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This is one of two raised Tomato beds I made.

This one has about 20 Celebrity Plants. My other raised Tomato bed is planted with about 20 Romas.





Yes, I need to do some pruning! LOL

What are the dimensions of your raised beds? Looks very crowded! Being in SoCal you probably have a much less humid atmosphere than I do. In my high-humidity environment, crowding them like that would be a recipe for fungal diseases. Even without that, you will need to work harder at fertilizing, so they don't compete with each other for nutrients.

I do somewhat crowd my raised beds, but I crowd them with lots of different stuff, tomatoes, peppers, basil, parsley, carrots, nasturtiums, early season broccoli that is getting pulled now, etc. That way they aren't competing so directly, because the different plants occupy different spaces and use somewhat different nutrients.

Hello RainbowGardener,

I have three different size boxes in my garden. I planted Tomatos in 3x8x12. I agree it's very crowded! I read that one could crowd tomatoes in raised beds for higher yield. I did the same last year but about 15 plants per box. But I kept it pruned. We will see what happens this year with the added plants. So far no problems, tho I am concerned the bees aren't getting to the flowers as easily. There are Nasturtiums, Marigolds and Borage in the box that have been over taken by the tomato plants.

Here is a pic from last year.



The difference is I made custom cages this year for the box and put in irrigation that I will attach timers to. I live several miles from my garden plot and can not get to water it daily in the summer. My garden is in a 10 acre community garden. Each gardener gets a undeveloped 60X60 plot and you develop and grow it "your way" within the rules of the garden. I am the only one with raised beds.

I do try to feed my plants compost tea every two weeks. We have been reaching temps in the 80s and 90 since May! I prune less on the west facing side of the tomato boxes to prevent the fruit from getting sun burned.

I hope I didn't overcrowd my boxes this year. It's been in the back of my mind and I need to spend the time to at least prune soon. They are starting to hang out too.

I spent 9 hours harvesting garlic, pulling weeds, pruning my tomato boxes, fertilizing and overall general "Maintenance" at my garden today. I was wrong... I counted 24 plants in each box. Yikes... LOL

I basically pruned the bottom of the plants. Wow my plants are loaded with tomatoes!

YEE HAW

Looking great. I am glad you found logs of tomatoes underneath. I have the same situation. Lots of leaves on some plants. To me that is better than the alternative losing leaves to blight. Last years plants look fantastic

Here is mine .

Another one.