Questions for a first time grower

[daniwoodruff]

Good evening I need some advise on my tomato plant. This was a transplant that got from a friend. So far it has done very well and it even has blossoms on it !!!! I am concerned that it is growing very fast and it outgrow the "support" cylinder I have around it. Any suggestions on how to maintain my little plant.

[jemsister]

I used five foot tomato stakes for mine. How tall is yours now? I had to form my stakes into a trellis because the tomato got so tall, but if you already have a cage, it might work to just add a stake. Some people also just let the plant grow out the top of the cage and then just let it drape over the side. This is my first *successful* (knock on wood) attempt at growing tomatoes (second attempt altogether), so take all that with a grain of salt.

[rainbowgardener]

To start with, pull all the weeds from around it! I had trouble spotting the tomato in your picture, which means it is getting a lot of competition for sun, air, water, nutrients. Then cut off all the bottom leaves that can touch the ground.

Tomatoes ALWAYS outgrow their cages. If you have more than one plant, I just let them go over and lean on their neighbor's cage. Or put stakes outside the cages and tie the extenders to that.

You didn't say where you are located. If you are going to keep posting here, it will be really helpful to change your location to show where you are. Hardly any garden questions can be answered without knowing that. Depending on where you are, it may be late to be just getting blossoms now, if you will get frost again in say October.

Here's a nice series of photos on development of a tomato:

https://web.archive.org/web/201012180503 ... s_Timeline

It depends a lot on variety and conditions, but you probably have more or less 6 wks yet until ripe tomato. Next year, start earlier (unless of course you are in Phoenix or one of those really hot summer places where tomatoes are grown through the fall).

[daniwoodruff]

Thank you all for the advise. I just updated my profile to show my location. I live in south/east Arizona. Our monsoon is in full effect and we are getting a lot of rain lately. There is only 1 tomato plant. All the greenery above the plant is grape vines and other veggies around it. There has been a lot of weed growth as well do to the rain.

[rainbowgardener]

OK, so you ARE in one of those hot summer places, so your tomato plant is actually early, rather than late. I looked up Phoenix weather info (that was a lucky guess on my part, but it looks like you are outside of Phoenix). Phoenix is still having highs consistently over 100 (111 predicted for Wed !). That's really not tomato weather. Tomatoes have a very hard time setting fruit at those temps and if fruit is set, it has a very hard time ripening it. It helps to grow heat adapted varieties (they usually have names like Sun Master, etc), and it helps to give it shade from hot afternoon sun, but really, no matter what you are not going to get much tomato production in that weather. It looks like the time when you could have good tomato production is Oct through April. That's a nice long tomato season, it's just different from a lot of the rest of the country. You just need to keep these plants watered and cared for and hope they make it through to the cool down when they can start producing. It looks like August would be a good time for you to plant tomato seeds to have the plants ready to start producing when the weather is appropriate.