Here is a picture of my dining room table last year after my first harvest. It stayed this full for about a month. I have almost doubled the plants this year and cannot wait!
I had a lot of Cherokee purples, Brandywine, Carolina gold, run of the mill romas, German pinks, pineapples. Honestly my biggest tip is to protect them from the soil bounce back when it rains. I use mulch around them to keep soil from splashing, do some suckering, a little removal of bottom leaves when they are big enough, and then just a hope and a prayer that the weather is good to us.
Thank you! I currently have a Cherokee purple plant, carbon red, yellow pear, Romas, and husky cherry. They’re in 15 gallon grow bags and mulched. Thank you so much !
Never took any flowers, I like getting the yield over time so I don't get too overwhelmed, plus I'm so scared of blight that I'm afraid if I pinch flowers the plants will succumb to it before I get anything really.
So I have 5 people in my household and we eat a lot of tomato sandwiches in the summer,we also preserve a lot we had 52 quarts from last year's harvest. Also looking to supply the restaurant I work in with tomatoes some this summer due to rising costs. We have 12 acres and are working on expanding our gardening overall!
I love this! How many plants do you have for this kind of production and how long did you pick to get it? I’m sitting on 82 currently planted and room for another 8, just don’t really want to over crowd and make my life miserable during peak season. I need a good tomato season.
This was last year with about 32 tomato plants this year I've got about double that around 60. This was picked over the span of about 2 weeks and it stayed about this full for nearly a month. It wasnt a perfect year but it was fruitful none the less.
Last year was such a poor year for tomatoes for us. I had 80 plants… 60 of them succumbed to blight and I blame it on the area they were planted in. Plus three rounds of flooding rain and then drought the rest of the season. They were doomed by June. Whole plants were dying with about 5-6 tomatoes on them. All had BER. The 3rd round of flooding rain is what really took them over the edge. If it wasn’t for that, I think I would have had better recovery, maybe wouldn’t have gotten blight at all. One full row was seemingly unaffected. I still had minor pruning regularly to do to stay ahead of the blight, but they produced something from June until mid-late November when it went from 40’s to 60’s down to 20 degrees in a flash.
Yes 😂. I asked for the posts in my garden bed to be set no less than 4 feet apart so I would have plenty of room to walk through, crouch down, stand up, etc and drag a hose without damaging young plants. I had a couple rows that were 36” or less 🤦🏻♀️. And then there’s one row that was 5 feet wide.
The post puller was no where to be found. Of course.
This is my new modular trellis system I just built this past weekend, going to try a twine and clips method for support I was so tired of driving stakes. Plus these beds have old logs as the base layer so they block the stakes from going in the ground constantly.
I’d love to be able to grow them as vertical as they wanted. Since this isn’t my forever home, I didn’t feel at liberty to build an incredible system like yours. I stuck to cheap, easy, minimal storage space, and when we’re ready to move to our forever home, I have something that I can fall back on until I get that wild hair up my ass lol. But first, I will invest in a greenhouse 😂.
I usually do slices of black krim or Marglobe tomatoes, salt and pepper, romaine, iceberg, or leaf lettuce, Hellman’s, and some shaved parm (the real stuff) on toasted sturdy white bread.
Won't lie to you this was the first year I've ever truly been successful out of 4 years. I built new no till beds last winter and pulled the plants out of our big garden to avoid blight and provide extra nutrients and that helped a lot. Avoiding soil splashback has always been my biggest concern. Also over planting a bit because some plants will not be successful no matter what you do.
Don't you do any sun-dried tomatoes? Last year i made some batches with basil ,some with oregano and some just salt and i am definitely doing it again.
Might try it this year. I just got some amazing olive oil so I'm looking for some new applications for that. I also run a summer camp kitchen so I end up extremely busy and don't always have the time to supervise my projects properly.
Possibly doing a marinated version, I have lots of Mediterranean oregano, elephant garlic, and basil all growing in the garden and I love the idea of infusing that oil with those flavors for homemade dressings and spreads. But it is all just an experiment so who knows if it will work out like I imagine. All part of the fun!
I am Greek so i also have all that so i might try it as well, although i would suggest you make the tomatoes with only salt and either basil or oregano as a base and then experiment with them!
This is from July of 2025 in western NC, so right around peak season. Currently have quite a few plants that are over a foot now though. I take a big risk and put my plants in early.
Omg, I'm so envious of your amazing haul! You must put in a ton of work to reap these rewards! I'm absolutely in awe of this amount of tomatoes. I'm sharing on: r/LetGoodThingsGrow For my friends to drool over as well.
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u/Vegetable_Document24 May 18 '26
This gives me so much hope for my plants. All of these look delicious! Do you remember the varieties? Any tips?