How to Grow Tomatoes: Complete Guide

📅 When to Plant

🌱 Growing Stages

1. 

   1

   Germination and seedling stage

   (5–10 days germinating, 6–8 weeks as seedlings)

   • •Tomato seeds sprout in 5 to 10 days at 70°F or warmer, pushing cotyledons up through sterile starting mix.
   • •For the next 6 to 8 weeks young plants grow their true compound leaves, needing bright light, even moisture, and gentle airflow to stay stocky rather than leggy.
   • •This is the stage where hardening off begins and pests such as damping-off and flea beetles can do the most damage if plants are kept too wet or unprotected.
2. 

   2

   Vegetative establishment after transplant

   (2–4 weeks after transplant)

   • •Once transplants recover from shock in the warm garden bed, they shift into rapid vegetative growth, sending up new stems and large sticky compound leaves while the buried stem develops adventitious roots.
   • •Plants need stakes or cages installed now, regular deep watering, and light mulch; this is also the moment to remove the lowest leaves and pinch early side suckers so growth channels into a strong main framework rather than a floppy bush.
3. 

   3

   Flowering and fruit set

   (4–6 weeks)

   • •Yellow star-shaped self-fertile flowers appear in clusters of 3 to 12 on the new growth.
   • •Bumblebees and wind shake the flowers so pollen falls onto the stigma; temperatures between 60 and 85°F are required for successful set.
   • •If nights stay above 75°F or days above 90°F, blossoms drop without fruit.
   • •Small green ovaries swell into golf-ball-size fruits, triggering the start of regular side-dressing with tomato fertilizer.
4. 

   4

   Fruit ripening and harvest

   (3–6 weeks per planting, until frost)

   • •Green fruits turn through the breaker, turning, and red stages as lycopene develops; optimal ripening happens between 68 and 77°F, and fruit ripens best off the vine in cool weather.
   • •Indeterminate plants continue producing new flowers and fruit while older clusters color up, so harvests are spread over many weeks.
   • •At season's end, any green-mature fruit can be picked and ripened indoors; vines are killed by frost.

💧 Detailed Care Guide

📝 Step-by-Step Planting Guide

🌱 Recommended Varieties

🪴 Growing in Containers

✂️ Pruning & Maintenance

🐛 Pest & Disease Control

🍅 When to Harvest

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

1. 1

   Why are my tomato plants flowering but not producing fruit?

   • •Blossom drop without fruit set is almost always temperature related: tomatoes fail to set fruit when daytime highs exceed 90°F or night temperatures stay above 75°F, and they also drop flowers if nights dip below 55°F.
   • •Inadequate water, too little sunlight, or low humidity can also reduce pollination.
   • •Provide light afternoon shade cloth during heat waves, water consistently at the base, and mist lightly in very dry air to help pollen stick; once temperatures moderate, flowers will set again.
   • •Avoid over-fertilizing with nitrogen, which pushes leaf growth over fruit.
2. 2

   Should I grow determinate or indeterminate tomatoes?

   • •Determinate (bush) tomatoes grow 2 to 3 feet tall, ripen their whole crop over a short window, and need little or no staking—they are perfect for containers, small gardens, and canning because all the fruit comes at once.
   • •Indeterminate (vining) tomatoes keep growing and producing all season until frost, reaching 6 feet or more, and need cages, stakes, or trellises plus regular sucker pruning; they are the best choice for continuous fresh slicers.
   • •Most paste/Roma types are determinate, while most beefsteaks and cherries are indeterminate.
3. 3

   Why do tomatoes split or crack open on the vine?

   • •Cracking happens when fruit growth suddenly accelerates after uneven moisture—usually a heavy rain or deep watering following a dry spell—so the skin bursts faster than it can expand.
   • •The key is to keep soil moisture even: water deeply and regularly through dry periods, mulch 2 to 4 inches around each plant, and avoid letting beds alternate between parched and soaked.
   • •Harvest fruits just as they begin to blush and let them finish ripening at room temperature rather than waiting for fully red fruit in very wet weather.
4. 4

   How deep should I transplant tomatoes?

   • •Tomatoes are unusual among garden vegetables in that they grow roots along any portion of stem buried underground, so deep planting is a strength rather than a problem.
   • •Set transplants so only the top two or three sets of leaves sit above the soil surface, removing the lower leaves first; leggy starts can even be laid sideways in a shallow trench and covered up to the crown.
   • •This buried stem develops a much larger root mass, giving the plant better drought tolerance, sturdier anchorage, and faster establishment after transplant shock.
5. 5

   Can I save seeds from my best tomatoes for next year?

   • •You can reliably save seeds only from open-pollinated or heirloom varieties; modern hybrids will not come true and their offspring will be variable and disappointing.
   • •Scoop the seedy gel from ripe tomatoes, ferment it in water for a few days until it develops a scum, rinse clean, and dry seeds thoroughly on paper in a cool shady spot before storing in an envelope.
   • •Keep saved seed away from other varieties during flowering to avoid cross-pollination, and label the batch with variety and year; properly dried tomato seed stays viable for about 4 years.
6. 6

   Why should I never refrigerate homegrown tomatoes?

   • •Refrigeration below about 55°F destroys the flavor-volatile compounds that make a garden tomato taste like a garden tomato, leaving a bland, mealy texture even on a perfectly ripe fruit.
   • •Instead, keep ripe tomatoes stem-side down at room temperature out of direct sun, and use within a few days.
   • •Green-mature tomatoes that need ripening should be placed in a loosely closed paper bag at 55 to 70°F with a banana or apple to speed the process through ethylene gas; check weekly and remove any soft or spotted fruit before storing other tomatoes.
7. 7

   Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

   • •Botanically, a tomato is a fruit: it develops from the ovary at the base of a flower and carries the plant's seeds inside, the same definition that puts cucumbers, squash, beans, and peas in the fruit category.
   • •Legally and culinarily, however, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S.
   • •304, decided May 10, 1893, that tomatoes are vegetables under the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883.
   • •Justice Horace Gray wrote for a unanimous Court that, although botanically the fruit of a vine, tomatoes are in ordinary speech and cooking served at dinner with the main course rather than as dessert, so the ordinary, non-botanical meaning of 'vegetable' governed the tariff.
   • •In a home garden either label is harmless: tomatoes are grown as a warm-season vegetable, while botanists still classify the fruit as a berry.
8. 8

   When should I plant tomatoes in my zone?

   • •Tomatoes are frost-sensitive warm-season crops; the safe transplant date is set by two conditions together: night temperatures consistently above 50°F (mid-50s) and soil at 4-inch depth at least 60°F, about two weeks after your average last spring frost.
   • •Start seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before that date, and harden seedlings off over 7 to 10 days before setting them out.
   • •Typical windows by USDA zone: Zones 3–4 (northern Minnesota, North Dakota, northern Wisconsin and Maine, mountain Montana) — last frost mid-May to early June, transplant late May to early June; choose early-maturing varieties and use row cover or water walls.
   • •Zones 5–6 (Chicago, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, Pacific Northwest valleys) — last frost mid-April to mid-May, transplant mid-May; protect against late cold snaps with row cover.
   • •Zones 7–8 (Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Arkansas, northern California coast, Georgia, Alabama, Texas hill country) — Zone 7 transplants mid-April to early May, Zone 8 late March to early April; many Zone 7 growers set a second crop in late summer for fall harvest.
   • •Zones 9–10 (southern Texas, central and southern Florida, southern California, Arizona) — grow two crops: spring transplants February to early March before summer heat stops pollination, and a fall crop seeded in late August and transplanted in September, producing through November or January.
   • •These are averages: confirm your local last frost date with the county Cooperative Extension, since microclimates shift the window by a week or two.
9. 9

   Is it spelled tomatoes or tomatos?

   • •The correct English plural spelling is tomatoes: the singular tomato keeps its o before the plural -es, which is why dictionaries list tomatoes rather than tomatos.
   • •Tomatos is an extremely common misspelling: the flat plural -s pattern feels natural after words ending in consonants, so search engines still see a large volume of queries typed as tomatos.
   • •Behind those misspelled searches is ordinary planting and cooking intent: growers want to know how to start seedlings, support vines, prune suckers, space plants, water and fertilize, identify pests and diseases, harvest ripe fruit, and fix cracking or blossom drop.
   • •Every guide on this site uses the standard spelling tomatoes, and searchers landing after typing tomatos will find the same practical tomato information they would have found under the correct spelling.
   • •This note is a spelling clarification only; it does not change any planting or recipe advice.
   • •If you arrived here from a tomatos search, our tomato growing guide walks through sowing, transplanting, care through the season, and harvest for your USDA zone: see the tomato guide at /how-to-grow-tomatoes, and browse the vegetable garden guides for companion planting, soil preparation, and fertilizer choices.
   • •No separate tomato page is written for the misspelling, because tomatoes and tomatos refer to the same plant, Solanum lycopersicum.