5 Things for Your Best Tomato Year Yet

The pick

Square Tomato Cages, 58 in (3-Pack)

$29.99 on Amazon

The cone-shaped cages sold everywhere hold a determinate patio plant, maybe. An indeterminate heirloom is an eight-foot vine carrying twenty pounds of fruit, and it folds a cone cage flat by August, snapping trusses on the way down. Square heavy cages fold flat for winter and are still standing in a decade.

Cage at planting - caging a three-foot plant breaks half its branches.

The pick

Tomato Trellis Clips, 100

$2.99 on Amazon

Twine cinched around a growing stem bites in as the stem thickens, and every gardener eventually girdles a favourite plant with its own tie. Clips hinge around the stem with room to grow and snap on one-handed - which matters at plant forty when tying has lost its charm.

Clip below a truss, not above - fruit weight pulls down onto the clip, not the stem.

The pick

Jute Garden Twine, 800 ft

$6.99 on Amazon

String rows, tie the weave, bundle stakes, hang the herbs upstairs - a fat roll of natural jute is garden infrastructure. Unlike plastic line it composts with the vines at season's end, so cleanup is cut-and-drop instead of picking green plastic out of next year's compost.

Biodegradable is the feature: end of season, everything goes in the pile together.

The pick

Fiskars Micro-Tip Snips, 2-Pack

$17.98 on Amazon

Pinching suckers with fingernails works in June and rips wounds by July when they have thickened. Fine-point snips take a sucker flush without tearing, trim the lowest leaves away from soil-splash - the blight route - and thin trusses on heavy-setters. Big pruners in a tomato jungle do collateral damage.

Snip suckers under four inches; bigger ones cost more healing than they are worth.

The pick

Espoma Tomato-tone

$15.15 on Amazon

High-nitrogen general fertilizer grows a gorgeous six-foot plant with four tomatoes on it. Tomato-tone runs deliberately low on nitrogen and high on the calcium that prevents blossom-end rot - the black-bottomed fruit that ruins Augusts. A handful worked in monthly is the whole programme.

Blossom-end rot is usually watering, not soil - calcium only travels in steady moisture.