plants do not seem to be growing well at first, a second sprinkle can of 15-30-15 soluble over the plants will spur them along. This, however, will probably not be necessary.

It is mid August now and I have a huge Spanish onion to make sandwiches with. I will be over to beg one of your giant ripe tomatoes to make a Dagwood sandwich with half inch thick tomato, and quarter inch thick onion. I will bring enough bread, salt and pepper, so as to make one for you too. Wow! Is that ever a big tomato. How do you get them so big?

The secret is out.