Gardenbite: How to Keep Tomatoes Healthy in Summer Heat: Pruning, Support, and Mulch | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a Gardenbite for you this week, growing tomatoes. Yes. We are going to get into that way back machine all the way to 2021 where I chat with Ken and former extension educator Katie Parker all about growing tomatoes. In this small excerpt from the that learn longer episode, we talk about how do we trellis our tomatoes because once you get them in the ground, well, heck, they get taller, and you gotta do something about it.

Plus, do we fertilize tomatoes? And what about mulching tomatoes? That is what we'll cover in this week's Gardenbite. So sit back and enjoy. Alright.

So we kind of mentioned this with indeterminants. With mine, I put them in the ground, and I have a tiki torch, and I just stake them up like that. But they're an indeterminant, so you know what happens. They grow over the tiki torch and the tiki torch falls over, sets the backyard on fire, all that good stuff. So how do you Ken, how do you train and then trellis your tomatoes?

How do you keep them from going crazy?

So last several years we've done stakes. So we actually get usually get two by six boards, like 12 foot two by six boards or 10 foot and cut them into one inch sections and drive them into the ground. The problem we've had with that though is they start warping over time and they end up curving and they don't really last more than a year just because they get so warped and stuff. That's what we typically have done and we'll tie them up on there, kind of prune all the suckers. We just have one vine going up.

This year we're trying a basket weave, Florida weave, whatever you want to call it. So we've got t posts in the ground. Unfortunately we can only find the six foot t posts, so they're not quite tall enough. But we've got a t post at the end of each row and then a t post in between in the middle. So we've got kind of two plants, two, three plants in between the T posts.

And we're just stringing a string in between those plants and then looping it back around. And I think we've got three of those on there, do like every 12 to 18 inches. So kind of a mix between staking and using a I'm trying to white here a cage form. So we'll see how that works out. The determinants we're growing, they only get 12 to 24 inches tall.

So we've got the stakes in the ground, but we haven't done anything with them yet. They're still kind of supporting themselves, the indeterminants we've had to do then. Some of them I'm pruning off all the suckers, some of them I'm leaving the suckers on there just to kind of see how it works.

The suckers, they're the things that grow up in like the leaf axle. Right? So you leave some and then you prune some? Explain that. Sorry.

So when we do that, when we stake them, what I do is I prune off all the suckers. Okay. So we only have one main vine. With the basket weave, I'm trying some. I'm pruning off most, if not all the suckers, and some I've just left all of them on there And just to kind of see how it works.

And they're the ones I haven't pruned are kind of eating everything else. They're like small shrubs right now. So that may not have been a good idea.

Katie, how so how are you Ken sounds like backyard type garden. You are managing over a 100. What like, when the deer stop eating them, like, you know, how do you plan to manage and train all of those? Is are you gonna use a similar system?

Yeah. We'll use the Florida basket weave, and we'll just we'll have stakes more frequently between the plants and then just weave some tomato twine between the plants to help them help to support them as they grow up and get taller. I do need to check with Nathan, though. I need to figure out what variety the tomatoes he bought I brought.

And so do you also what do you prefer? Do you leave the suckers, or do you prune them off?

I've been pruning them. Mhmm. So I think that it's easier to manage a little bit more. Last year, we did not prune suckers, and we just had, like, a mass of tomatoes. I also accidentally gave my aunt an indeterminate tomato, and I don't think well, I mean, she wasn't totally familiar with it.

And she's like, I don't know what this tomato is, but it just keeps producing like crazy. I was like, uh-oh. I think I gave you the wrong tomato. But, I mean I mean, they're they're both nice, but I think determinants are way easier to manage.

It's just you guys are just throwing indeterminate around like a bad word. I agree though. So I found especially, Katie, in that situation, when you're managing like long rows, you don't prune off those leaf suckers or the the suckers in that axle there. That yeah. You're hunting for tomatoes.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. It was just like a jungle last year because we just we didn't we planted light, and we had issues with rabbits feeding on them. And so then we had to replant, and then I think it got we we ended up moving, and so it was just chaotic. So we kinda failed, but you always learn something from your failures.

That's right. That's right. That's but by the time we retire, we will be really good.

Right. Woah. No stuff

more than we do now, hopefully. Now it gets set in our ways. That's that's the dream. Right?

Right. So,

Ken, what else do you do to take care of your tomatoes this time of year? I mean, we're getting into the nineties. It's summertime. Do I you're doing in ground, sounds like. So would you fertilize?

But Help me because my tomatoes need help.

So I've we have never fertilized our tomatoes. I think we've got good enough soils, we don't have to. You could do a side dress a fertilizer, just put it kind of along next to the plants. Do that usually kind of a balanced fertilizer is what's typically recommended. And we'd mulch our tomatoes, so we rake all the leaves up and shred those leaves in the fall and store them in our garage over the winter and summer.

And we'll mulch our garden with those. Also did a so we have kind of two separate vegetable beds. We've got a main one and a smaller one we typically grew cucurbits and squash and stuff in. Squash bugs were getting real bad, so we kind of flipped them this year. So our tomatoes are in our cucurbit bed.

And then last year we had grown cover crop, rye cover crop. So that's all laid down as a mulch in there. As that starts breaking down and stuff and we get bare patches, I'll go in and put some leaf mulch down. But so far so good. And that's going to help keep weeds down.

That'll help with retaining some of that soil moisture. Hopefully I don't have to water quite as often.

Katie, what Ken describes where his tomato bit is with the rye, that is the same goals that you're exploring with the the cover crop trial. Right?

Right. I mean, we terminated the cover crops, so we sprayed it before we planted the the tomatoes. So we did half tomatoes, half peppers. And so we no longer have any cover crop there, and so no coverage. But it was quite significant.

So after planting, we had to do a lot of hand watering. We we it's not it's a high tunnel, but it doesn't have a cover on it yet, which actually works out well for the study. But so we were having to hand water with just a hose for a bit. Then we got all that rain. But it was it was just amazing, like, water runoff with no cover versus cover.

So a lot of water was just absorbed into the ground where there was cover crop versus where there was no cover crop. You know? You could easily see where you had watered.

It's it's just becoming more and more popular, those

cover crops.

I actually have a bag of red winter wheat right next to me.

Oh, cool. A five

pound bag for gardeners. So yeah.

That's cool.

Yeah. I'm I'm I would like to incorporate more covered crops in my bed. So I my tomatoes are planted directly into lawn. So at our new house, we do not have many full sun areas. And so I have actually taken big sheets of cardboard.

I know this is gonna be controversial. I've taken big sheets of cardboard and I've cut holes in them and I've laid them on the lawn and I planted my tomatoes in the little holes. And so talk about water runoff. When there's rain, that cardboard just sheds water like crazy. It's not as permeable as people think.

And so I don't recommend cardboard as like a mulch layer. It's just something I needed to kill the grass real quick. So also, if you ever think of using cardboard, make sure you remove your staples. You gotta remove all the little labels and tape and all that stuff. You don't want that in your soil.

So yeah. That's my cardboard soapbox.

One thing we've done when replacing lawn into garden is we've just sprayed it. And depending on what you use, sometimes you can go one day after or three days later and plant. We just plant directly into that dead grass and kind of use that as a mulch too. So it's another way you can do it.

Do what Ken says.

If you don't mind. I mean, if you don't want to use herbicides, and obviously that's not going to work, but if you don't mind using herbicides, it's quick and easy.

Yeah. I'd I'd say that that mulch layer though, whether you're using a terminated cover crop, shredded leaves, in my case, the hope is to replace the cardboard, which is already disintegrating, but to replace it with like wood chips or something. That is a bit cheaper than bagged wood mulch. So it's still, like, $3 or no. Sorry.

$10 for three bags. It's I'm gonna need a lot more.

Mhmm.

Well, that was some interesting tidbits of information about tomato trellising, fertilizer, and mulching, our precious love apples. Well, the GoodGrowing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Coming up next week, we are going to be sitting down with extension educator, Aaron Garrett to talk about the perennial plant of 2026. It's Andropogon gerardii, also known as big bluestem, and the cultivar is blackhawks. So you won't wanna miss that show.

Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening, or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.

University of Illinois Extension