Climate & Soil

Tomatoes like a nice warm area in full sun, and need at least 8 hours of sunlight a day, or they get spindly and produce little mature fruit.
They like soil that has a pH of 6.0 – 7.0, is fertile, deep, well-drained, and that is rich in organic matter. If the soil stays soggy where you want to plant, build a raised bed. You want soil that will hold water as evenly as possible because uneven uptake of water can cause all kinds of problems with tomatoes including: flower drop, fruit splitting and blossom-end rot. To help give your tomatoes the best-suited environment you can, till in a good amount of compost or organic matter. A general guide would be 3 inches (7.6 cm) of organic mater into the top 6 inches (15.2 cm) of soil.

You can also grow a cover crop to help build the soil. Plant a grain or legume crop, sometimes called green manure, for the purpose of chopping it down and adding it to the soil. One way is to plant hairy vetch (Vicia villosa), a nitrogen-fixing legume, in your garden bed in the fall. In the spring, cut it down and till the residue into the soil. This provides both nitrogen and an instant mulch that preserves moisture.

Lastly, many tomato diseases reside in the soil and affect peppers, eggplants, potatoes, and other crops in the nightshade (Solanaceae) family. To break the disease cycle, and to help get rid of the disease-causing organisms, rotate tomatoes with unrelated crops, such as corn, beans or lettuce.
Heirlooms and Hybrids.

Written by Day Lily on 2007/07/16 | Permalink to this article