Gadenin日本語Get the appFour stages, and where the season is won
A medium tomato season splits into four: establishment for the first fortnight after planting, frame building for the next month, the main harvest, and the run down to frost. What makes this size of fruit different from a cherry is that the long wait sits in the middle. Each fruit needs 55 to 65 days from flower, so the plant looks like it is doing nothing for weeks while it is in fact filling a truss of tomatoes.
The season is won in the frame-building stage, between weeks two and six after planting. That is when you set the stem count, establish the weekly sucker habit, thin the first trusses, and give the first feed. Everything after that is maintenance. A plant that is left to itself through those four weeks has already decided how it will spend the rest of the summer, and it is rarely the way you would have chosen.
| Stage | When | What it determines |
|---|---|---|
| Establishment | First 2 weeks after planting | Root depth, and therefore blossom end rot risk in hot weather |
| Building the frame | Weeks 2 to 6 after planting | Stem count, fruit per truss, final fruit size |
| Main harvest | Week 9 to first frost | Yield, splitting losses, disease pressure |
| Run down to frost | Last 9 weeks | How much of the late set actually ripens |
The stage by stage list
Everything below is counted from your last spring frost. If you raise your own transplants rather than buying them, sow indoors seven to eight weeks before that date, which is about a fortnight more than a cherry needs because medium types take longer to reach transplant size and you want a stocky plant rather than a rushed one.
Unlike cherries, a second planting later in the season rarely works with medium tomatoes outside a long, mild autumn. At 55 to 65 days from flower, a plant that goes in a month late is still flowering when the nights turn cold and hands you a plant full of green fruit. One planting, done properly and on time, beats two done hopefully.
| Stage | Main jobs | The point of it |
|---|---|---|
| 7 to 8 weeks before last frost | Sow indoors if raising your own, warm and bright | A stocky transplant ready exactly when the soil is |
| 2 to 3 weeks before last frost | Prepare the bed, dig in compost, lay mulch, drive stakes | Warm the soil and get the supports in before roots are there |
| At last frost, soil above 60F (15C) | Trench plant deep, remove any flower truss, water once | Deep roots that can supply heavy fruit two months later |
| Weeks 2 to 6 | Choose stem count, weekly suckering, tie in, thin first truss to 4 or 5 | Set the frame while the plant is still small enough to shape |
| Weeks 6 to 9 | First feed at marble-sized fruit, keep thinning trusses, mulch topped up | Full-sized fruit rather than a plant covered in undersized ones |
| Main harvest | Pick every 2 to 3 days, strip leaves below the picking truss, feed fortnightly | Keep fruit quality up through the wettest part of summer |
| 9 weeks before first frost | Top every stem, remove flower-only trusses | Put everything into fruit that can still finish |
| At first frost | Strip all fruit including green, pull and clear the plants | Save two months of work and take disease off the plot |
Establishment: restraint is the work
For the first fortnight after planting, the job is mostly not doing things. Water once, hard, at planting, then wait until the top two inches (five cm) of soil are dry before watering again. Constant light watering now keeps roots shallow, and a shallow-rooted medium tomato is the plant that gives you black-based fruit in high summer when it cannot pull water fast enough on a hot afternoon.
Judge the plant at dawn rather than midday. Leaves standing up in the morning mean the roots are working, even if the plant flags in the afternoon sun, which is normal and not a signal to water. Leaves still drooping at first light mean the rootball has genuinely dried out and needs a slow, thorough soak at the base.
- Check the plant at first light Midday wilting tells you nothing at all. Dawn is the only time you find out whether the roots are keeping up with the leaves.
- Get the permanent stake in at planting Drive stakes before or during planting. Pushing one in beside an established plant tears through the roots you spent six weeks growing.
- Do not feed yet Nothing until the lowest truss carries marble-sized fruit. Early nitrogen gives you a huge leafy plant that flowers late and rots at the blossom end.
Building the frame: the weekly round
From about two weeks after planting until picking begins, visit once a week and do four jobs together: suckers, ties, a look at the lowest leaves for spots, and thinning any truss that has set more than five fruit. Doing them on the same day each week is what stops the plant getting ahead of you. This is also when you commit to one stem or two, by keeping or removing the sucker directly below the first flower truss.
Truss thinning is the job unique to this fruit size, and it is the one most people skip. A truss that sets eight fruit will fill none of them properly. Take it down to four or five while they are marble sized and the rest reach full size and color within days of each other. Add the first feed once that lowest truss reaches marble size, applied in a ring at the edge of the leaf canopy rather than against the stem.
- Fix one day a week and keep it Suckers, ties, disease check and truss thinning, all in one visit, on the same day. A missed week is a materially different plant.
- Decide the stem count in week two Keep or remove the sucker below the first truss. Leave it a fortnight and the plant has made the decision for you.
- Thin every truss to four or five At marble size, remove the smallest, the misshapen and the fruit at the very tip of the truss. This is what produces full-sized tomatoes.
- First feed at marble-sized fruit, and log the date A ring of balanced granular fertilizer at the canopy edge, scratched in and watered. Write the date down or you will feed from memory and get it wrong.
Main harvest: keeping quality through wet weather
Once fruit begins to color, picking every two or three days becomes the center of the job. Fruit at full color left on the plant is fruit waiting to split, be found by birds, or go soft in the sun, and at this size each one represents two months of the plant's work. Keep the weekly round going alongside it: suckers, ties, leaf stripping below the picking truss, and disease inspection.
Feeding continues every ten to fourteen days in the ground and weekly in containers, on a high-potassium tomato feed. Keep the mulch topped up as it breaks down, and get a rain cover over the row before the wet part of summer arrives. This is also when the weather should be steering your priorities rather than your list.
| Weather | Priority | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Hot and dry above 86F (30C) | Steady soil moisture and fruit shading | Soak at the base in the morning, shade the row through the afternoon |
| Sustained heat above 90F (32C) | Flowers failing to set | Expect a gap in the crop two months later. Stop nitrogen and wait it out |
| Cool and wet | Blight risk | Inspect lower leaves daily, strip and bag anything spotted, open the canopy |
| Rain forecast after a dry spell | Splitting | Pick everything at breaker or beyond first, then hold off watering afterwards |
| Nights dropping below 55F (13C) | Ripening slows sharply | Pick at breaker and finish the fruit indoors instead |
Run down to frost, and the six lines that matter
Nine weeks out from your first expected frost, top every stem two leaves above the highest truss you expect to finish, and remove any truss still at the flower stage. Because a medium tomato needs the best part of two months per fruit, this cut-off comes noticeably earlier than it does for a cherry, and being sentimental about a late truss costs you size on the fruit already set.
Keep picking to the end, then strip everything green when frost is forecast and ripen it indoors. Pull the plants and take them off the plot. Before you finish, write down four dates and two numbers: planted, first flower, first ripe fruit, last picking, plus stem count and average fruit per truss. On a crop with a two-month lag between cause and effect, that record is the only reliable way to improve from one season to the next.
- Top nine weeks before first frost At 55 to 65 days from flower to ripe, nothing opening after that will finish outdoors. Redirect the plant into what it already carries.
- Remove flower-only trusses on the same day A truss still in flower in the final nine weeks is pure drain on the fruit that can still make it.
- Strip and clear on the frost forecast Take every fruit down to mature green, then pull the plants and remove them. Old growth on the bed carries disease into next year.
- Write down four dates and two numbers Planted, first flower, first ripe fruit, last picking, plus stem count and fruit per truss. That is next spring's starting point.