Get Year-Round Tomato Harvests With This One Growing Strategy
Do you love growing tomatoes and dream about having them year-round? With one simple and effective strategy, you can enjoy them throughout the year. In this article, plant expert Matt Dursum shows you the steps to this easy tomato-growing strategy.
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Tomatoes are such an important food crop in a summer garden that it’s hard to imagine the season without them. Picking their juicy fruits off the vine and using them in your favorite dishes is one of life’s simple pleasures. But as soon as the temperatures fall, your tomato plants will slowly die away. What if you could grow bountiful tomato harvests year-round with a simple strategy?
Successive planting involves planting multiple varieties of tomatoes during separate times of the growing season, as Jacques does in this video.
Below are the steps to executing this incredible tomato-growing strategy. Try it in your garden this year and see how many bountiful harvests you get. Note that growers with short seasons may not have as much luck with this method.
Step 1: Choose Your Varieties
The first step in this strategy is growing tomatoes that will yield bountiful harvests at different times of the year. By planting several varieties, you’ll have more variation in harvest times instead of getting a ton of fruit all at once.
Choose varieties that are bred with some form of pest and disease resistance. You’ll have better luck growing these tomatoes without worrying about losing your crop. Pick delicious varieties with a good balance of sweetness and acidity.
Heirloom varieties are wonderful, but hybrids are more disease and pest-resistant. You’ll probably have more success growing hybrid varieties. With food prices so high, why risk having a poor harvest? Below are some of the top varieties to grow successively and when to plant them.
‘Glacier’
‘Glacier’ tomatoes are early-ripening varieties. They are relatively disease and pest-resistant. They’re also very juicy and taste amazing in salads. This would be a good variety to include in batch 1.
‘Moskvich’
‘Moskvich’ is another early-season variety. It’s grown in some of the coldest regions of the U.S. because it can withstand cooler air than other tomatoes. Include ‘Moskvich’ in succession 1.
‘New Girl’
‘New Girl’ tomatoes are also early-season. They taste amazing and can handle diseases and pests. The medium-sized fruits are great for stews and salads. This is another batch 1 variety.
‘Sungold Cherry Tomato’
‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes are a staple cherry tomato. They’ll last from summer until fall and produce big, bountiful harvests. They’re slightly sweet, with good acidity and flavor. Try growing ‘Sungold’ cherries in round 2.
‘Cherokee Carbon’
This big, juicy, and flavorful variety is indeterminate and will produce fruit until the first frost. It’s perfect for salads, stews, or sauces. Include these seeds in batch 2.
‘Beefy Purple’
‘Beefy Purple’ is another giant variety that produces massive and flavorful fruits. It has purple flesh and plenty of tomato flavor. This is another great batch 2 variety.
‘Roma’
‘Roma’ is a classic variety that’s popular in sauces. It’s one of the many paste tomatoes that can be stewed down. Plant these tomatoes in batch 2 and preserve them by canning or making sauces.
‘Piennolo Red’
‘Piennolo Red’ is one of the best varieties for batch 3. These tomatoes will stay fresh for months after harvesting. Keep them on their vines and store them in a cool, dry area.
Step 2: Start Your First Tray
Start your first tray roughly two months before your last frost date. Go to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, type in your zip code, and find your average last frost date. In coastal California, you’ll start your tray in January. In Michigan, the last frost date is in May, so you’ll plant your first succession in March.
Fill your tray with a high-quality potting mix for tomatoes. Or you can make your mixture with compost, perlite, sand, and potting soil.
For the first tray, plant cool-tolerant varieties such as ‘New Girl’, ‘Early Girl’, and ‘Glacier.’ These plants tolerate colder air temperatures, so you’ll get your first round of tomatoes in the ground early.
Step 3: Plant Two Seeds Per Cell of Each Variety
The trick to this tomato-growing strategy is diversifying your garden with multiple varieties, not a ton of the same. To do this, plant two seeds per cell. If you’re using a 16-cell seed starting tray, grow 16 varieties. If you’re using a 24-cell tray, why not grow 24?
Step 4: Label Your Cells
Label your cells with biodegradable wooden plant labels or popsicle sticks. This will help you keep your crop organized. When they mature, transplant them in the ground with their labels so you don’t get confused.
Step 5: Thin Your Plants Out
No matter your strategy, once your tomato plants start growing, you’ll want to thin them out. Carefully remove the weaker of the two seedlings. You’ll only need one of each plant for this strategy to work. The trick is keeping it healthy.
You can keep the second plant if you want. If both seedlings look healthy, separate them and transplant the other plant to a new container or cell.
Step 5: Start Your Second Tray
The next important step in this strategy is to start another tray later in the season. Wait until a month or two after starting your first tray. For example, if you started your first tray in March, you’ll wait until April or May to start the second one.
You can plant less cold-hardy cultivars since the soil temperature will be warm by the time you plant them. This batch will be ready for planting 7 to 11 weeks after you start them.
The beauty in this is you can get them in the ground earlier or later, depending on how your first batch is doing. Grow cultivars that produce abundant fruit for salads and sauces.
Step 6: Plant Your First Batch in the Ground
By the time your second tray of seedlings emerges, your first tray of tomatoes should be ready for planting in the ground. The first batch should comprise cold-hardy and pest and disease-resistant cultivars.
Diseases and pests can be extra problematic in the early spring. And the weather is notoriously unpredictable. Your first batch will take on the unpredictable elements of the early season. If some of them don’t make it, you’ll have your second and third trays as backup.
Once the soil is above 60°F (16°C), plant your seedlings in a designated space in your garden. Make sure the soil is well-drained. Add a thin layer of mulch over them to keep the soil from drying out.
Step 7: Start Your Third Tray
By now, you’ve staggered enough tomatoes at different times to set up harvests throughout the year. Start your third, late-season tray in mid-summer.
Try switching up your cultivars to include types that store well, such as ‘Piennolo Red.’ You’ll harvest these tomatoes late in the year and they’ll last for several months stored on their vine. They’ll need a cool, dry space to store properly and maintain their freshness long into the winter.
If you live in colder climates, try growing cold-hardy tomatoes. Fall frosts will kill the plants, so choose varieties that can handle the cool air.
Step 8: Plant Your Second Batch
After starting your third tray, your second batch should be ready for planting. Choose an area near your first batch of vines, which should be approaching maturity.
If your first succession succumbs to disease or cold and isn’t fairing well, get your second batch in the ground early. These seedlings will make up for what you lost.
Ideally, all your plants will be thriving. By the time your second batch matures, your first batch will be producing its first round of ripe fruits.
Step 9: Plant Your Third Batch
Once your seedlings have more than four leaves and are around 4 to 8 inches tall, it’s time to plant them. This late-season planting will give you tomatoes until the very end of fall.
After planting, consider using row covers and extra mulch to give them extra protection. If you have a greenhouse, you can choose to plant this batch in containers instead. Use heating pads or a heater when the winter arrives, and your tomatoes may last until the new year.
Key Takeaways
By practicing successive planting, you’re harvesting different varieties and batches at various times. Just when one plant ripens, the other is just getting started. You’ll harvest ripe tomatoes from spring to winter.
