Common Tomato Problems and How to Solve Them
This is somehow the happiest tomato in my garden. It’s a volunteer Matt’s Wild Cherry and I have no idea how it ended up here. This variety is available in my shop and it frequently naturalizes from dropped fruit.
If you find that the tomatoes you’ve been lovingly growing for so long are not producing the big, bountiful harvests you see in other gardeners’ social media posts, don’t despair. Lack of fruit set, which is when flowers fail to produce fruits before they wither and drop off, is a symptom of a larger issue. Make some adjustments and you can get the results you want before the growing season ends.
“My tomatoes look healthy. They have lots of leaves but not a lot of blossoms or fruit.”
Assess the light your plants are receiving during the day. Tomatoes really need 6 full hours of sun to produce fruit. If your plants don’t get enough sun, it will be very hard for them to have the energy to grow fruit. If your plant has grown tall but always looks sad and wilted, it’s usually a lack of sunlight that is holding them back. If the branches with leaves are widely spaced, that’s another indicator. There’s really no way to fix that other than to move the plant. Disturbing the roots of tomato plants is very devastating, so this may not work, but you aren’t getting tomatoes from this struggling plant in its current condition anyway so what do you have to lose? Cut your plant down to the healthiest 2/3 of the plant. Remove all the leaves from the bottom foot of the plant and dig it up with as much root ball as you can. At this point, I highly recommend letting your plant soak in a nice tub of seaweed water in the shade for an hour or so. Next, if you are putting it in a container or grow bag (preferred), make sure it’s at least a 7 gal container and you have over a foot of soil depth to work with and plant that baby all the way down in there. Finally, fill in the rest of the container with a soil mix all the way to the top, covering that foot of stem where you’ve shed leaves. The plant will make new roots from the stem. Make sure that you mix in lots of compost and perlite. Adding some fertilizer is good too. (More on that below.)
Make sure you are watering enough. The trick to watering tomatoes is to go slowly. Tomatoes are the perfect plants for a soaker hose. Water deeply 20 minutes or so, 2-3 times a week in the summer months. Your container tomatoes will most likely need to be watered every day. Watering this way will not only help your tomatoes produce, but it will also help them avoid blossom end rot (see photo) and splitting, which happens when they suddenly grow so quickly that the outside of the tomato can’t keep up with the inside. They basically bust their pants. Keeping them evenly and consistently hydrated is the best way to avoid that from happening after a heavy rain.
Add organic matter to the soil. Tomatoes really love having soil full of organic matter. They will be happier if you give them extra compost or some other mulch that breaks down easily. I like to collect fallen oak leaves and put them at the base of my tomatoes to give them that added material. It also helps keep soil from splashing up on the plants when watered, helping to prevent mildew and other diseases from taking hold. Do not use manured compost as that is too rich in nitrogen, which will result in more foliage than fruit.
Feed them. Tomatoes are very hungry plants, so you need to provide food for them throughout the growing season. Be very careful, though, with what fertilizer you give them once they start blossoming. Again, too much nitrogen and they grow tons of leaves and not much else. What you want to provide them is a fertilizer high in phosphorous fertilizer (the 2nd number in the NPK breakdown). You can add a slow-release, all-purpose organic fertilizer to the soil when you plant them, that one can have a fair amount of nitrogen, but then switch to the NPK when they start setting fruit and then every 4-6 weeks going forward. My personal favorite right now is MicroLife. Make it easier on yourself by using something specific to tomatoes, like the Jobe spikes. If you’ve amended the soil with cotton meal or compost, reduce the recommended amount by half. (NOTE: Your dog will try to eat any of this fertilizer you spread out in the garden. I took mine to the vet after who knows how much MicroLife she gobbled. She was fine but did have amoebas in her stool, which is a testament to their hyped micro-organism content.) Remove any mulch from your plants, apply the fertilizer according to product directions, and then put the mulch back. If you can’t be bothered to move the mulch, I feel you. That’s fine, it will eventually get to the roots, but it will take a little longer to see results. Water deeply after you apply. In addition to granular fertilizer, you can feed them with fish fertilizer or seaweed once a week when you water. It helps them get all the trace minerals they need to produce fruit. If you can’t do that, here are some other cheap options for adding trace minerals to the soil: To add magnesium, pick up a $2 bag of Epson salts with your grocery order and spread a tbsp around the base of each plant. You can add calcium to the soil by grinding up eggshells in a blender or food processor until they are a powder, and then add that to the soil, this will help with blossom end rot. Generously scattering wood ash from your fire pit also helps add trace minerals to your soil which will help your tomatoes produce juicy, glorious fruit.
Not mentioned in this post is the very real threat of squirrels to your harvest. This is a genius solution that came from the Stay Home Garden Club! I use these fruit containers to protect the tomatoes on the plants the squirrels like the most.
This Speckled Roman Plum Tomato is very unhappy. The wide spaces between branches and general slump show that it’s not getting enough sunlight to power fruit production.
Blossom end rot starts with a dark spot where the flower once was. The spot darkens and spreads and the tomato underneath the leathery skin is watery mush. This condition is caused by the plant not being able to access the calcium in its soil, often due to poor watering methods. Remove any afflicted tomatoes from your plant right away and make the suggested adjustments to save the rest of your crop.
I’m not getting paid to recommend this product, so trust me when I say that Houston-based Microlife fertilizer is a revelation. I spread the big 40 lb bag across my whole garden, and two days later it was exploding with new vigor. This one is good for tomatoes as the nitrogen content is low. I love it as it improves the life of the soil, adding billions of beneficial microorganisms per bag, and it is slow-release so you don’t have to worry about adding too much. I found this locally at Round Rock Garden Center. If you find it elsewhere, please post in the comments!
“My tomatoes have a lot of blossoms, but they aren’t producing fruit.”
This is probably from poor pollination. Attract pollinators to your garden by planting perennials or annual flowers next to them. Marigolds alone won’t cut it, as they have an odor that repels pests and they aren’t a favorite with beneficial insects either. Sunflowers and zinnias are easy to grow all season long. High humidity can also hinder pollination when the pollen gets too clogged to drop down onto the stigma (the female part of the flower that catches the pollen). So don’t forget to brush your tomato blossoms gently with an old toothbrush or paintbrush to help pollinate them. It’s one of the most relaxing gardening tasks there is! You can also help pollinate them just by giving the flowers a little tickle with your fingers when you walk by. It also lets them know you care.
“Help! All of the blossoms are dropping off!”
Either it’s too hot, or you aren’t watering enough. Once it’s regularly over 86º F (30º C), tomatoes get very sulky and stop producing. Some people choose to stop watering tomatoes when this happens and let them die. But if you do keep caring for them, they will come back online when it cools down a bit and you’ll see them start producing again. A lot of central Texas gardeners see yields through the fall months that will more than make up for the drought your tomatoes are going through now.
If your tomatoes are getting totally fried, you can shield them from scorching late afternoon sun rays with a 40% shade cloth. If your tomatoes only get morning sun, they shouldn’t require shading.
Other tips:
Some debate the pros and cons of pinching suckers off tomatoes. But if your plant is not producing any fruit, then make sure you remove suckers as they appear in what I call the “reverse-armpit” of the tomato branches. It will help focus energy on the main plant. If you happen to find a sucker that has grown a bit, you can snap it off and pot it up for a Fall tomato attempt. Just treat it with a little extra care and keep it out of direct sun until it has gained some confidence and isn’t drooping anymore.
Once we hit July, your tomatoes likely won’t be producing as our temps will be over 90º. of the plants that still look healthy, cut about 2/3 of the foliage off to give them a fresh start for fall.
Make notes on what tomato varieties give you the best results and which ones seem to have the most trouble. A big part of the Joy Max method is choosing plant varieties that require the least effort. You can avoid frustration next year by learning from this one.
What’s your best tip for a great tomato harvest? Share it in the comments below!
