How To Grow Tomatoes: The Complete Guide To Growing Bigger, Sweeter Tomatoes

Few vegetables reward the home gardener quite like tomatoes. Pick a sun-warmed tomato straight from the vine and you’ll immediately understand why so many gardeners dedicate a large part of their vegetable garden to them every year.

The difference between a supermarket tomato and one you’ve grown yourself is remarkable. Homegrown tomatoes are sweeter, juicier, richer in flavour and available in hundreds of fascinating colours, shapes and sizes that you’ll never find on a supermarket shelf.

Whether you have a large vegetable garden, a tunnel house, a greenhouse or simply a sunny patio with a few pots, you can successfully grow tomatoes.

The secret isn’t buying expensive fertilisers or complicated equipment. It’s understanding what tomato plants need at each stage of their growth.

Please read: This information is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended to treat, diagnose or prevent any disease. We encourage you to make your own health care decisions in partnership with a qualified health care professional.

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Healthy soil, consistent watering, plenty of sunshine and a little pruning will usually outperform expensive products every time.

Over the years I’ve grown tomatoes outdoors, in tunnel houses and in containers. Every season teaches me something new, but the same principles always seem to produce the strongest plants and the biggest harvests.

This guide brings together everything I’ve learned, along with the original tips from this article, into one complete resource for growing amazing tomatoes at home.

Quick Answer

Tomatoes grow best in full sun, rich compost-filled soil and consistent moisture. Plant seedlings deeply to encourage strong roots, support plants with stakes or strings, feed regularly with a balanced fertiliser, water the soil rather than the leaves, and prune indeterminate varieties to improve airflow and fruit production. Healthy soil and consistent care will produce sweeter, healthier tomatoes with fewer pests and diseases.

Why Grow Your Own Tomatoes?
Choosing the Right Tomato Variety
Growing Tomatoes from Seed
10 Tips for Growing Amazing Tomatoes
Preparing the Perfect Soil
Watering Tomatoes Properly
Feeding Tomatoes
Supporting Tomato Plants
Pruning Tomatoes
Common Tomato Problems
Harvesting Tomatoes
Frequently Asked Questions

Why Grow Your Own Tomatoes?

Tomatoes are one of the most rewarding vegetables you can grow because they produce heavily over a long season while taking up relatively little space.

One healthy tomato plant can provide kilograms of fruit over the course of a summer, making them one of the best-value crops for home gardeners.

Growing your own also opens the door to an incredible range of varieties.

Instead of choosing between two or three supermarket options, you can grow enormous beefsteak tomatoes for sandwiches, tiny cherry tomatoes for salads, colourful striped heirlooms or rich black tomatoes with exceptional flavour.

Many heirloom varieties have been passed down through generations because they prioritise taste rather than shelf life.

Once you’ve tasted a perfectly ripe heirloom tomato picked fresh from the vine, it’s difficult to go back to store-bought fruit.

Choosing the Right Tomato Variety

Before planting, it’s worth deciding what type of tomatoes you actually want to grow.

Some are perfect for slicing onto sandwiches, while others are ideal for sauces, preserving or snacking straight from the garden.

Type	Best For
Cherry tomatoes	Snacking and salads
Roma tomatoes	Sauces and preserving
Beefsteak tomatoes	Sandwiches and slicing
Heirloom tomatoes	Outstanding flavour and diversity

Whenever possible I encourage gardeners to experiment with heirloom tomatoes. They come in almost every colour imaginable and often have flavours that far exceed commercial varieties.

Determinate vs Indeterminate Tomatoes

One of the biggest decisions you’ll make is whether to grow determinate or indeterminate tomatoes.

Determinate Tomatoes

Grow to a set height.
Produce most of their fruit over a shorter period.
Require less pruning.
Excellent for preserving.

Indeterminate Tomatoes

Continue growing throughout the season.
Produce tomatoes over many months.
Need regular pruning and support.
Ideal for continual harvesting.

Most of the tomatoes I grow are indeterminate because I enjoy harvesting fresh tomatoes over a long season rather than all at once.

1. Start From Seed

Growing tomatoes from seed is one of the easiest ways to save money while dramatically increasing your choice of varieties.

A single packet of tomato seed often costs only a few dollars but contains enough seed to grow dozens of plants. Compare that to buying individual seedlings each spring and the savings quickly become obvious.

More importantly, seed catalogues offer hundreds of fascinating varieties that never appear in garden centres.

Growing from seed also allows you to choose tomatoes based on flavour, colour, size, disease resistance or suitability for your climate rather than simply buying whatever happens to be available locally.

If you’re new to raising seedlings, don’t be intimidated. Tomatoes are among the easiest vegetables to start indoors.

Learning to grow vegetables from seed is one of the best skills any gardener can develop, and tomatoes are an excellent place to begin.

For a step-by-step guide, see my complete tutorial:

How to Start Tomatoes from Seed

If you’re new to gardening, or would like help planning and growing a productive vegetable garden, I’d love to help. Find out more here.

2. Start with Healthy Soil

If I could only give one piece of advice about growing tomatoes, it would be this:

Build healthy soil first.

Everything else becomes easier when your soil is rich in organic matter and full of life.

Every tomato plant I grow receives generous amounts of homemade compost before planting. Compost improves drainage in heavy soils, increases water retention in sandy soils and feeds billions of beneficial microorganisms that help keep tomato roots healthy.

I also like adding worm castings or well-rotted compost directly into each planting hole. These introduce beneficial microbes while providing a slow, steady source of nutrients throughout the growing season.

Healthy soil grows healthy plants, and healthy plants are naturally more resistant to pests, diseases and drought.

3. Give Tomatoes Plenty of Sunshine

Tomatoes are true sun lovers.

The more sunlight they receive, the more energy they have to produce healthy leaves, flowers and fruit.

For the best harvest, plant tomatoes where they’ll receive at least 8–10 hours of direct sunlight every day.

If you’re growing seedlings indoors, they require even more light. Without enough light they quickly become tall, thin and “leggy” as they stretch towards the nearest window.

If natural light is limited, a simple LED grow light can make an enormous difference during the seedling stage.

Remember that more leaves don’t necessarily mean more tomatoes. Healthy, compact plants grown in plenty of light usually produce far better crops than tall, weak plants grown in shade.

If you’re deciding where to position your vegetable garden, always prioritise sunshine before convenience.

It’s almost impossible to compensate for a poor location later in the season.

4. Plant Tomatoes Deeply

This is one of the biggest differences between tomatoes and most other vegetables.

With many seedlings you’re told to plant them at exactly the same depth they were growing in the pot.

Tomatoes are different.

The tiny hairs covering the stem are actually capable of producing roots when buried beneath the soil.

Every section of buried stem becomes another opportunity for the plant to develop a larger root system.

The result is:

Stronger plants.
Better drought resistance.
Greater nutrient uptake.
Improved stability.
Higher yields.

If your seedlings have become tall and leggy, don’t worry—they’re actually perfect candidates for trench planting.

How to Plant Tomatoes Sideways

Remove the lower leaves from the seedling.
Dig a shallow trench rather than a deep hole.
Add compost and worm castings.
Lay the stem horizontally.
Leave only the top 10–15 cm above the soil.
Cover the buried stem with soil.
Water thoroughly.

Within a week or two the buried stem will have produced dozens of new roots, creating an incredibly strong foundation for the rest of the season.

This simple technique often produces noticeably larger plants than conventional planting.

If your soil is still cool, laying plants sideways also places much of the stem into warmer topsoil rather than colder subsoil, helping young plants establish more quickly.

5. Feed Your Tomatoes Properly

Tomatoes are hungry plants.

Producing kilograms of fruit over several months requires a steady supply of nutrients.

However, more fertiliser isn’t always better.

One of the biggest mistakes gardeners make is applying large amounts of nitrogen throughout the growing season.

Too much nitrogen encourages lush green leaves at the expense of flowers and fruit.

You end up with enormous plants—and very few tomatoes.

A Simple Feeding Schedule

Growth Stage	Recommended Feeding
Before planting	Compost and worm castings
Early growth	Balanced organic fertiliser
Flowering	Higher potassium tomato fertiliser
Heavy fruiting	Liquid feeds every 1–2 weeks

I prefer slow-release organic fertilisers because they feed both the plant and the soil biology.

Healthy microbes help unlock nutrients naturally while improving soil structure over time.

6. Water Tomatoes the Right Way

If there is one cultural practice that separates healthy tomato plants from struggling ones, it’s watering consistently.

Tomatoes dislike constantly wet soil, but they also dislike drying out completely.

Large swings between dry and wet soil often lead to cracked fruit, blossom end rot and uneven growth.

The goal is steady moisture.

Best Watering Practices

Water deeply rather than little and often.
Water the soil—not the leaves.
Water early in the morning.
Apply mulch to reduce evaporation.
Increase watering during hot weather.

Keeping leaves dry also reduces fungal diseases such as early blight and septoria leaf spot.

Drip irrigation is one of the easiest ways to achieve this because water is delivered directly to the root zone with very little waste.

I also use passive watering systems wherever possible to reduce both water use and maintenance.

See how I use a simple greywater system here.

Mulch Makes Everything Easier

One of the easiest ways to improve tomato growth is simply covering the soil.

A thick layer of mulch:

Reduces evaporation.
Suppresses weeds.
Keeps soil temperatures more stable.
Protects beneficial soil organisms.
Reduces muddy splash that spreads disease spores onto leaves.

Suitable mulches include:

Straw
Lucerne
Grass clippings (thin layers only)
Shredded leaves
Compost

Keep mulch a few centimetres away from the main stem to prevent excess moisture building up around the base of the plant.

7. Support Your Tomato Plants

Tomato plants become surprisingly heavy once they begin carrying dozens of fruit.

Without support the stems often snap, fruit sits on the ground and diseases become much more common.

There are several ways to support tomatoes, and each has advantages.

Support Method	Best For
Wooden stakes	Outdoor gardens
Tomato cages	Bush tomatoes
Vertical strings	Tunnel houses and greenhouses

Personally, I almost always grow indeterminate tomatoes up strings.

When planting, I bury one end of the string beneath the root ball and tie the other end securely to the overhead supports in the tunnel house.

As the plant grows I simply wind it around the string or secure it with reusable tomato clips.

This system keeps plants upright, improves airflow and makes harvesting much easier.

If you’re staking tomatoes outdoors, soft ties made from old stockings work brilliantly because they stretch as the stem grows without cutting into the plant.

8. Prune Your Tomatoes for Bigger Harvests

Pruning is one of the most debated aspects of tomato growing.

Some gardeners never prune, while others remove almost every side shoot.

The truth is that it depends on the type of tomato you’re growing.

Should You Prune Tomatoes?

Indeterminate tomatoes continue growing all season and benefit greatly from regular pruning.

Determinate tomatoes, however, naturally stop growing after reaching a certain size and generally require very little pruning.

If you remove too much growth from determinate varieties, you’ll actually reduce your harvest.

Removing Suckers

Suckers are the small shoots that develop between the main stem and a side branch.

If left to grow, they become full-sized stems with their own leaves, flowers and fruit.

While that might sound like a good thing, every extra stem also demands water, nutrients and sunlight.

For indeterminate tomatoes, removing most suckers allows the plant to focus its energy on producing larger, healthier fruit while improving airflow through the plant.

The best time to remove them is when they’re only a few centimetres long.

Simply pinch them off with your fingers or use clean secateurs.

9. Improve Airflow by Removing Lower Leaves

As tomato plants mature, the lower leaves often become shaded, collect moisture and are the first place fungal diseases begin.

Gradually removing the lowest leaves offers several benefits:

Improves airflow.
Reduces fungal diseases.
Makes watering easier.
Allows better light penetration.
Improves fruit ripening.

Once fruit begins to size up, I also remove a few leaves surrounding the tomato trusses.

This increases sunlight reaching the fruit, helping tomatoes colour more evenly while improving airflow around developing fruit.

Don’t remove too many leaves at once though.

Leaves are still the plant’s solar panels, producing the energy needed to ripen fruit.

10. Companion Plant with Tomatoes

Tomatoes grow even better when surrounded by the right companion plants.

Companion planting increases biodiversity, attracts beneficial insects and helps create a healthier garden ecosystem.

Some companion plants also provide nectar for pollinators, improving fruit set throughout the season.

Excellent Tomato Companions

Plant	Benefit
Basil	Traditional tomato companion and useful kitchen herb.
Marigolds	Attract beneficial insects and brighten the garden.
Borage	Excellent bee plant.
Parsley	Supports beneficial insects.
Onions & garlic	Traditionally planted nearby in mixed vegetable gardens.

Growing Tomatoes in Pots

Don’t have a vegetable garden?

Tomatoes are one of the easiest vegetables to grow in containers.

Choose a pot at least 30–40 litres for large varieties and use a high-quality potting mix enriched with compost.

Container-grown tomatoes dry out much faster than those in garden beds, so you’ll need to water them more frequently during hot weather.

Because nutrients wash out of containers over time, regular liquid feeding also becomes more important.

Cherry tomatoes are often the easiest choice for containers because they’re extremely productive in limited space.

Growing Tomatoes in a Tunnel House or Greenhouse

A tunnel house can dramatically extend your tomato season.

Plants begin growing earlier in spring, continue producing later into autumn and are protected from many weather-related problems.

However, enclosed spaces create new challenges.

Humidity can quickly build up, increasing the risk of fungal diseases.

Good ventilation becomes essential.

I always leave doors and vents open whenever temperatures allow, encouraging airflow through the plants.

Growing tomatoes vertically on strings works particularly well inside tunnel houses because plants occupy very little floor space while remaining easy to prune and harvest.

Common Tomato Problems

Even experienced gardeners occasionally run into tomato problems.

The good news is that most issues are surprisingly easy to diagnose once you know what to look for.

Blossom End Rot

Dark, sunken patches appear on the bottom of developing fruit.

This is usually caused by inconsistent watering rather than a simple calcium deficiency.

Keeping soil moisture even is the best long-term solution.

RELATED: How to Prevent Blossom End Rot

Tomatoes Splitting

Large fluctuations between dry and wet soil often cause ripe tomatoes to crack.

Regular watering and mulching greatly reduce splitting.

Yellow Leaves

Lower leaves naturally yellow as plants mature, but widespread yellowing may indicate poor nutrition, overwatering or disease.

Leaf Curl

Leaf curl is commonly caused by environmental stress including heat, inconsistent watering or root disturbance.

It usually isn’t serious if the plant continues growing normally.

Flowers but No Fruit

Very high temperatures, poor pollination or excessive nitrogen can all reduce fruit set.

Encouraging pollinators and avoiding excessive fertiliser usually helps.

Common Tomato Pests

Healthy tomato plants can usually tolerate a small number of insects, but severe infestations should be dealt with early.

Pest	Control
Aphids	Ladybirds, lacewings, water spray or insecticidal soap.
Whitefly	Yellow sticky traps and beneficial insects.
Caterpillars	Hand pick or encourage birds and parasitic wasps.
Slugs and snails	Hand removal and habitat management.

A diverse garden filled with flowers and herbs usually experiences fewer severe pest outbreaks than a monoculture of tomatoes alone.

Harvesting Tomatoes

After weeks of caring for your tomato plants, harvest time is easily the most rewarding part of the season.

Exactly when to harvest depends on the variety you’re growing. Tomatoes can ripen to many colours including red, orange, yellow, pink, purple, black, green and even striped combinations.

The important thing is to learn what a ripe fruit looks and feels like for the variety you’ve chosen.

A ripe tomato should have developed its mature colour and feel slightly soft when gently squeezed.

If birds, insects or splitting are becoming a problem, don’t be afraid to harvest tomatoes just before they’re fully ripe.

They’ll continue ripening perfectly indoors on the kitchen bench while avoiding damage outside.

Should You Ripen Tomatoes on the Vine?

Whenever possible, I prefer allowing tomatoes to ripen naturally on the plant.

This usually produces the richest flavour because the fruit remains connected to the plant for longer.

However, if heavy rain, frost or pests threaten your crop, harvesting slightly early is often the better option.

How to Ripen Green Tomatoes

At the end of the growing season it’s common to have plenty of green tomatoes still hanging on the vines.

Fortunately, most mature green tomatoes will continue ripening indoors.

Simply place them in a single layer somewhere warm with good airflow.

If you’d like to speed up ripening, place a ripe banana or apple nearby. These fruits naturally release ethylene gas, which encourages tomatoes to ripen more quickly.

Immature green tomatoes, however, won’t develop the same flavour because they hadn’t fully developed before harvest.

Saving Tomato Seeds

One of the joys of growing open-pollinated and heirloom tomatoes is being able to save your own seed.

Not only does this save money, but over time you can gradually select plants that perform particularly well in your own climate.

How to Save Tomato Seed

Select healthy, disease-free plants.
Choose fully ripe fruit.
Scoop out the seeds and surrounding gel.
Allow them to ferment for 2–3 days in a small jar.
Rinse thoroughly.
Dry completely before storing.

Properly stored tomato seed often remains viable for five years or more.

Extending Your Tomato Season

If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably wish tomato season lasted longer.

Fortunately there are several simple ways to enjoy fresh tomatoes for more of the year.

Start seeds indoors earlier.
Use cloches or frost protection in spring.
Grow inside a tunnel house or greenhouse.
Choose early, mid and late-season varieties.
Protect plants from early autumn frosts.

Growing a mix of varieties means you’ll enjoy fresh tomatoes over many months instead of harvesting everything in a short burst.

Summary: The 10 Best Tomato Growing Tips

If you only remember a handful of things from this guide, make them these:

Grow tomatoes in full sun.
Start with healthy, compost-rich soil.
Plant deeply to encourage more roots.
Water consistently.
Feed regularly without overdoing nitrogen.
Support plants before they become heavy.
Prune indeterminate varieties.
Improve airflow by removing lower leaves.
Use companion planting to encourage biodiversity.
Harvest regularly to encourage continued production.

These simple practices alone will dramatically improve the health, productivity and flavour of your tomato plants.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much sun do tomatoes need?

Tomatoes grow best with 8–10 hours of direct sunlight every day.

Can tomatoes grow in pots?

Yes. Large containers with quality potting mix and regular watering produce excellent crops.

How often should I water tomatoes?

Water deeply whenever the top few centimetres of soil begin drying out. Consistency is more important than frequency.

Why are my tomato flowers falling off?

High temperatures, poor pollination or excessive nitrogen are common causes.

Should I remove tomato suckers?

Indeterminate tomatoes usually benefit from removing suckers, while determinate varieties require very little pruning.

Why are my tomatoes splitting?

Usually because soil moisture has fluctuated between very dry and very wet conditions.

Can I grow tomatoes in a greenhouse?

Absolutely. Greenhouses and tunnel houses often produce earlier and longer harvests, provided good ventilation is maintained.

What is the best fertiliser for tomatoes?

Start with compost and a balanced organic fertiliser, then switch to a higher-potassium fertiliser once flowering begins.

How long do tomatoes take to grow?

Most tomatoes take between 60 and 100 days from transplanting, depending on the variety.

Can I save tomato seeds?

Yes, particularly from open-pollinated and heirloom varieties. Hybrid varieties won’t always grow true to type.

Final Thoughts

Tomatoes have earned their place as one of the world’s favourite vegetables to grow—and for good reason.

With just a little care, a handful of plants can reward you with months of delicious fruit that far surpasses anything you’ll buy in a supermarket.

The key isn’t chasing miracle products or complicated techniques. It’s building healthy soil, giving plants plenty of sunshine, watering consistently and supporting them as they grow.

Everything else simply builds on those foundations.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with new varieties each season either. Some of my favourite tomatoes have come from trying an unusual heirloom that I’d never heard of before.

You might just discover your new favourite too.