I agree, I have a hoop house and my tomatoes grown in it are substandard to those outside. I have noticed the same applies to cucumbers, in the hoop house they have an acid taste.
I start my tomatoes in empty large coffee bags, they are sturdy, waterproof and stand upright. But I roll the top down half way, fill with dirt, pop in the tomato plant. As the plant grows I add dirt and roll the sides up rather than transplant them.
I wonder what causes the substandard plants? Is it a deficiency in a particular light wavelength filtered from the greenhouse glass/plastic?
My buddy’s tip for tomatoes is “Plant them deep”. He notices that they grow more roots up the stem as the season progresses, so a few inches lower than how they grew from seed is preferred. I have had horrible luck with tomato production personally. Now that I’ve found this forum I’m pretty confident that luck will change.
POTASH. Use it
@disc4tw — I used to think that too… and planted them deep… but saw a video by mhp gardner (youtube) a year or two ago where he showed where… if you plant them deep they will grow more roots on up the stem nearer the surface… but the established roots you had at the bottom will suffer and fade.
So… he was saying the tomato plant will actually benefit more if you let them grow fairly tall (lots of stem) and plant the original roots and as much of the stem as possible in a trench 4-6 inch deep. That way the original roots will continue to thrive… and the buried stem portion will develop more roots too…
Who knew…
TNHunter
When I first started gardening the old fellow who sold plants showed me how to plant tomatoes right there in the bed where he grew them. He had no seed trays, dug them up and wrapped them in wet newspaper. He dug a shallow trench with his hands, pinched off all but the top 2 or 3 leaves, laid it over, covered all but the leaves with a slight mound. Said that would all turn to roots, being close to the top the warmth of the sun would make it take off faster.
These are some solid tips, I would definitely second making sure you don’t plant them out before it gets warm (same with any warm season crop) - does a lot more harm then good.
Don’t rush to transplant, either. Cold soil and air temperatures can stress plants. Wait at least a week or two after the last frost. Nighttime temperatures should be consistently above 45 F. Transplants exposed to cold temperatures (60 F to 65 F day and 50 F to 60 F night) are more prone to catfacing. [gardening.cornell.edu]
My other tip for the home gardener is to use rebar mesh tomato cages. Here is how I use them: 2020 Tomatoes and Tomato Support - #3 by dimitri_7a
I have 6 that I made out of cattle panel…
Super strong… work great… will outlast me for sure.
TNHunter
I had to go out of town this year to find some good big beef tomato plants.
The place I have been getting mine, the owner passed away last summer… an old friend of the family, hunted deer and ginseng with him a several times. It was his time to go.
Our Local Walmart, TSC, Coop, had no Big Beef… just my luck.
So I located some by phone calls… and yesterday took a trip over to Maury Co. Coop and got them.
I have 8 nice Big Beef and 6 Rutgers “planted” into the black gallon pots now, with a nice compost/garden soil mix, with some epson salt, greensand, bone meal, blood meal, gypsum in the mix.
They are in my little hot house now, soaking up the sun.
I will be giving 4 of those to my daughter to grow.
TNHunter
You had me up until greensand. Green sand???
I don’t know if it has been mentioned, but this is a great little book, well worth the money.https://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-World-Record-Tomatoes/dp/0911311572 Here I am picking tomatoes in late October one year.
Greensand… Epsom salt… Gypsum…
Lots of trace minerals…
Flavor.
Forgive me if you’ve already talked about this, but it looks like you have your plants on some kind of rebar type fencing. Are they supported by T-posts, and if so, how high are the posts?
Also looks like you do a single stalk with your plants, and deleaf (or de-branch) anything within a foot of the ground? That looks like you can have a pretty high density tomato patch.
I work in a big greenhouse growing tomatoes, and I’d like to try to incorporate some of what they do with my tomatoes this year. My plants end up with multiple branches and I end up having to stake about 5-7 of them per plant, a big mess. I’d like to try a different strategy this year. I might try a trellis system.
We never plant out our tomatoes into the garden until late May, we’ve had freezes that month enough to wait a few weeks, usually around memorial day.
@subdood_ky_z6b ---- I have some very nice tomato cages… but recently decided to go back to pruning my tomatoes… instead of just letting them go and grow all they want in cages… too much foliage can make blight symptoms much worse… and with pruning larger quality fruit.
Last spring I tried something different that worked well. As you can see… I used a 10 ft long piece of cattle panel… think it was 55" tall… and I supported it with 3 tpost…and had the bottom of that panel set just above the plants so that they soon grew up to it… then I just trained them up that panel.
After first bloom… I pruned them to two stems… and they filled that panel space to the top and went on up to near 9 ft… until a summer storm blew them over… off the back side… and they continued to grow and produced fruit until fall.
Nice sized big beef tomatoes too. 2 stems works well for big beef… more maters… still plenty of size.
The tpost I used were probably 6 foot… I have several of those.
TNHunter
These are big beef mostly… one evenings picking… canned most of those.
Some nice big beef… I normally get mine in ground end of April… first of may… have first ripe fruit end of june.
TNHunter
how did you get 9 foot on 55 inch panels? did you use 2 panels or turn it 90 degrees?
@ggrindel — I checked my panels… and they are actually 50 inch. The Tpost I used were 6’6".
I drove those Tpost in around 14"… just enough to get those flat things sub soil a little to stablize.
I put the top of the panel up at the top of the Tpost… around 62-64 inch high.
The plants had to grow 12-14 inch to get to the bottom of that one panel.
Yes they grew on up above the support 3 ft or more… with some calm weather… then a summer storm blew them off the back side.
They hung of the backside and the tips turned up and grew up again…
When I grew in tomato cages made from those same panels… they would just grow out the top and then hang over… and keep growing.
I had no problem with how that worked last year… and plan to do the same this year.
TNHunter
Tpost flat things sometimes referred to as flukes.
Thanks Larry… could not recall what those were called.
Flukes… sounds like a fishing lure to me 
Tip #1 Start with good genetics. Big Beef is an excellent hybrid. There are plenty of open pollinated tomatoes with outstanding flavor. If you want a genetics discussion, we could do that separate. I’ve already listed several on another tomato thread. For extra early tomatoes, Bloody Butcher, Glacier, and Stupice (all golf ball size) mature in 55 days. Gregori’s Altai and Sasha’s Altai are larger tomatoes but mature in about 65 days. Most of the common varieties grown mature in 75 to 95 days.
Tip #2 Make a raised mound of well tilled soil in your garden and cover it with black plastic mesh. The soil will get warm earlier. This eliminates the cold soil penalty most of you have encountered. I can’t emphasize this tip enough. It is literally the difference between having healthy large tomato plants as early as possible and having yellow leaves and stems until a month too late.
Tip #3 Heavily amend the soil with organics. No amount of commercial fertilizer will make up for the soil loosening and enriching effect of composted manure or worm castings.
Tip #4 Plant them far enough apart. Indeterminates like Big Beef need 16 square feet per plant. That is a 4’ by 4’ square or a rectangle of similar size. Determinates need about 9 or 10 square feet. Dwarfs can go down to 3 or 4 square feet. One caveat, in very heavily amended soil it is possible to grow at closer spacing.
Tip #5 Don’t take chances with the weather. Tomato plants suffer from temperatures below 45 degrees with most of the detrimental effects associated with the stem of the plant. If the temperature is going below 35 degrees, the plants definitely need to be covered up to keep frost from forming on the leaves.
Tip #6 Lay very tall plants down sideways and cover them with 2 or 3 inches of dirt. Do NOT bury them a foot deep in the soil. Laid sideways, the plants will develop roots all along the stem. Don’t be an idiot like me and dig a few of them up with a weeding fork. They are shallow for a good reason.
Thanks, I’ll keep this in mind. I have a few Tposts that I could use. I did use some of them to support some 16 gauge 4ft fencing to let some of my beans to vine up on last year.
