5 Mistakes You Must NEVER Make When Growing Tomatoes

In this video, I share the top 5 mistakes you must never make when growing tomatoes. Tomato plants are finicky, and the internet has taught gardeners to do terrible things that harm them. Avoid these traps! This video will teach you how to work with your tomato plants and give them everything they need for success, while dispelling much of the bad tomato growing advice that has become so common.

These gardening products* will help you grow tomatoes and keep them healthy:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Mistake #1: Disease Prevention
4:29 Mistake #2: Fertilizing Tomatoes Incorrectly
9:51 Mistake #3: Pruning Tomatoes Incorrectly
15:07 Mistake #4: Planting Tomatoes Too Late
18:30 Mistake #5: The 'Full Sun' Myth
24:07 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about avoiding these tomato growing mistakes, how to grow tomatoes in your backyard garden, growing fruit trees or want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and "how to" garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #tomatoes #tomatoplants #vegetablegardening

[TheMillennialGardener]

If you enjoyed this video, please *LIKE* it and share it with family and friends! Thanks for watching 🍅 TIMESTAMPS for convenience:
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Mistake #1: Disease Prevention
4:29 Mistake #2: Fertilizing Tomatoes Incorrectly
9:51 Mistake #3: Pruning Tomatoes Incorrectly
15:07 Mistake #4: Planting Tomatoes Too Late
18:30 Mistake #5: The 'Full Sun' Myth
24:07 Adventures With Dale

[pizmot]

55 years of growing tomatoes and you nailed it on this one. Well done.

[danak]

I tell you what!
I’ve been into gardening veggies, flowers, and lawn for at least 48yrs myself, just jamming seeds and plants in the ground and hoping for the best, and going on with life.
Now that I’m retired, I’ve watched hundreds of gardening videos trying to finally get it right. Never have I found a channel that is as crazy thorough as this one! I mean he has spent a fortune on materials to get his setup picture perfect, so clean and organized!!
Then he explains every tiny step so that we will be successful, because he has already gone thru the trials and tribulations, successes and failures and is happily willing to share these with us. I really understand his explanations as now I realize why my plants failed more than flourished.
I could go on and on, but I finally found my “Go to” gardener guy. (Don’t know your first name), but Thank You Mr Millennial!!!

[shots]

had a garden for over 30 years.... never ferterized it.... and the past 15 years I never turned the soil.... in the fall I would cover the garden with grass clippings from my yard and my neighbors yard about a acre each... my garden was 40 ft by 60 ft. In the spring I spread the grass around the garden to a 8 inch depth before planting.. at planting I would dig a hole and plant the plant and water it and put a wire cage around to keep the critters away... all year I would spread the grass around the garden.. it kept the ground moist and the weeds down and the grass would compost back to the ground.. no pesticides and nothing to soak through the ground to pollute the ground water... always had a good yield..

[vernielove]

First year gardener here and I’ve learned a lot from your channel so thank you for your knowledge!!!

[skoalmen]

Wow, and more WOW! 25 minutes of myth busting. Thank you very much!

[jima]

Just changed my gardening methodology. I always removed suckers, but hearing why we shouldn't, now I will leave them alone. See you next season, sucker!

[ronweldon]

Only my 3rd season growing ever I now know why my tomato harvest has been so incredible. Friends and relatives all told me that their tomato plants did lousy last season and all have asked me what I was doing that got my tomato plants to produce so much. I was calling everyone I know to please take some tomatoes off my hands. I hadn't learned canning yet so since I started all my plants from seeds and was just learning how to prune, also my garden only received direct sunlight 8 hours a day, 4 in the morning and 4 in late afternoon. Living in Massachusetts zone 6b I was unable last season to put my plants in the ground until Memorial Day weekend. I grew 5 different types and everyday I was picking 30+ tomatoes. I cut the first sprouting leaves off my seedlings when my true leaves were starting flourish. I didn't cut any branches or suckers off my plants. My plants were growing wild everywhere and my main producers were the bottom branches that grew wild. I literally had so many tomatoes all my relatives, friends, and neighbors got their fill and most couldn't use anymore. So now came my doctors, nurses, veterans and my senior center. As a DAV with all kinds of medical issues I brought all my doctors and nurses a shopping bag full each of cukes, tomatoes, romaine, and peppers.Needless to say I became extremely popular. Each of the two VA Hospitals I go to have a group of retirees that go there to help direct other veterans to the different departments like neurology, orthopedics, xray, etc and they received 2 shopping bags full of my organicly grown seed to harvest vegetables. One of the good things about being a veteran is we all help each other out with anything you can and all exchange not one penny to help one another from a simple bag of vegetables to putting a new roof on your house. Helping your brother or sister while serving carries on throughout our lifetime, so it was a no brainer bringing shopping bags full of freshly picked organicly grown food. I had one of my doctors eat 5 of the martino and compari tomatoes as soon as I handed them to him. So funny! So my point is now that I know how many tomatoes the branches put out I will never prune again except for the first two bottom grow leaves. I did overplant though and planted 15 plants consisting of 5 types but the key was shade I believe. Nobody else I know that grew tomatoes had their plants tn the shade like mine so it had to be the key. Last season was only my second garden in my entire lifetime of 70 years. I used Tomato Tone pellets and Farmer's Secret Fruit and Bloom Booster 2-15-15 liquid fertilizer. My first season I used the Tomato Tone Pellets and Neptune Tomato liquid fertilizer. I had much better luck though with the same pellets and the Farmer's Secret liquid fertilizer that hhas a much greater set of numbers. My first season I had plenty of that endrot issues on all of my giant Kelloggg variety. One gallon of the Farmer's Secret makes 1, 536 gallons of fertilizer which lasted me all season and I still have enough left for this season also. I used it on all my plants and my Rose's loved it as well as every other flower and vegetible. Almost all my tomatoes I grew in 5-gallon buckets and all my cukes in 15-gallon buckets that were originally 30-gal water barrels I cut in half. My 4 types of peppers I grew I had in my raised beds. Unable to bend with a boatload of titanium holding me together all peppers, beans, romaine, beets, and spinach I grrew in my 32" high raised beds, all of those plants also received the same amount of shade as my tomatoes. I highly reccommend the Farmer's Secret liquid fertilizer over the Neptune brand. Even though the Neptune brand is made the next town over from me in Gloucester, MA I can buy it at a cheaper rate but have had a much more successful outcome with the Farmer's

[Turkelton]

My favorite part of this channel is that you always ask the question of "why", and you don't just take "conventional wisdom" as the reason to do things. It makes a difference and has impacted how I plant my vegetable garden. Always appreciate these videos!

[debbybrady]

I’m a Texas Master Gardener and a tomatoholic 😂You are spot on with your information ❤🍅

[danielleboule]

Great message! Do what you can afford but do something. Home grown is best

[ashleys]

There I was, just casually doing dishes on a Saturday morning and watching this video, and the VERY FIRST STEP was one I forgot. I got my tomatoes in a few days ago but didn't remove the lowest branches. You better believe I semi-sterilized some pruning scissors real quick and ran outside in my robe to fix my error. Lol Thanks again for the vid!

[bluewolf]

This has to be one of your best videos. 100% agree with everything.👍

[YourSundaySchool]

I’m in eastern NC and I have sandy soil. I will dig a hole a minimum of 12” deep and plant the plant all the way to the bottom. This prevents my plants drying out so quickly causing fluctuations in moisture thus causing blossom end rot. Over 35 years of doing this has proven successful.

[thatonegirl]

Dale has such a good life. He is precious and clearly gets treated that way. ❤

[maicolleroy]

.Best tomato growing Information on YouTube.

[texasnurse]

I planted my tomatoes outside on February 9 (Texas Gulf Coast, 9b). We had a freeze 12 days later, but I used your method of protecting your trees with lights and cover and they did fine. They are now setting fruit. If I wait until March to plant I won't get many tomatoes unless I can get them through the summer. Then they'll bloom in the fall.

[susanh]

Thank you for this video! I’ve been gardening for over 50 years and have seen so many crazy ideas on the internet. It’s good to see a video with solid, common sense information. I’m in northern Illinois and we’re supposed to get snow on Monday, so planting time for tomatoes is still over a month away. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy watching your garden. Dale’s new outdoor bed is awesome!

[mlmeyer]

I was one who clipped every sucker - wow - I’m learning a lot. Thx

[natsmcgats]

3rd year gardener-I didn't realize I need to give the tomato a few days to heal after removing lower leaves before I transplant. Thanks!!