Tomatoes are the most popular vegetable (well, fruit) grown in home gardens. They’re delicious, money-saving, good for fresh-eating and preserving, and come in endless colors, shapes and sizes. Learn how and when to select tomato seedlings, step-by-step instructions for planting tomato plants in the ground and basic care tips for watering, fertilizing, pruning and keeping your tomato plants healthy until harvest. Mastering tomatoes is a skill learned over time, but any beginner can succeed with tomatoes by learning the basics.
Should you Start Tomatoes from Seeds or Seedlings?
Growing Tomatoes from Seedlings
When you start tomatoes from seedlings, someone else does the work of starting the seeds and caring for the seedlings for the first few weeks. It’s significantly less time-consuming and you don’t need seed starting supplies or a dedicated space in your home. The downside is that big box stores and garden centers generally carry a very limited number of tomato seedling varieties. However, you may be able to find a wider variety of heirloom tomato seedlings at farmers markets and small local farms.
If it’s your very first year growing tomatoes, especially if you only plan to grow a few tomato plants, I recommend starting with seedlings and focusing on learning how to plant and care for those rather than taking on the additional tasks of setting up an indoor seed starting space, learning how to start seeds and caring for indoor seedlings.
Growing Tomatoes from Seed
Starting tomatoes from seed requires more work, time and resources but, depending on your situation, it might be worth going for it even if it is your first year gardening. You might choose to start from seed if:
The easiest way to grow tomatoes for beginners is to start with plug plants or seedlings. If you’re determined to start tomatoes from seed instead, check out my in-depth post on the basics of indoor seed starting. It all applies to starting tomato seeds.
- Growing specific or unusual varieties of tomatoes is important to you.
- You know for sure you eventually want a large garden grown from seed and you want to start learning how to grow from seed as soon as possible.
- Your desire to garden is motivated more by sustainability and self-sufficiency.
- You’ve already grown a few easy vegetables or flowers from seed, have some of the supplies already, and want to do more.
- You want to grow a lot of tomatoes and/or other vegetables and buying everything from seedlings is cost prohibitive.
Planting Tomatoes for Beginners
Best Time to Plant Tomatoes
Wait to purchase and plant your tomato transplants until after all risk of frost has passed AND nighttime air temperatures are reliably above at least 10C, ideally 15C. In my 5b garden this can be as late as mid-June. It’s counterintuitive but you don’t gain anything from planting tomatoes before conditions are ideal. They will just sit there and languish. Tomatoes planted later tend to catch up and eventually do better than tomatoes planted too early.
At the same time, you want to plant your tomatoes with enough time left in your growing season for the tomatoes to ripen. This is especially important if you live in a cool, short growing season. Check the “days to maturity” of the variety you are planting. This number usually refers to the number of days from transplant to harvest, so count from your transplant day to the first expected frost in fall, to be sure there are enough days in your growing season. If you’ve got a short season, choosing varieties that ripen quickly, about 55-60 days, may be your best bet.