Tomato Planting Masterclass: The Secret to Perfect Tomatoes 

Started my allotments this year without a clue about gardening I’m only 27 & your videos have made me feel like a professional when I talk to people, thank you 😂

Hit like if you love Rosie dog! ❤️

Rosie is such a good helper. Everyone should have a gardening supervisor that cute!

Yes! Ben pops up with a new video at the perfect time (for me anyway 😁). Always informative and good fun. One of the best channels on RU-vid

Ben, you are such a good teacher! I like how you illustrate every important detail in the process. I have learned a great deal from you! Thank you so much!

Thanks for a great video! What a beautiful greenhouse! Definitely a bit jealous!!

When we lived in Northern California in the 90s our landlord was a farmer (also in his 90s!) who at one time had grown tomatoes which he sold to Del.Monte for canning. He always started them under glass and aimed to pick the first one by the 4th of July. When he planted them out he gave them a good soak to settle them in, but then said he never watered them again after that as "tomatoes don't like having wet feet". Never forgot that!

2:30 Rosie being the attentive student! so cute.

This is educating me love this kinda videos

Dear Ben, Rosie is a sweetheart; I enjoyed the Tomato Masterclass. Can we please have more tutorials about peppers, aubergines, salads, raspberries, and radishes?

A couple years ago, my brother had a gigantic Sungold tomato plant that he just stopped picking from as he got ready for his wedding. Tomatoes everywhere. Last year, lots of plants popped up. Same deal. Neither he nor his wife picked them. This year, there are tiny seedlings popping up all over along the fence between our garden plots, despite the weather being in the mid to low 30s (F) at night. I like the slightly creepy looking tomatoes like reisetomate, because potential intruders are unsettled by their appearance. As is my mother😂

Ben, you are a treasure to all gardeners.😘 Thank you!

Im in the southern hemisphere so heading into winter, but I'm growing my tomatoes right now in an indoor greenhouse! This comes at a great time

Wonderful video, thank you so much 😊. I grew up gardening, but still have a lot to learn about veggies! I didn't know about planting the seedlings deeply, for a start. Your videos are informative, but enjoyable so that we can take the info in. Rosie is an added bonus! Thank you both.

Started my tomatoes in late March indoors and planted them outside in early April, they’re growing a little slow but are starting to catch up now that it’s getting warmer:) can’t wait to smell them this year again lol

Last year I had 'black' cherry tomatoes in our garden. Both neighbours and tourists stopped to look at these black fruits. "Are those cherries? Or grapes?" I got frequently asked. For months people stopped by to ask about the black tomatoes. Some even came up to the door; they were so curious about these strange tomatoes! These tomatoes were "Indigo Blueberry" and "Indigo Goldberry". In the green stage the purple blush can be so dark, it looks black - the more sun, the darker they get. When they ripen, they turn red or yellow beneath that purple blush. Lovely to see, and great sweet and sour taste for eating fresh or in salads. But my favorites last year were "White Cherry", "Green Copia" and "Dark Galaxy".

Again great tips and explanations. Thanks again!!! Unfortunately, the weather in Belgium is still very cold. The thermometer in the greenhouse can still go udown to 7°C at night, so much too cold. I will definitely have to wait until mid-May to plant the tomatoes/peppers in the greenhouse. Because I have already sown these, especially the peppers in January... and have raised them under light... some of them are already bearing flowers that I will pollinate myself in the house with an electric toothbrush. Fortunately, the tomato plants are not yet bearing flowers. I am also experimenting with micro tomatoes (bonzai style) that would only grow to 25 cm and can be sown and harvested indoors (under light) all year round.

Could you please make a zucchini masterclass video?

Hi Ben, brilliance!!!! I love your use of spare sheep fence! That idea is going into ....... or onto my new raised bed in the sunny corner. LOVE IT! Thank you

I'd like to say that I'm already getting tomatoes, but I'm not. Some of my plants are starting to flower, Martino's Roma, Sun Gold, and Thronburn's Terra-Cotta. I'm growing a mix of determinant, semi-determinate, and indeterminate. Of nineteen plants, six are determinate and will be replaced with new plants after they fruit. I'll sow seeds for a second crop of six plants in a week, 2 Martino Roma, 2 Ace-55, and 2 Black Krim. By the time they are ready to go in the ground, I'll have harvested my first round of tomatoes. Cheers!

Thank you for a good explanation on how to deal with determinate tomatoes ( most channels just talk about indeterminates) . Hopefully my Roma will benefit this year !

Fabulous class. Clear and concise. Mac (my garden Border collie) and Rosie need to meet. 😂

Can you plant other seedlings up to the bottom leaves too? I see you’re not using your daughters hair bands anymore x

Hi Ben with your hanging baskets don't by gels. If you have old washing up sponges just cut the ruff bit off leaving the sponge wash this in soapy water and rinse then cut into small pieces 20 to 30 cm squares and mix in with soil at the bottom of the pot. This will hold water until the next watering or rain. When finished with just sift out and throw away the sponge and kept the soil.

I remember seeing you taste a tomato when you were with huw richards, honeycomb i think it was. You said it was the sweetest tomato you ever tasted. Meant to buy but only after thinking of it now!

Volunteer tomatoes. Yes, I carefully potted some new seeds and when they were ready, planted them out. Then when they stated getting bigger, noticed I had some intruders. These must have been left over seeds from toms I'd grown the previous year :) My problem is I'm not ruthless enough. I let the old plants grow, but they took up space from the new ones. I should have pulled them out. I got a good crop, but also had a lot of blight.

The best crops of tomatoes I have ever had were when I stopped fussing over them. I planted in rich soil, partial shade, drip irrigated, and then ignored. I didn't cut out any suckers and let the vines go wild. I didn't even need to do pest control. They were so healthy that pests left them alone. Even the dreaded hornworm was no match.

Hi Ben your a grow veg genius your knowledge is so useful to everyone following your videos and I ❤your little jokes to I will be doing the string as well under the root balk 🍅🍅💚

First time yes. Still to cold here to plant tomatoes however. We wait til May for that. Fruit trees & potatoes are being planted here now. Your vid on tomatoes will get me ready for next month thanks !!

Watching your videos everyday.. so "no stress" watching, even i`m not in garden.

Cutest dog!! Also, great tomato tips.

As always... great information and presentation. Thanks for all you do! 🍻

Looking so forward to watching!! I've have 5 or 6 varieties growing, maybe 25 plants just small at the moment but can't wait to be able to pick and eat them straight off the vine!!

Always engaging and informative.

Hi Ben! I live in the Pacific Northwest, USA. What feedback might make a successful go at growing Roma toms directly from seed to ground when freezing weather isn't an issue? Well done on your vids and paws up to your fur baby. Thanks and ta!

Good morning Ben, thank you for the informative garden talk. I have learned so much regarding the planting of tomatoes, things I just took for granted, I am sure come our spring, I will be better informed and thereby enjoy a good harvest. We planted yellow pear shared tomatoes but I need variety. Could share some the bumper crop with a friend. Good bye.

Great job Ben,love these videos,

Anybody else have a cat that lays on their seed packets and pees in their onion patch?

Watched a few of your videos. It's good to see 👀 the pitfalls and the success we all get. 😮 🐟

Excellent. I put mine outside last week under a fleece. Last year they rotted due to damp and the year before caterpillars had 70% of my crop. So here's hoping for this year.

I'm sooo happy you're sowing the "100s and 1000s" tomato type because I did too :D I saw a picture in an online garden group last year where the gardener attached the pot to a pole and had the same plant drape down towards the ground like a giant tower of tomatoes, it was glorious!! Fingers crossed for both of us :D But my favourite micro bush variety is Bonsai, and I sowed a bunch of those I will be gifting away this summer.

I like growing sauce tomatoes.

Hi i just watched your master class brilliant as are all your movies. i have one question. this is my first year growing tomatoes on my allotment and some of the other plot holders say they put crushed egg shell in the hole when they plant the toms dose this actually work and if so what are the benefits please

Will be following all your tips this year, hoping for a bumper harvest :)

Wow fresh healthy Cherry tomatoes

I have just tried to access the garden planner re tomato planting dates that you advised and it is not accessible it has been removed ?????

Yay another master class video! For those of us that start their seedlings too early, would keeping them at a cooler temperature (e.g. at 17C instead of 22C) slow down their growth or would this cause stunting in the long run? My plants are reaching my grow lights and I don't have enough space for them...

Always label your tomatoes, after watching your video last year I decided to start gardening, I decided not to bother labeling them as I said we would see what they are when they come up, anyway I ended up with Tomatoes trailing out the hanging baskets and cucumbers that were put where the sunflowers were going, It worked out in the end and these trailing tomatoes tasted great.

I'm always looking for ways to streamline my gardening techniques and by running my own trials, I've discovered that there is no need to pot up tomato seedlings. I now germinate only two seeds in relatively small pots and transplant the seedlings directly in the garden. My transplants are about half the size of the ones you are showing in this video. My original comparison tests showed me that the smaller seedlings (about 3 or 4 inches) quickly caught up to my potted up seedlings (about 6 or 7 inches). And they produced equally as well, if not better. The one thing I have to be cautious of is starting my seedlings too early as they can outgrow their pots. As well, there's always the risk that the weather may not be acceptable for transplanting until unusually later in the season. In these cases, I have had to resort to potting up. I especially liked your advice about germinating your seeds in regular potting soil. When I first started gardening I thought it was preferable to use specialized germination mediums. It took me several seasons to realize that this wasn't necessary. Thanks for your many informative posts.

Howdy, Ben and Rosie!👋 Another great tutorial! Beautiful tomato seedlings/plants. 👍 We are starting to get fruit on our tomatoes and peppers in Central Texas. Soon, it will be too hot for our plants...hitting 100+ for 30+ days.

Epsom salts anyone for tomatoes Or is this just a old folks tale I might try it this year

Excellent info as always…. I do have a question . Once the plant is about 6-8 inches high do you recommend cutting off the bottom stems of leaves?

Great to see a new video of tomatos! Every year it passes, I love them even more! Your other tomato videos were a great help btw! I'm looking forward to this next video! I currentely have 6 tomato plants growing (2 black cherry, 1 black krim, 1 golden nugget, 1 yellow pear and another given to me by a close family member which I don't know what it is... yet!). The black cherrys are already huge and giving tomatoes! I have them all in big pots (learned from my mistake last year of putting them in small ones. The yields were not very good. But it was a veeery small pot). I've been trying to get the Sungold F1 cherry seeds that everyone talks about, but in Portugal seems to be impossible! Happy gardening to all!

what temperature shut be in greenhouse to move plants from house to have more light ? many thanks

nice i just last minute to start one more type for fun. Kumato.. 1.5 inch brown cool looking and the Torinjina Hybrid Organic hybrid type like a grape vine like clusters i love your videos so much.. from northern Ontario Canada

Great masterclass, it is really helpful. Just what I was looking for. All my veg growing is large fabric bags, and I only have a polytype walk in greenhouse. This has given me some ideas I will watch this many times. Thanks very much Maggie in Hertfordshire

I'll be looking for Mountain Magic seeds ASAP.... thanks Ben

Another great video, just be careful when you use plant-based rope like sisal. If you put it underneath the rootball, it can happen that it decomposes before the end of the season, and when the rope snaps, your whole plant can slide down. Speaking from experience here 😅

Tomatoes are the main reason I garden. My heirlooms I save seed and grow from them year to year. But Roma's are a must for my paste and sauces. Rich soil and lots of water. I can't wait to get mine outside !! But still frost chances until May 15 th in the Blue Ridge mins. So heat mat,and grow lights in my spare room. But so much I've learned over the years from Ben. From his old days of being a helper on the PBS show to his own wonderful knowledge sharing thank you

Haven’t watched this yet but already liked

I love growing tomatoes on my balcony! This is my third year and I've been getting progressively better. I have just fabricated a gravity fed drip fed olla system so now I can go on holidays without getting anyone to water them. Next I'm going to build a cattle fence trellis tunnel. This is the most exciting time of the year!

Awesome video! Thank you!

Thank you for the tomato Master class. ❤ Rosie is a doll!

I been told tomatoes don't like water on leaves, and I've tested it left one outside n it did got black rot on all of them, and those inside was good , is that true? Watering leafs get them rot

By any chance do you have a video of your favourite sweet pepper varieties to grow in the UK? Mine are having a slow time of it but we are finally seeing fruit set 😅 I’m growing AstorF1, ThorF1, Black KnightF1(longer horn shaped) and Sweet ‘Boneta’(a smallish Bell type). Surprisingly, all the long peppers are noticeably outpacing the Boneta, which were described as being specifically good for cold UK weather and early cropping. Curious if you’ve got any varieties that exceeded your expectations, or you felt performed a bit lacklustre!

Last year was my first year growing, and I grew tomatoes outside in Yorkshire. The single biggest bit of advice I have for people in the same situation is that beefsteaks are significantly harder to grow in these conditions than smaller varieties, even ones listed as suitable for outdoors. Mine just couldn't ripen in time. Perhaps if you have a fantastic indoor propagating setup you can get ahead, but for me, I'm sticking to cherries and saucing tomatoes this year.

i have many tomatos in garden 😊😊😊ETHIOPIA

Great video - thank you. Is your video heated? I’m in Norfolk, zone 11, with last frost date of April 21. Wondering if I can plant my tomatoes out in my unheated greenhouse yet?

Do you read blight forecasts? I found a site called blight spy... what do you do if you think it might arrive? Is that forecast only a problem if you have infected tomatoes/potatoes growing close by? How close is the problem? I'm growing in a garden , immediate local neighbours on my side of the road don't really have anything in their garden, but it is a mysteriously windy garden for some reason!

Thanks for another great video Ben. Quick question, you like growing toms in straw bales...could I get the same effect with putting loads of straw/hay in a pot?

Started our usual varieties (along with a few new ones) but the climate in my part of the world has been fluctuating far too much this year and I can see the seedlings are struggling. Our greenhouse is not climate controlled so it's been either too hot or too cold for the ~200 tomatoes. I've been keeping all of the nightshades in the garage and taking them out for walkies during the day. Other than some sun scald they're acclimating but we're still bouncing between 4C at night and 24C days. Hoping temps will stabilize and not go directly to 38C Summer.

Ben, I love your videos and always learn something new and useful, even after years of growing vegetables here in Maryland in the US, a very different climate from yours. I noticed that you put your blighted tomato prunings into the compost heap. Does your compost get hot enough to kill any disease spores? I was taught that diseased tomato clippings should go into the trash to avoid re-introducing diseases. For me, that’s important, as my compost heap doesn’t heat up very much. Wondering about yours.

Love your greenhouse. Thank you for all the tips.

I'm having trouble with choosing a tomato feed. I planted my tomatoes with a good amount of compost and some chicken pellets in. Now I'm looking at liquid fertiliser to use during the fruiting stage. I have a great organic one with a 3-4-3 ratio and I'm wondering if that would be fine. It feels like everyone has a different opinion about the ratios. What do you reckon?

Hi Ben, very informative as ever. Can I ask where you get the cattle fence wire from? I can only seem to get in 50m length, which is way too much for me. I'm in the Midlands, UK.

Thanks again for the helpful tips. Always learn a thing or two hopefully time will tell lol had a good season last year...sure some of thats down to your help. Much appreciated!! Wee question Got tomato plants here getting a bit big for their grow space some are 6 or 7" tall. They will be going out to a tunnel soon. Do you think its maybe a bit early? Or does the tunnel allow this early First season with a tunnel and finding it...different shall we say

Hi. In trying to “help”me my kids pinched some of the growing tips off my tomatoes when they’re only a couple of feet tall, rather than suckers. I think I just wait on a new high sucker and let it off now, am I right?

Question- when you use the green house for plants do you have less bug issues? Last year I struggled with many pest. Cucumber beetles, squash bugs White moths etc. I only got to eat one cucumber and one squash. Is there any preventative I can start out with? What’s your thought one BT??

A lot of this footage - recorded previously (last year) I guess as the plants are so well developed when you talk about 'Now'?

Boil tomato sauce for at least 50 minutes to release the sugars into the sauce

I grow my tomatoes in 30 37 degrees Celsius

How did the hanging basket tomato go Ben! I'm very curious.

I’m a beginner at this not started but want to only 32yr the garden beds can you do it on top of pavement slabs and how would I have to put cardboard or anything else underneath to stop a mess from coming out underneath

I prefer the STRONG BUSHY TYPE😊....also 🍅s

love tomatoes

Have you tried growing and harvesting the same tomato plant over multiple seasons? 😀

There you've got a very nice greenhouse! 🌱 I LOVE your vids

Thank you for the informative videos! As always!

Thanks much for the masterclass! I hope to be an A student someday soon. I love Tom's, usually do OK, tho I think I need crop rotation..... getting disease and cat face on my fruit. My question is about your hothouse. I would love to have toms all year, but don't know if a hothouse is the way. Do they taste the same as those grown in the sunlight? And what to do about pollination? Is there a best way? Or do you primarily start plants inside then move out? Hope for some expert guidance. Thank you!!

Your baby is supervising you.😊

What's the reason for avoiding watering the leaves? You said this at the end when watering with added tomatoe food. Cheers

I recommend Losetto for baskets.Tiny fingernail sized oh so sweet sweet tomato pearls and masses and masses of them.

I have at least 3 more weeks until I can plant my tomatoes. They are getting big

Love these homemade tomato cages! Excellent idea, especially with the hazel canes.

Love your videos! Any preference with the feed type? Heard good things about calmag

can you grow these in a poly tunnel? I haven't got a greenhouse.

Just got in from , beleve it or not , Tomato planting 😂 and since you posted this video i have a question : the sun and heat of summer have alredy creept in ,and last year the sun was so strong it killd my tomatos litrely killing the leaves so this year i started to plant them in March and April insted of midd April have you noticed this change and what are you doing , if at all , about it ?

The only problem when Im planting tomatoes is blight

what are the outside tomatoes you have used called?

I grew alacante toms last year and they were really good, I never eat tomato's and now I don't mind them in my sandwiches. I kept the seeds to plant this year but sadly they have not geminated, I kept them in my warm room, maybe I planted them too deep, maybe it's not warm enough or maybe non of them were viable, just maybe I harvested them wrong.