How To Jump Start Your Tomato Plants - Get Your Tomatoes Growing Fast!

Welcome to the Simple Garden Life Podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello and welcome everybody. Today's podcast is all about
getting your tomato plants off to a fast start. I am joined today by
my host and wife, Mary Competti. And Mary, there's nothing like tomato
planning season and getting your tomatoes in the ground. It's an exciting time of
the year. This is my favorite time of the year. Playing tomatoes has
to be one of the biggest topics that we discuss every year. Yeah,
probably the most often we get emailed about, the most often we get questions
about, and especially when plants go in the ground right away, because a
lot of times there's a law. People get a little nervous their plants are
kind of sitting stagnant. That's what we're going to talk about today. But
before we get into that, as always, we want to take a moment
to remind everyone that you can always reach us via email at the farm at
ow garden dot com. We get lots of emails. We try to answer
every single one, might take us a day. Sometimes it takes us two
depending to round three. YEA, well, we do a pretty good job
of that, and we love love getting your ideas and love getting your questions
and your tips. I mean, we get a lot of tips too.
But you can always sign up to follow us at simple garden life dot com
for the podcast, follow along on Facebook or your favorite podcast app, and
be sure to check out our Old World Garden YouTube channel two. We've been
posting a lot of videos and we'll post a lot more as this spring and
summer playing season come along, so always get there and take a look.
We love to talk about everything gardening this time of the year and actually all
year round. Absolutely, And you know, when we do garden videos and
we do podcasts, we're very real. We're very rustic, very real.
We talk about what we do, what has worked for us in the past,
and it's one of those things that you know, once you hear us,
once you see us, it's all about what we do. Yeah,
And I think I think the biggest thing, and I think the reason a
lot of people resonate with it is because we are just as apt to talk
about our own failures as our successes. And you know, gardening, if
gardening was easy, and you could follow ten simple rules to be perfect.
It wouldn't be that fun. But we all know that mother nature plays apart,
pest play apart. Season by season plays apart, and we just kind
of let it unfold. You know, after what gosh, almost thirteen years
now of living on our farm life, we've gotten a lot of experience.
But we are also smart enough to realize that that experience needs to learn every
year. And we always learned something not just from us, but from our
listeners. Every week, absolutely and every year is absolutely different based on weather,
conditions and plants, and you know, it's one of those things that
gardening. We try to get the best advice we can, but every year
can be different. Yeah, exactly. So okay, let's let's get into
today's subject, and we're talking about tomato plants, especially how they sit sometimes
when you first put them in. We've all been there, you know.
You plant your new transplants in your garden, your raised rows, your bucket
planners, whatever you plant them in, and they just seem to sit there.
It can drive you nuts. You're like, we get these questions.
When I say we get these questions, I'm talking we get fifty emails a
day saying, Hey, I planted my tomato plants a week ago or two
weeks good, depending where we're at in the country, and they just don't
look like they're growing. And what can I do? And there are some
reasons in the early spring that plants sit and one of them we'll get into
this in a second, but transplant shock is going to take a little bit
of time for plants to go. But let's marry get to the question of
the week, because we got this this week, and I have to say
that it's kind of funny this. We could have multiplied this question from Tammy
Reynolds from Greenville, South Carolina by a one hundred and it's a great question.
And I'll let you read it and then we're kind of kind of answer
it Tammy over the course of this podcast. But you'll understand why a lot
of people have issues these first few weeks with their tomato plants. Right.
The question of the week is I planted my tomatoes ten days ago and they
just seem to be sitting in the soil. They do not look like they
are growing at all, and the leaves are starting to turn yellow. I've
been watering them every day, but have not put any fertilizer on them.
What can I do to save my plants? Tammy? An absolutely excellent question,
and there's going to be a lot of factors that play into that,
and we're going to get through them all. The good news, Tammy is
that almost all the above can be overcome with little help, and you should
be able to get those plants growing strong and fast quite quickly. But there
can be a lot of factors, Mary, that really play into that.
I think number one is you know things that you've got to be careful from
the get go that you can overcome. But cold soil, right, cold
soil is one of the key factors and putting transplants in the ground. We
all know those days that come in the early spring and you feel warm.
It's seventy five eighty degrees. It may even get to that several several times
in one week, but that doesn't mean that the soil is seventy degrees absolutely.
And then we talk about cold air temperatures. Just because the temperature gets
to seventy five or eight in a day might be dropped into forty or fo
five at night, so you get the cold air temperatures. Those are two
big factors we're going to get into all of these. The other one is
and Tammy, you mentioned this. I water my plants every day a lot
of times that watering can really affect early growth. And we'll talk about this,
but more times than not, it's too much water that people are giving
their plants other than not enough, so we'll cover that. We talked about
transplant shock. You know where the plants hardened off? Did they get there?
These are all things that you might be saying, Wow, I probably
didn't do that perfectly right, But what can I do now? We're going
to help you there too, And that's especially when you get into fertilizing and
how you can power these plants up. So the good news, Tampion,
Like I said, all of it can be overcome with a little help.
And of course a few of these issues. If you haven't planned your tomatos
yet and you happen to be in an area like we are. We're in
Ohio, it is middle of May. We are not planning our tomatoes yet.
We will wait till the end of the month. And here's a great
point. It's been what seventy five at the plants. It's been beautiful,
but we know what happens, and if you look at the extended forecast this
week, we're gonna get down close to forty thirty seven on some nights,
a couple nights this week, So we wait until the end of the month.
Depending on where you live, you gotta let that soil warm up.
I tell everybody that the soil should be at least sixty to sixty five degrees
before you ever think you're putting them in. But if you haven't, don't
despair. We're gonna We're gonna be able to help. So let's start right
off the bat. We talked about cold soil and cold air temperatures. So
let's say you put these plants in and all of a sudden, your plants
are sitting there and you're like, wow, I realize my soil is probably
only you know, sixty or fifty five degrees and I've gotten some cool weather
in the last week and some mores in the forecast. What can you do?
So let's start with malch. Malch is a huge benefit to the garden.
We talk about it all the time on this show, about maulching your
plants keeps weeds out, keeps the soil temperature, regulated. But think about
that. It keeps the soil temperature regulated. So if your soil is cool
and you plant your tomato plants and you mulch heavy, what's it going to
keep the soil like? It's going to keep it cold. So the key
here is do you remove that malt right now to let the soil warm up.
So this is what I always tell people. If you're experiencing a cold
spell and you've malched your plants, yes, it may be time to move
some of that mulch back. And here's why. The sun and the daily
temperatures can't warm that soil and that mulch is on, especially if it's on
four to six inches like it should be during the regular season. So if
you live in those cool areas and you may have planted your plants a little
bit earlier than you should have, here's what we always suggest. And we've
done this before too, because sometimes mother nature plays tricks. It can be
June. We've had June and had frost warnings here, and the weather forecasters
sometimes might be wrong. Yeah, So remove that mulch, let the sun
warm up the soil temperature, and if it's not, here's a great way
to get it to warm it up quick. If you have some black plastic,
put it around your tomato plant. It's gonna just be a couple feet
around each You don't have to plastic everything. And what that's gonna do is
it's gonna absorb black is going to absorb the sun rays. It's gonna heat
that soil up very quick. By taking the mulch back, you're still going
to cover the soil with that plastics. So don't worry about weeds, don't
worry about anything like that. But it's going to really absorb that sunlight.
It's gonna heat the soil up twice two to three times as fast as anything
else. That's going to help your plants right away if it's cool. The
second thing is if you're really getting cold soil and you really think your plants
are lagging, and you you know, if you have ten twelve plants,
get some Get some old milk jugs, fill them with water, and set
them about six to twelve inches around your plants each plant. Put a jug
around each plant. What it does is during the day that sun absorbs its
heat into the water. It heats those jugs. It's going to radiate some
heat into the soil and into your plants. But more importantly it's at nighttime.
Absolutely, it takes that heat and it starts to release it slowly back
out, and it keeps those plants a little warmer. If you're mean a
massive cold streak and you think you put your plants into early, I'm telling
you right now, pull that mulch back, get it there, make sure
your soil temperature gets to sixty to sixty five degrees, and once that happens,
then you can start to put the mulch back on. I think we
need to clarify when we're talking about black plastic, we're talking about plastic,
not landscape frobic. Right, yeah, yeah, black plastic. At that
point, you don't put it right up to the plant's edge so you can
still get some water, but put it around the root zone. It cut
a nice big hole or piece it around there. This is the extreme.
This is when your plants are sitting in cold soil and you're like, man,
the forecast says it's not going to get above sixty for the next two
days or week, and I'm in trouble. I shouldn't have planted this early.
It is an amazing way to heat up solarly the soil faster than ever
a lot of people before they plant. We've never had to do it here
because we just wait later. They'll lay black plastic over their soil for four
days that that sun heat it up and it works great. But look,
if you're having trouble and they're sitting there, that's something you want to do
right, and guest calls for frost or a freeze, you have to cover
those plants the black plastic. The water drugs is not going to take care
of frost or freeze. No. And that's the biggest thing that I think
happens too much every year. And I can't look, we're talking about your
plants run the ground. But if you can wait, wait, We've watched,
we've tested in our test gardens when you wait an extra week or two.
We usually plan here right near the first of June, even though we
could plan a little earlier, because the soil warms and once you put the
plants and they acclimate very quickly and they take off and plants we've planted two
weeks before sometimes get overtaken in the garden within a week of that, just
because they're a lot warmer later on. So what I said, whatever you
do, that's the first thing you want to be careful with is to make
sure that that soil is warm. So we're going to take a break right
now, and we're going to come back and talk about the other things,
which include watering and fertilizing and ways to really get those tomatoes off to a
fast start. So we'll be right back after this and we are back talking
about how to get to make the plants off to a fast start. You
know, Mary, watering is a huge key, and when there's issues with
plants early on, I have to say that overwatering is way more of a
problem than underwatering. Yeah, this is the same problem I have with house
plants. I always overwater house plants, but I'm great at watering outdoor plants.
So overwatering is definitely more of a problem than underwatering. So when you
see your leaves of your to make the plants start turning a yellow color or
on the tips of a yellow, it's most likely an underwater or overwatering problem
than underwater watering. Yeah. So what happens is when when there's too much
water in the soil. The sounds almost counterproductive, but what happens to the
root systems? Are they swell? Okay, so they just become water logged.
And when they do that this sounds strange, but they can't take in
water and they can't take in nutrients from the soil. And so when that
happens, the plant starts to starve and those leaves start to yellow. They
may curl, but for most gardeners, the top of the soil surface may
dry and they don't realize their roots underneath are wet. So what do they
do? The water more? Yeah, I mean we get this question a
lot, and so what you really have to do is test the soil down
by the root level. Now you can do this a couple of ways.
You can take a stick and poke it in and see if soil still comes
up with it. That means there's moisture on there. You can put your
finger down the soil a few inches, although tomato plants you should be burying
them deeper than that. For us, and we talk about this, we'll
have a link on the podcast for this. An instant read meter is perfect
if you have a lot of tomato plants or you just want to know you
can stick that long probe in the soil. It's instantly gonna tell you the
soil moisture level, and you're gonna know should I be watering or not.
The biggest issue with watering, as Mary said, is people water more than
they should and they water way too often. When you first plant your transplants,
yes, you probably need to water them a little every day for the
first few days to get them there. They're coming in, they've been hardened
off or not hardened off. They need a little bit of water. But
you do not want to be watering your tornato plants every day for the first
two weeks. No, And you know the key here is to water less
frequently, but water them deeply so it gets to the roots. So you
mentioned that, and we get this question a lot. What does watering deeply
mean? It means providing more water at the single time you water, so
that water goes deep. That doesn't mean just turning your hose on full and
putting them on the soil. You have to put a little water on,
let it soak in. Put a little water and soak in and do this.
We use about a quarter a gallon per plant. As they get a
little bit larger. You know, two weeks in, But don't just do
it all at once. Let it soak in. And what that does is
it lets the water go deep into the soil. Why that is important is
the roots. If you just water the surface the first few inches, the
roots are like little kids. Okay, if they're giving something every day,
they're just gonna stay there and say, keep giving me that. But they're
gonna go down a lot deeper. When you force the water deep, you're
gone. Yeah. And once they search and find it, those roots get
deeper, and that means they're more or less prone to having drought issues.
So again, when Mary says water deeply, that's what she's talking about.
Water and more thoroughly, you know, and put put the water down there.
And again, if you have yellowing of leaves, don't instantly think that
your plants are dry. A moisture meter is like fifteen bucks and you can
get four and ones and we'll put we'll put one on the podcast. Notes
that not only tell you that, they tell you the pH they tell you
the light your plants are getting. It's a great investment and you can use
it on hanging baskets, you can use it on your tomato plants. You
can use it in house plants and it will tell you when you need to
water. And like I said, watering is probably the single biggest mistake people
make with their tomato plants, and it's overwatering, right. And you know
there's a tricky part to this too. If your spring has been extra wet,
if you constantly get rain and rain and rain, and you have your
toimato plants on the ground, if you have malch right there, it's keeping
the moisture inside by your plants. So you really need to kind of pull
back that malt dry out a bit. If it's been an extra rainy season.
That's an excellent point. Extra rainy seasons, pull them malch back a
little bit because it will help to dry out again. We're talking about keeping
the soil regulated, not overly wet, not overly hot, notally cool,
and when plants first going in the cool you know that's what happens. We
talk about transplant shock, and this is a great time to talk about that.
No matter what you do, you can raise the greatest transplants in the
world. You can harden them off, which is that process of letting them
stay outside a little bit before you put them in the soil and they're still
going to struggle. I think people watch their transplants grow sometimes inside and they're
growing a quarter inch every day. They put them in the garden and suddenly
they stop growing. Look, that's a normal process. It's going to take
a while. But if you're two weeks down the road and your plants are
still sitting there, there's an issue. So you want to make sure you
know that, as Mary says, the soil is not overly at that if
you've had cold weather, maybe you solarize that soil a little with some black
plastic. You want to you know, you want to make sure they're comfortable.
Now let's get to the real thing, which is the big thing.
Once those plants have been in five to seven days, they need power.
You've got to power up your plants, and the only way to do that
is with a little bit of fertilizer. And this is probably another area where
people struggle, like when should I fertilize? And if they see their plants
suffering, they may think I gotta give them a big boost of energy.
Sometimes that's not the right idea. The key here to power your plants,
and we know this from experience. We do it every year in our garden
is liquid fertilizer low and slow, about seven to ten today, seven to
ten days after your plants have been in the ground, they've had enough time
to acclimate. You know, when any vegetable plant gets too much energy at
once, it's gonna put it all towards growing stems and leaves. That's not
good. And if they don't get enough energy, they're just going to sit
there and lag. But a little bit of fertilizer here in the form of
liquid power, is going to make all the difference. Absolutely, And when
young plants get too much fertilizer, it can even kill the plants right away.
So you have to give the plants enough time to accle me to the
soil. You give them a small boost to fertilizer, and then that will
get them growing. And here's the other thing I really want to caution everybody
about is you know, not all fertilizers are the same. So with grass,
people would need a lot of nitrogen. It greens it up. That's
the same thing that happens to meto plants. And a lot of times people
give their plants this big boost of nitrogen in the beginning they're like, oh,
this is great. My plants turn dark green and they're growing lots of
leaves. That's not necessarily good. You want to give them a balance of
nutrients early and if anything, you want to power it a little bit more
with phosphorus than nitrogen. So there are three numbers in every fertilizer. You
know. You get your nitrogen, your phosphorus, and your potassium n YEP
N PK, and nitrogen is always going to power growth, and don't get
me wrong, it's very important, but it needs to be balanced early on.
So you don't want some high nitrogen number and lower phosphorus numbers. Potassium
that they help. It helps with plant health, but it's that those two
in you know. It's the potassium, or excuse me, the phosphorus and
the nitrogen and your key numbers. Phosphorus powers blooms. Blooms mean fruit.
Nitrogen powers growth, and that means big plants and a lot of leaves.
You want to you want to limit the nitrogen, give them enough, but
limit it and give more phosphorus because that's going to bring your blooms down the
road. Power. Let's not get too scientific. This is where people get
scared off and gardening and kind of like spend too much time thinking and researching
about it. You're absolutely right, So here's what you do. The best
thing that we love to use compost TA. Okay, if you have your
own compost, look on the blog will show you how to make compost TA
very easily with water and compost. You power those every seven days with a
dose of compost T and your plants are going to great because it's balanced energy.
You don't have compost, you can use worm castings and make your own
TA. Yeah. My very favorite type of fertilizer. Yeah, and we
have it. We have a post on that and we'll put it on the
link as well. Again, these are liquid fertilizers that you can pour on
the plants and the soil around the plants. They're going to power them up
low and slow and make them grow and jump off to a fast start.
Now, not everybody has that, So what do you look for if you're
buying a commercial fertilizer. There's a lot of organic solutions out there. Will
link some to the blog that have a very balanced or even a formula that's
a little bit more what we like to call bloom booster, which gets more
on the phosphorus side, it's just going to help. All you want to
avoid are high nitrogen fertilizers, So that's it. Just look for balanced numbers.
Whether it's five, five, five, ten, ten, ten,
those are going to be great for your tomato plants. If it's a little
higher in the phosphorus number, even better. But here's the key. When
you use commercial fertilizers versus compost t or worm casting t. Both of those
can be used at full strength. They are very stable. They're not going
to overpower plants. That's why we love to use them. But when you
get into commercial fertilizers, they're stronger. Okay there sometimes those numbers can be
fifteen, fifteen, fifteen and twenty. They're just built more with more strength.
They have a very high concentrated amount they do. So what we always
recommend, and there's no issue with using an organic commercial fertilizer. The thing
is you want to cut the strength to about half. So if it says
to use one tablespoon for every gallant of water, use a half or a
quarter and then apply that fertilizer to your tomato plants every seven to ten days,
just as you would the liquid. You know, composh T or worm
casting T, but it's at a lower rate, so it's not going to
overpower that growth. But every seven to ten days gives it the consistency you're
looking for, right you know, even though the directions on the package says
use a certain amount, we recommend that a commercial liquid fertilizer is about half
strength because your plants are going to be more successful throughout throughout the season.
Yeah, and one final note, so let's say we're early in the season
like we are right now, if your plants are really struggling, you know,
dose those every five to seven days, don't don't wait to seven to
ten. Do it for a few weeks. You're going to see the green
come around. You're gonna see the growth come around, and then you can
go back to the regular fertilizing every ten to fourteen days. Don't be afraid.
It's not going to hurt them, especially with compost tea or worm casting
tea. But I'm telling you that power is so essential in the beginning,
and it's sometimes people wait so long to power their plants and then they give
them a big dose and it's just not worth wait seven days to ten days.
Let your plants accremate to the soil and then start giving them those small
boosts. Right. I think it's very important to know that if you start
your plants off right and then kind of back off on the fertilizer, you're
going to give them a big boot so that the foiliage grows, that the
blooms can grow. Then you back off a little bit, then you have
more fruit. If you continue to fertilize strong throughout the season, you're gonna
have all this foliage that grows, all the grainyer that grows, and your
fruit production is going to be less. I couldn't say that better myself.
That's right. That's the biggest that's the biggest issue people really have when it
comes to any vegetable garden is too much power all at once, or too
much power later. Just let let mother nature take its faith. But you've
got to help them along. So okay, so let's get this concluded up
and talk about everything. So you know, first of all, if you
haven't planned yet, please let that soil warm. Let it warm to at
least sixty to sixty five degrees before you put your plants in. You will
it will pay huge dividends. Down the road. You will not have to
watch your plants sit in the cold soil. And then mary, secondly,
watch the watering. You know, as we say, too much watering is
usually the issue. Yeah, if you have too much watering, your plants
are gonna yellow and look like they're dying. And your first instinct is going
to water more. But that's the worst thing that you can do. And
then finally, you know, power them up. Don't be afraid to power
your plants low and slow. After about seven days in the ground, give
them that dose compost tea worm casting tea commercial fertilizer tea at half strength.
Give them something to get it, to get a drink, and to get
powered up. I remember, transplant shock is a thing. It's a real
thing. Once you take your plants and put them into your own soil and
your ground, they're gonna sit there and be stagnant for maybe seven to ten
days. That's normal. Yeah, it's very much normal. So there you
go. You know, get those tomatoes. Don't get worried, don't get
nervous. If your tomato plants are sitting there. Stop watering so much.
We talk about that, and don't be afraid to give them a little energy
early on. So here's the hope, and your tomato crop gets huge this
year and you get great yields. Don't don't despair. There's always a way
to fix things when when they're a little bad, whether it's cold soil,
whether it's you painted a little too early, whether it's they're not they're not
dark and green and strong. Yet you can get through this. Just just
take your time, give them low and slow power, and things are going
to work out. Right. So, Mary, I think we've covered the
whole subject here. I think it's time for your famous line. There we
go, and remember whatever you do, find the fun and guarding and grow
something beautiful. All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening. We'll
talk to you next week. This has been Jim and Mary Competti with a
Simple Garden Life. We'll talk to you later. We hope you've enjoyed this
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