Solanum lycopersicum (Solanaceae or nightshade family)
Production
Soil preparation
- Where Phytophthora (Phytophthora capsici) is an issue, rotate away from this land. Biofumigation has shown some effectiveness to reduce incidences.
- Total nutrient uptake is 180 lbs. of N, 21 lbs. of P and 280 lbs. of K.
- A soil test will determine how much compost to apply.
- Spread lime as needed to increase both the pH and Ca levels. Dolomite lime will also increase Mg levels. Spread gypsum when calcium levels are low but pH is correct.
- A fertilizer company can add OMRI-listed potassium sulfate to compost if it doesn’t have enough K to meet the crop’s needs. If this isn’t possible, spread the correct amount of fertilizer and incorporate it before planting.
- Most vegetable crops remove little P, but at times your soil test result will call for additional P. Unfortunately, there aren’t short-term options for an organic grower to increase the available P levels in the soil. Through the use of animal-based fertilizers, P will build up to a level in the soil that is sufficient for all vegetable crops.
- Incorporate compost and plant tomatoes on high raised beds covered with plastic mulch.
Common recommended fertilizer rates1
| Nitrogen | Phosphorus | Potassium | pH |
| 100 | 0-200 | 0-240 | 6.0-6.4 |
| 1Rates are for New York and are from Cornell University’s Nutrient Guidelines for Commercial Vegetable Production (2019). Check the Cornell website for updated guidelines, or consult with local experts for recommended rates outside New York. | |||
Varieties
- New York variety trial
- Wisconsin variety trial
- Popular with growers
- Early red: Polbig, Early Cascade (Alternaria tolerant), Early Girl, New Girl, Fourth of July
- Midseason red: Celebrity (sweet and good disease tolerance), Tastilee
- Late red: Mountain Fresh Plus, Mountain Merit (Alternaria resistant)
- Small plum: Juliet (high disease resistance and great flavor), Golden Rave
- Large cherry: Mountain Magic (excellent disease resistance)
- Cherry tomato: Sungold, Superweet 100, Sakura, Edox, Valentine
- Heirloom: Valencia, Nepal, Brandywine
- Plum: Plum Regal, San Marzano
Greenhouse guidelines
- EZ Seeder seeding plate #16
- Early in the season, germinate seeds in a germination chamber unless you can keep the greenhouse warm both day and night. Germination improves greatly at optimum temperatures.
| Cell pack tray | Germination temp | Growth temp | Hardening off | Notes |
| 288 | 75°–90° | 60°–70° | Withhold water | Put plug trays on a wire mesh bench to encourage air pruning. Take plants outside 1 week before planting in field. |
Number of successions
- This depends on the grower and the type of tomato.
- Indeterminate tomatoes produce all season long. If you can keep them disease free and well fed, there is no need for a succession.
- Additional planting may be a good strategy for harvesting disease-free tomatoes late in the fall. In that case, start a determinate or semi-indeterminate tomato variety 5 months before the first frost date. (This is the middle of May in New York.)
Greenhouse guidelines
- Repot into 38- or 50-cell trays, or into 4-inch pots, when true leaves are developed.
- To reduce elongated growth in seedlings, brush plants with a broom at least once a week to get stocky seedlings. Dr. Joyce Latimer of Virginia Cooperative Extension found that this type of mechanical stimulation is an effective way to prevent excessive stem elongation (stretching). Brush across the top of the canopy in long gentle strokes with a broom, preferably one that is unpainted because leaves won’t stick to it. Begin this treatment when the plants are about 2.5-inches tall. Run the broom about ½–1 inch below the top of the canopy to lean the plants over gently, 10 times back and forth, once a day. In mid-June it takes 20 strokes. More treatment than that can damage the leaves. If you see damage, it’s too much! Brush when the foliage is dry but the plants aren’t wilted. Mostly, this will be before watering in the morning.
Transplant readiness indicators
- Transplant when plants have enough of a root ball to hold the pot together. Plants that are lush don’t perform well in the field when hardening off, so increase light by moving them outside and reduce watering.
Water wheel planter
| Rows | In-row spacing | Planting depth (inches) | Notes |
| 1 | 24 inches | As deep as possible | Add kelp to water as a 0.5% solution in the water wheel planter. |
Transplant tips
- The first planting should be on infrared transmitting (IRT) plastic, while the second and third plantings can be on black plastic or bare ground.
- The following tip is useful when you have harvest lanes, where every 8 or 10 beds are separated by a grass strip: Mark a 4-foot “walking break” on the plastic mulch every hundred feet and don’t plant anything in that 4-foot strip. This will make harvesting easier by allowing you to easily pass through the crop when removing buckets. Instead of carrying the buckets of tomatoes to the headland, one can walk through the crop (instead of over) to the left or right and place the buckets in the harvest lane to be collected by truck or other vehicle.
Cultivation procedures (with plasticulture)
- After transplanting, cultivate once or twice between plastic with a rolling cultivator or Spyder. Cover the wheel tracks with rye straw at a rate of 3 lbs. per foot. (One 600 lb. round bale covers 200 feet of wheel track.) Increase this amount when using an early cutting of orchard grass because hay breaks down much faster than straw. Over time, hay and straw mulch will release a significant amount of K and other beneficial properties like silicon, contributing to long-term soil health. Mulching also protects crops from soil splashing. This reduces soilborne diseases and time spent cleaning produce after harvest.
Cultivation procedures (without plasticulture)
- Ideally, control weeds when they’re in the white thread stage. When using precision cultivation tools, make sure plants are established and won’t be uprooted by the use of close implements.
- When plants aren’t established, use side knives or sweeps only.
- When plants are established, use a finger weeder in combination with side knives for best weed control. Alternatively, if you want very slight hilling, use spring hoes in combination with side knives.
- Hand hoe or hand weed between plants.
Training and pruning tomatoes
- When using determinate or semi-determinate varieties, prune off all the suckers, up to the 1 immediately below the first flower cluster. Don’t remove the sucker below the first flower cluster or any that are above it. Doing so can cause severe stunting. Some varieties may do better with leaving the 2 suckers below the first flower cluster. It’s better to leave too many suckers than to remove too many. Try to remove them when the suckers are 2–4 inches long. Prune before the first stringing and only when the plants are dry to avoid spreading bacterial diseases. You may have to go back and prune a second time. For more detail, read this article by Rutgers University.
- Use 5-foot stakes and T posts for semi-indeterminate varieties (such as Mountain Spring or Fresh), and 4-foot stakes and T posts for determinate varieties (such as Defiance or Regal Plum). Use a handheld fence post driver to pound in the stakes and T posts every other plant (4-feet apart). Drive them about 12–18 inches deep, and be careful to avoid puncturing drip tape.
- Here is a video describing how to apply the tomato twine. Use tomato twine that comes in a cardboard box. The plants will need to be “strung” for the first time when they’re about 8–10 inches tall. Make sure you get to them before they flop over. Use a homemade stringing tool to make tying convenient. The tool will work as an extension of your arm, limiting the amount of bending you’ll need to do. Take an old broom handle, about 2-feet long, and drill 2 holes 1 inch from each end, and feed the string through both holes. Alternatively, use a PVC pipe of the same length, except drill only 1 hole about 8 inches from the bottom, and feed the string through the hole and the pipe. Either method keeps tension on the string while you work. Attach the box of string to your belt and thread the twine through the tool. Tie the end of the string to the first stake, about 10 inches above ground level. You are now ready to weave.
- Use the stringing tool to pass string along the near side of the first tomato plant and the far side of the second. Your other hand can help provide the right amount of tension. As you get to the second stake, wrap the string tightly around the stake 1 or 2 times, and continue down the row in the same manner. When you reach the last stake in the row, work your way back down the row in a similar manner, but make sure you’re wrapping the twine around the opposite side of each plant, in a figure-eight manner, so that each plant is held firmly in place. When you get back to where you began, tie the string on the first stake.
- Repeat this procedure as the plants grow, placing strings about every 10 inches. Simply run the string down 1 side of the plants and up the other side when you return. That will leave you with about 4–5 strings for a determinate plant and more when using semi-determinate plants.
Frost, disease and insect protection
- Staking greatly improves plant health, and a thick mulch of rye straw also reduces plant diseases. While it won’t prevent a late blight (Phytophthora) outbreak, the practice of using tolerant or resistant varieties in combination with plastic mulch and heavy rye straw mulch greatly reduces disease pressure. Plant any additional successions in different parts of the field to avoid the spread of disease, and plant each succession away from the prevailing wind (west).
- When late blight (Phytophthora), early blight (Alternaria), gray mold (Cladosporium), leaf spot (Septoria) or bacterial speck is a problem, use a weekly spray of an OMRI-listed copper, as in Nordox 75 (CuO) or Nu-Cop50 (CuOH). Mix it with a spreader/sticker for a longer effect. Alternatively, use a mineral oil as in JMS Stylet-Oil to replace the spreader/sticker, but don’t use both, as this can cause crop damage. Regular applications of a giant knotweed extract (Reynoutria sachalinensis), as in the product Regalia, provides the plant with greater resistance against plant diseases.
Other cultural practices
- Irrigate frequently for optimum yield and plant health. Frequency depends on soil type, evaporation, precipitation and the particular needs of the crop.
Double cropping and/or cover cropping
- Remove stings, stakes, plastic and drip tape shortly after the last harvest.
- Work under any harvest and mulch remains to avoid insect or pathogen buildup, and plant a cover crop.
- In the northern United States and Canada, you can plant oats and peas after early tomatoes, or rye and vetch after later tomatoes. Adjust accordingly in other regions.
- Clean and sanitize the stakes before storage. Use an OMRI-listed chlorine or hydrogen peroxide solution. Plant pathogens will continue to survive on soil particles left on the stakes.
Production, High Tunnel
Soil preparation
- Total nutrient uptake is usually higher than field tomatoes.
- A soil test will determine how much compost to apply.
- Incorporate compost and plant tomatoes in raised beds.
- High tunnels are known to accumulate P over time. Be careful when applying animal-based fertilizer that contains a significant amount of P.
- Be careful when using plant-based fertilizers like peanut meal as a source for N. Some growers have lost their crop due to pathogens and nematodes present in plant-based fertilizers.
Varieties
- Comparing tomato varieties in high tunnel and open field conditions in the Midwest
- Illinois variety trial
- Iowa variety trial
Greenhouse guidelines
- Many high-tunnel producers graft their plants on disease-resistant rootstock to improve plant health. Here’s an excellent video on grafting tomatoes.
Planting by hand
| Rows | In-row spacing | Planting depth (inches) | Notes |
| 1 | 12-24 inches | As deep as possible | Plants have 1 or 2 leaders. When plants have 2 leaders they are set at 24 inches, giving each leader 12 inches. Rows are generally 4–5 feet apart. |
Number of successions
- Only 1, when growing the tomatoes as a single or double leader.
- Some growers plant a determinate tomato variety for very early production and another determinate variety for late production to avoid low market prices in August.
Trellising
- You can still grow determinate varieties with the traditional Florida weave system, as described in the Tomato section.
- Indeterminate varieties are trained to 1–2 leaders with a string trellising system:
- Decide 1 or 2 leaders per plant. Two leaders are easier to manage, but many varieties do better as a single leader. One consideration is the cost of grafting and seed. You save some time and resources by choosing 2 leaders.
- Use an in-row spacing of 12 inches for single leaders and 24 inches for 2 leaders.
- Drop a line down from the overhead support, 1 line for each leader. Use the same twine that you use for the Florida weaving system.
- Use a tomato clip to fasten the line below the first leaves. After that you can wrap the line clockwise around the stem as you train the plant.
- For a double leader, establish a strong Y by removing the leaves up to the first flower cluster. Leave the sucker just under the first flower cluster and remove all suckers below that point. The stem should now look like the letter ‘Y’. Each arm of the Y will become a leader.
- Maintain the leaders throughout the growing season by continually pruning off all suckers. You’ll need to prune on at least a weekly basis. It’s best to prune during the morning hours after any dew has dried off. Remove suckers when they’re small to avoid plant damage.
Frost, disease and insect protection
- Growing tomatoes in a tunnel greatly improves plant health. While you may avoid late blight, other diseases like powdery mildew, leaf molds (Fulvia), and Septoria leaf spot, and Sclerotinia (timber rot) and Botrytis can become an issue. The practice of planting or grafting tolerant or resistant varieties in combination with good sanitary practices greatly reduces disease pressure. Pruning and good air circulation are primary defenses against foliar problems. Powdery mildew is partially controlled through genetics, but weekly foliar sprays of potassium bicarbonate, as in MilStop SP, have also proven to be effective.
- Tomato hornworms can be an issue in high-tunnel production. You can either pick them off plants or spray with Bt aizawai, as in the product XenTari.
- Two spotted spider mites can best be controlled by introducing a predatory spider mite. Spraying neem oil or JMS Stylet-Oil can be effective, but isn’t advisable as it leaves a residue on the tomatoes.
- Aphids: Check for aphids using yellow sticky cards. As aphids can spread viral diseases, control them when present by introduction of beneficials like green lacewings. At high populations, use Beauveria bassiana, as in the product Mycotrol ESO, for effective control.
Monitoring nutrients
- Due to the much higher production of tomatoes in a high-tunnel, the crop might need additional fertilizer throughout the season. Obtain a plant tissue analysis from a commercial lab to establish any deficiencies.
- If a tissue analysis determines plants need additional fertilizer—either N or K—you can adjust by injecting the corresponding liquid fertilizer through a drip line.
Additional resources
Harvest
| Yield | Yield figures are averages based on growing tomatoes in a protected environment like a caterpillar tunnel. Outdoor yields vary year to year due to weather impacts. All figures are per row foot: Early beefsteak (all sizes): 6 lbs. Cherry tomatoes: 4 pints, with variation between varieties Heirlooms: 2.8 lbs. Midseason beefsteak: 6 lbs. Plum tomatoes: 5 lbs. Plum tomatoes: 5 lbs. |
| Standards | Harvesting1 (rates include sorting and packing as applicable) Early, small beefsteak in quart baskets: 30–40 quarts (60–80 lbs.) per person, per hour Large beefsteak: 200 lbs. per person, per hour Cherry in pint baskets: 20–30 pints per person, per hour Heirloom: 80–100 lbs. per person, per hour Plum: 100–00 lbs. per person, per hour, depending on size |
| Tools and supplies needed | Buckets (for beefsteak, smalls and plums), tomato trays (for heirloom varieties), and pint or quart containers |
| 1Harvest rates don't include the time required to transport crops from the field to a wash and pack shed or storage facility. | |
Ready-to-harvest and quality indicators
- Tomatoes are well formed for their type.
- “Marketable” size depends on the market, but in general “marketable” implies the characteristics mentioned below.
- Maturity depends on how far removed you are from the end buyer. The buyer will communicate how they want to receive the product: either stage 1 (mature green), stage 2 (pink) or stage 3 (vine ripe).
- Tomatoes have a uniform color throughout the fruit with no sign of green shoulders or gray wall. Fruit is smooth, with small scars at the blossom and stem ends.
- Tomatoes show no signs of growth cracks, cat-facing, zippering, sunscald, insect injury, insect frass or honeydew, or physical injury or bruises.
- Beefsteak tomatoes yield only to firm hand pressure. Soft and easily deformed tomatoes are overripe.
- Heirlooms are often soft. While this isn’t a true indicator that there’s something wrong with them, softness can be challenging for growers who intend to ship their product, as a long truck ride can bruise these tomatoes.
Harvest procedures
- Avoid harvesting when the crop is wet either from rain or dew.
- Each person takes one side of a tomato row.
- Pick tomatoes into buckets or tomato trays (only use 1-layer trays for heirloom tomatoes and ones that are very ripe). Pick cherry tomatoes directly into pints or harvest buckets.
- For beefsteaks, remove the green stems to prevent puncturing tomatoes in the bucket. Place them face down when picking in a 1-layer tray. Generally, the stems from heirloom tomatoes or cherries aren’t removed. In the case of the Sun Gold variety, removing the stem reduces storage.
- Heirloom and some beefsteak varieties are very soft and easy to damage. Harvest them very carefully into 1-layer tomato trays.
- Mark the spot where you stop harvesting with a bright flag so that you can begin there the next time you harvest.
Cleaning procedures
- Tomatoes stay clean and washing is unnecessary when using adequate plastic and straw mulch.
- Washing decreases storage life and can introduce pathogens.
- As needed, clean tomatoes by wiping them with a clean cloth.
- Sort tomatoes for size and quality in a well-lit packing shed.
- If washing is necessary, use a conveyor brusher washer. Make sure to dry tomatoes after washing.
Packing procedures
- For a CSA or farmers market, you can pack small beefsteak tomatoes into quart baskets. Fill to a rounded top and possibly place a net on top to avoid spills. Each quart weighs approximately 1.8 lbs.
- Distribute cherry tomatoes in pint baskets. Fill to a rounded top and possibly place a net on top to avoid spills.
- Pack large beefsteak tomatoes into tomato boxes. A 5x6 box means that each layer in the box can accommodate 5 tomatoes on the short side and 6 tomatoes on the long side, or 30 tomatoes per layer.
- Sort heirlooms by size into 1-layer tomato trays.
- Distribute plum tomatoes in boxes of 20–25 lbs.
Additional resources
Packing and storage summary for tomatoes
| Packing in the field | Remove stems from all red beefsteak tomatoes except the heirlooms. |
| Packing for delivery | Communicate with your buyers or customers on the desired maturity (stage 1 mature green, stage 2 pink and stage 3 ripe) and how to pack. See the International Federation for Produce Standards for the correct PLU code. Add the prefix 9 for organic crops. |
| Storage | The ideal storage temperature for ripe tomatoes is 50° and 90–95% humidity. Light red tomatoes are best kept at 55° and mature green at 60°. You can ripen tomatoes faster by keeping them at temperatures as high as 75°. Tomatoes are sensitive to chilling injury when held for longer than 2 weeks below 50° or for longer than a week at 41°. Tomatoes are sensitive to ethylene, which also allows them to ripen. Ripe tomatoes also produce ethylene. Exposure will reduce shelf life. |
This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.