in this video I'm compressing over 12 years of my tomato Growing Experience into under about 15 minutes I'm Kevin from epic gardening and over the years I've had my fair share of successes failures and everything in between but I've learned how to grow truly amazing tomatoes so whether you have tomatoes in your garden right now you've tried and failed to grow them in the past you're just thinking about planting some out the tips in this video will guarantee you are swimming in flavorful fruits this season and for many seasons to come and this is not your typ typical tomato tips video there's some stuff in here that's pretty unconventional that transformed my tomato harvests over the years from choosing varieties for flavor not just for looks to trellising and pruning your tomatoes in a way that makes sense for your garden as well as some tips on harvesting that I only learned in the last couple years or so that really extended my ability to enjoy the tomatoes that I grew over the season so by the end of this video you'll not only know how to grow amazing Tomatoes you'll probably have a lot of amazing tomato so in partnership with graza the sponsor of today's video I'm going to show you a recipe at the end to turn your new found Bounty into something truly delicious growing epic Tomatoes starts before you even plant the seed you've got two different types of tomatoes Vining types or indeterminant or bushing types or determinants and while there are some major differences between these two types here's what you need to know if you're in a small space go with a bushing type you can grow it in a little bag like this it'll top out at about 5 or 6 ft and it'll will produce all of its tomatoes in about a month window but if you're feeling adventurous or you have a bit more space try a Vining style or indeterminate tomato there are so many varieties to choose from you will have to support them because they grow pretty much indefinitely only the season will kill them off and I'll show you some pruning and training techniques later on the beauty of these is that you get more consistent tomato production over a longer period of the season but don't get too hung up on all the different varieties when I first started growing I'd look through the catalog and my I would be drawn to the most colorful fancy varieties and they didn't work out that well flavor-wise for example I grew one called Brad's Atomic grape back in the day which looked beautiful but it didn't perform that well and frankly compared to Sun gold one of my favorite cherries of all time the flavor wasn't even close so if you want foolproof varieties sungolds are my pick for Cherries but for sace tomatoes go with a San Marzano and for like a sandwich or beef steak slicer try a Cherokee carbon now the scariest part of growing tomatoes which is pruning to do pruning right you got to know that different parts of a tomato plant you have the main stem here you have a leaf or what's called a sunleaf here and then between the main stem in the sun leaf you have something called a tomato sucker these suckers have the ability to produce leaves stems and fruit so sometimes people advise to remove them but before we even discuss the controversy around pruning suckers just know that for a bushing style tomato or a determinant one you basically don't have to PR it at all maybe remove a few lower leaves and then let that tomato grow for IND deter determinate Vining style Tomatoes you have a lot of different options first you can do what's called a single leader technique where you just emphasize the main stem what that means is you would come through and remove every single tomato sucker you see making the plant focus on one main stem growing straight up and producing some flower clusters along the way another technique you'll see is actually removing the leaf below the sucker and letting the sucker remain proponents of this technique say that it helps keep air flow in the plant so you prevent disease but you also get more fruit because the leaves that are producing energy for the plant are still growing up above if you want to keep it simple this is what I do I take all the suckers off use a single liter technique and let that tomato grow up but eventually it's going to get so tall you have to figure out how to support it the simplest tomato trus is no trellis at all but taken from me you do not want to go down that path so here are my options from easy to complicated first off you got the simple Bamboo Steak cheap easy you can do it in ground you can do it in a container and it's great for a bushing style tomato because they don't need that much support just throw some twine on there and you're good to go if you want to let that tomato grow a little bit more get a little bushier or it's nice and heavy and needs a little more support go with a tomato cage but go with one like this a square cage instead of one of those conical flimsy cages that are really cheap and break at the slightest pressure now I have a little bit of a fancier method and it works well if you're growing a lot of tomatoes in a row but don't want to spend a ton of time trellising and training them it's called the Florida weave and all you need are some steaks these are tsts maybe they're about 10 bucks spaced four to 5et apart and some twine you're going to plant your Tomatoes about 12 to 18 in apart and then weave the twine back and forth effectively sandwiching them in this layer and then that's it you can just let these Tomatoes go and they look amazing if you already have an existing structure like this you can make life even easier by just grabbing some J netting cutting it to size and hanging it down and then you just weave your tomato Vines through this creates a nice bushy effect that it takes almost no time to do but if you do want to get a little bit more intricate or particular about your spacing for me I do like to space my tomatoes kind of far apart cuz I want to avoid disease which I'll talk about later on you can just do What's called the top twine method where you take twine run it down and use tomato clips to clip the vine all the way up effectively the same thing but a little bit more controlled I've got a ton more killer tips for you but I also told you I was going to make a Killer Tomato recipe so I'm going to grab a few sungolds which brings me to the sponsor of today's video this video is sponsored by graza which is a top-notch olive oil at an affordable everyday price that both jacqu and myself have been using for over a year now the olives come from one place in Spain where over half of the world's olive oil is produced but to me the coolest part is it comes in a squeeze bottle for ridiculously easy sizzling drizzling and everything in between and it can handle the heat the sizzle oil has a smoke point of 411 de Fahrenheit in case you're grilling which I do all the time with my garden produce and as a sustainably-minded gardener I love that if you run out of olive oil you don't have to buy and waste a new plastic bottle just grab a refill can from their website or your local Whole Foods for an easy way to refill and the cans are nitrogen sealed which keeps oxygen out and locks freshness in they're fully opaque just like the squeeze bottles they'll block any and all light from degrading the quality of your olive oil to refill just crack open a can pour into your empty squeeze bottle with a kitchen funnel and get cooking you can get $5 off your first order of Sizzle and drizzle at graza doco with the code epic now we're on to watering Tomatoes it is very simple if you remember these two words deep infrequent they want to be watered they need it they love it especially when they're putting on all these delicious Tomatoes but it's better to come through and give it a nice deep water twice maybe three times a week than Trickle a little bit of water on the surface every single day the reason why is because that water is going to permeate down into the soil Force those roots to search for that water and you'll have a much healthier tomato plant over time now of course you could set up irrigation or you could just come out and give it a little bit of water I call this the water weight water method let that soil hydrate and then come back for a much deeper water as that soil is able to receive it the only other thing you need to know is use a heavy dose of mulch I like just pure compost laid straight on on top of the soil which also helps with the next watering tip don't hit it with water on the leaves if you can avoid it Tomatoes actually do have quite a few fungal diseases that they suffer from and hitting the leaves especially throughout the day is just not a good idea so come out in the morning throw some mulch down give it that deep and frequent water and move on when it comes to fertilizing it's no secret these are a hungry plant as much as they are thirsty and if you're growing in containers I absolutely recommend fertilize your Tomatoes the way to do it is to fill up a watering can with some liquid fertilizer dilute that down a bit and then every time you water give it a little bit of fertility because your tomatoes are basically going to suck all the nutrition out of your container no matter how big it is but if you're an inground grower most of the time you hear people talk about burying a fish head burying an egg as you transplant that tomato into the hole that you dig take it from me we tried this method we tested actually six different things underneath the Tomato over 6 months and the best thing was either a little bit a compost nothing or some organic granular fertilizer reason being you need the nutrition that you're feeding it the fertilizer to be fully broken down if you throw a fish head or something in there it takes time to break down which slows down the growth of your tomato other things that are guaranteed to slow your tomato roll are all the pests the diseases and the problems that you're pretty likely to run into when you grow tomatoes as long as I have so here's a rapid fire of the most common problems and how to solve them for those huge tomato horn worms try companion planting to attract parasitic wasps which are their natural predator if you see aphids on your Tomatoes use a spray nozzle and blast them off in the middle of the day if your tomatoes are getting close to harvest and they start to crack and split it's because the skin has effectively stopped growing but the water pressure inside is forcing them to break so dial back your watering if you see a little zipper pattern on your tomato that's a bit of a pollination problem but don't worry it doesn't mess with your Tomatoes flavor if you see deep holes poked into your tomato tomes all over the place that's probably from a bird and they're mostly going for the water so maybe try leaving some water out for them in another area Tomatoes can experience Sunburn and if you're seeing that you might be pruning your Tomatoes too much or you may need to give them a bit of shade if you see a black spot at the bottom of your tomato that's called Blossom en Rod most people think it's because of a Calcium deficiency and that's true but that Calcium deficiency is caused by watering inconsistency so make sure you have your watering on lock then you have the dreaded Milo and BL lights the best way to prevent these is to space your tomatoes out further than you'd think give them a lot of air flow and make sure you prune them appropriately if you've dodged all those problems congratulations my friend you have some juicy Tomatoes but the journey doesn't end there you need to figure out when's the right time to harvest them how to store them so this is something I learned a couple years ago you don't have to harvest a Vine Ripe Tomato in fact when a Tomato's about 50% ripe by color so take a look at this guy this is pretty green I would say it's mostly a full Green Tomato this is is on its way towards being about halfway ripe and then this guy right here to me looks about 50% ripe I can Harvest right now you're probably thinking that's crazy but it's at What's called the breaker stage most of the flavor is developed and if I let this Vine ripen with maybe a bird or a pest or a disease problem I might have this rot out or get eaten and the flavors perfectly fine like this so you can come out and harvest at the halfway point and you'll still get all the flavor without losing any of your tomatoes and if you're want your Toms to last even longer don't store them like this flip them over and put what are called the shoulders on the surface where you're storing them because it distributes the weight a little bit better and tomatoes ripen from the bottom up so they'll get soft here first so this is a great way to extend the life by a couple days it's finally time to show you that recipe I was promising you I collected some of my favorite cherry tomatoes but I need a couple more things from around the garden starting with basil a little Thyme and a touch of Rosemary first we're cutting all our cherry tomatoes in half we'll smash up some homegrown garlic we'll strip and chop our herbs we'll do a/ teaspoon of salt 1/4 teaspoon of pepper splash of vinegar a cup and a half of graza Sizzle olive oil we'll start with a cup and see how that goes as long as the tomatoes are about halfway covered we're good on the oil the Final Touch is some homegrown dried and ground paprika that I grew from last year let's mix it up in the oven for 25 minutes at 4:25 and here we have it a delicious 30 minute homegrown tomato con fee on some homebaked sourdough I don't say so myself this is what you have to look forward to when you learn how to grow tomatoes the right way for more tomato guides check this video out right here thanks to graza for sponsoring the video now let's give this a taste wow wow that's good that's really good