Tomato Plants

There are two main types of tomato plants:

• Vine tomatoes - also called cordon or indeterminate, as they don’t grow to a fixed size and require staking and pruning.
• Bush tomatoes - also called determinate, as they grow to a set, compact height and don’t require much if any staking or pruning.

You can either raise tomato plants from seed or skip that stage and start with a healthy young plant, like we offer at Roots. Plant it in a pot, making sure it’s packed full of good compost. Keep it well watered, so the soil is never dry. Whenever the roots fill the pot (and creep out of the bottom), rehome your plant into a bigger pot. Keep it in a sunny indoor spot or greenhouse until after last frost, then you can move it outside if preferred. Vine tomatoes need pruning. For more information, read our full tomato growing guide.

Plant your new tomato plant from around April onwards and keep it indoors in a sunny spot until late May or June.

Most tomato plants grow better in the ground, where it’s easier to support cordon varieties. Bush and trailing varieties are well suited to growing in pots or growbags - just make sure you keep them well fed and watered. It can also be more practical to grow tomatoes in pots, where you can move them into sunny and sheltered (indoor) spots.

Tomato plants, particularly vine varieties, will need staking to support their growth. Tie the stem to the stake every 15-20cm, or train the vine around a vertical string. Remove all leaves within 10-15cm of the soil. Then for vine varieties, pinch off any suckers that grow from the ‘armpits’ of the main stem and side stems. For more details, see our complete growing guide.

Eventual size depends on the variety, with some vine tomatoes growing in excess of 2m tall! Bush varieties will likely stay under 30cm high.

Topping tomatoes means cutting off the top of the main stem, which can help keep the height of vine tomatoes under control, direct more energy into flowering and fruiting, and produce a more wind resistant plant. To top a tomato, simply cut off the main stem at the desired height (just above a leaf node) with clean pruning shears. The plant will continue to grow back, so you’ll need to top it again every week.

Tomato plants need a good amount of water and nutrients, so we recommend a soil mix of three parts compost and one part topsoil.

You can grow tomatoes in a greenhouse or on a sunny windowsill, but if you’d rather move your plants outside then wait until June, when the chance of a surprise late frost has passed.

This varies wildly by variety and growing conditions, but on average a larger tomato plant can produce up to 30 tomatoes a season, while a small or cherry tomato plant can produce up to 100 tomatoes per season.

• Which tomatoes have the best flavour? Our most highly regarded tomato is the ‘Supersweet’ Cherry, which lives up to its name with unbeatably sweet fruit, great in salads or cooking. Tigerella are larger tomatoes that have a wonderfully fresh, tangy flavour.
• What are the easiest tomatoes to grow? We’d recommend Tumbling Tom for beginners as it doesn’t need staking or pruning and grows best in a pot or hanging basket.

There are two main types of tomato plant - bush and vine. Bush tomatoes have a more compact, shrub-like form, with green leaves and fruit growing on the stems. They can even trail over the edge of a pot. Vine tomatoes grow like climbers, generally need support in the form of strings or canes and require pruning.

Once a tomato seed has grown from seedling to mature plant, it produces flowers in the spring. These are pollinated by the wind or through pollen shaken loose by buzzing bees - tomato plants are self fertile, so one plant can pollinate itself. The flowers then develop into delicious tomato fruits over the next couple of months, maturing from around July to October.