SEED TO HARVEST

Growing Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is simple, but it is not easy. There are a hundred small decisions between a seed packet and a ripe tomato, and getting a few of them right makes all the difference. This section walks you through every stage: starting seeds, choosing pots or beds, feeding, watering, pruning, staking, and finally picking at the perfect moment.

From seed to harvest, in order

Start

Seeds or seedlings, timing, germination, transplanting, and hardening off without killing anything.

Grow

Pots, beds, and greenhouses. Soil, feeding, watering schedules, pruning suckers, cages and stakes.

Harvest

When to pick, how to ripen green tomatoes, and how to keep plants producing until frost.

Container growing gets special attention here. Growing tomatoes in pots is the single most asked about topic in the tomato world, and we treat it like the main event, not a footnote.

A planting calendar that knows where you live

The right week to plant tomatoes in Texas is the wrong week in Michigan, and the opposite season in Melbourne. Our location aware planting calendar is in the works. Until it lands, the growing guides flag timing for every climate as we publish them.