With these 5 tips you can harvest the tastiest tomatoes for a longer period

With a bit of skill, you can harvest a bountiful supply of tomatoes from early summer through autumn. We'll give you some clever tips to extend your tomato harvest and enjoy those juicy red fruits for even longer!

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When you can pick tomatoes depends on your location. In the tropical regions of South and Central America, where tomatoes originate, the tomato plant is a perennial. In our climate, however, the plant is eventually felled by the cold. Therefore, the harvest time is shorter. Weather permitting, you can harvest fresh tomatoes in August and September, both in a greenhouse and outdoors. Sometimes as early as late July, and very occasionally even into October, in a well-sheltered spot!

Have you sown or planted tomatoes yourself? Here's what you can do to keep your tomato plants productive and healthy for as long as possible, both in the greenhouse and outdoors. We offer 5 tips for an extra-long and delicious tomato harvest.

Do you see the first red, gold, or purple ripe fruits? Then make sure the plant stops growing so it can focus all its energy on ripening the fruits. If you're growing tomatoes in a greenhouse, prune the tops of your vine tomatoes in September. For outdoor tomatoes, it's better to do this in late July or early August.

When growing tomatoes both indoors and outdoors, also remove new side shoots so the plants don't waste their energy on producing leaves instead of ripening their fruit. This is called "suckering," and you can read more about it in our article on caring for your tomato plant .

If you happen to be among the leaves, check immediately for brown spots. That's a sign that the dreaded potato blight is taking hold. This disease affects not only potatoes, as the name suggests, but all members of the Solanum family, including tomatoes.

Remove all affected leaves to slow the spread of this disease and keep the remaining leaves dry. Your harvest will inevitably be reduced by late blight, but the longer you hold it off, the more tomatoes you can save.

Tip!

When the first red fruits appear, start watering less and stop fertilizing: a little stress will help the plants ripen their fruits faster. This accelerated seed production is the tomatoes' way to reproduce quickly before they die.

The sun is lower and shorter in the sky in September. Since tomatoes need a lot of sunlight to ripen properly, it's important to ensure as much light as possible reaches the fruit. You can do this by cutting back the branches that are lowest on the trunk or those that hang in front of the fruit. If you have a greenhouse, also remove any blinds to let in more light.