A gardening expert has shared some helpful tips to ensure your tomatoes grow bigger this year. Garden designer Ish, who goes by Gardening with Ish on TikTok, gave his advice for beginner gardeners on planting and growing tomatoes.
In a video from May, he revealed his top three tips all beginners need to know about planting tomatoes. Ish pointed out that there’s one pruning technique you should follow to help the energy from nutrients go into growing tomatoes rather than the stem. The trick is super easy; you only need your hands to do it.
How to grow bigger tomatoes
Ish captioned the video: “If you’re looking for advice on where to plant and how to prune your tomato plants this year then this is for you. My gardening tips for beginner gardeners will show you the best position for your tomatoes, how to feed and prune too. As a result you’ll have amazing harvests of tomatoes this year.”
Pruning your tomatoes is the best way to ensure that they grow big and plentiful. Ish advises pinching off any small side shoots from the plant.
He said: “This tomato plant will want to bush out as best as it can in order to be able to generate a good, healthy plant, but we want more tomatoes. And this here – little side-shoot coming out of the stem – is stopping it from getting all the energy to the tomatoes and more to the plant.
“And all you’re going to do is take your finger and thumb and just pinch them off like that.
“By stunting this growth you create one main stem, which will keep this nice and tall and give us a nice side-shoot with tomatoes.”
Ish also reminded gardeners to consider the position of their tomato plants, noting that they love “consistent warmth.” Planting tomatoes in a greenhouse ensures they benefit from the humidity, which prevents them from drying out.
For nutrients, make sure they are planted in a well-rooted compost or specialist tomato bags. When it comes to watering and feeding your plants, Ish advised that the soil should be consistently moist and well-drained.
If the plants are left to dry out, little black spots can form on the bottom of the tomatoes. For a larger tomato yield, use a feed that gives the plants a boost of nitrogen and potassium.
Ish recommended giving the plants this feed once a week during the main season of tomato growing.