Tips For Growing Healthy Summer Tomatoes

The easiest way to insure your tomatoes are successful in crazy hot sun is to shade them. We recommend between 40% – 65% shade. The shade doesn’t totally ensure that you have great tomatoes throughout the summer. When the temperatures increase, the viability of pollen decreases, especially when the temperatures hit 95 degrees. Some varieties like large cherry tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes are more heat tolerant and easier to grow in the hot summer months.

When shading your tomato plant, it is okay to self-shade, but be sure to check the fruit often. You want to be sure to shade these plants from the afternoon sun, so check your microclimates for the best place to grow your tomatoes. You will also want to have a lot of airflow around your tomatoes so they don’t rot easily. To help with air flow, you can grow them on trellises and be sure to prune them for peak production.

It is easy to over water or under water a tomato plant. Some things to look out for is that an under watered tomato plant will wilt. An over watered tomato plant will shrivel and turn yellow or black. You might be able to bring an overwatered tomato back to life by adding iron to the soil.

If you start to see blossom end rot, it is from water stress, root stress, and calcium deficiency. If you changed your routine or it rained more, this might happen. To treat this you can:

-Add a 5-20-5 or 4-12-4 organic fertilizer
-Add compost tea
-Increase your mulch or moisture increase
-Add partial shade
-In an emergency, you can do a one time calcium chloride spray to the leaves

When your plant is starting to flower or fruit it is the best time to fertilize it. You will want to be sure to fertilize it at night to help promote the growth of the plant.

We dive deeper into growing in the summertime in our Agriscaping Mastery Program along with 36 other skills to help you to create your ideal elegant edible landscape year round.