How to Build a Tomato Garden

One tomato plant can produce a large number of tomatoes.

Tomatoes are one of the most popular backyard vegetables in the United States. If you ask your friends and neighbors what they are growing, chances are tomatoes will top the list. This juicy vegetable is easy to grow, and just one plant of many of the available varieties will produce quite a few tomatoes during its summer growing season. Before you plant a large tomato garden, ask yourself how many tomatoes you want and need; you might not need to plant more than a few tomato plants to suit your needs.

Things You'll Need

• Lawn mower or trimmer
• Measuring tape
• Stakes
• String
• Hammer
• Newspaper or flattened cardboard
• Boards or rocks
• Organic materials such as peat moss, compost and wood ash
• Shovel
• Rake
• Sprinkler
• Trowel

Instructions

1. Mow or trim all weeds and other unwanted plants that are growing in the area where you plan to plant your tomatoes.

2. Build a raised bed or two for your tomato plants. Measure the space in a sunny area and then mark the corners of each 4-foot-by-8-foot bed you plan to create by driving one stake into each corner with your hammer and then tying string between the stakes. Leave room for a pathway around and between your planned beds.

3. Lay sheets of flattened cardboard or thick layers of newspaper over the soil in your marked bed areas.

4. Construct a frame for your raised beds if desired by nailing together two 1-by-12-inch boards that are 4 feet long and two 1-by-12-inch boards that are 8 feet long to form a rectangle. Alternatively, stack rocks around the border of your raised bed area.

5. Layer topsoil, organic compost, peat moss, lawn clippings, wood ash and any other organic materials such as chopped-up plant parts on top of the newspaper or cardboard. Make your raised beds at least 12 inches high, repeating the alternating layers of material.

6. Rake the top of your bed or beds level and then run a lawn sprinkler over the area for at least 30 minutes. When the water drains through, dig holes with your trowel down the center of the bed. Make sure the holes are large enough for your tomato plants, and leave about 3 feet between holes. Set your plants in the holes and keep your young plants well watered until they begin to show new growth.

Tips & Warnings

• Raised beds allow the deep root systems of tomato plants to spread and provide the plants with nutrients throughout their growing season.

• You'll be able to plant about four tomato plants in each of your 4-foot by 8-foot raised beds.

• If you're building your tomato garden on top of unwanted lawn you needn't dig out the lawn when you use the raised bed method because the newspaper or cardboard and planting media you include in your beds will smother it.

• It is not mandatory that you build a frame for your raised bed: the soil and other materials in the bed will stay in place without the help of a frame, but one can contribute to the appearance of your garden.

• Unless you have a very large family or want to contribute large quantities of tomatoes to a food bank, consider growing a maximum of about eight tomato plants.

References

• University of Illinois Extension: Tomato
• UCSD Cooperative Extension: Tips on Growing Tomatoes
• "Lasagna Gardening"; Patricia Lanza; 1998
• Texas A&M University: Tomato, Part 1