Try to plant tomatoes in a different spot every year, rotating through your garden space every three to four years. Planting them in the same place allows disease pathogens that are specific to tomatoes to build up in the soil. By moving them around in the garden each year, you can break up the disease cycle.
Tomatoes LOVE to grow in the same place every year. If you add new composted soil and ammendments, they will be just fine. Don't need to worry about it unless you get some kind of virus or fungi in the soil. You can rotate what you plant next to them and that will help.
A: It's important that you rotate your plants every year. Diseases and pests are able to establish themselves much easier if you grow things in the same place every year. Moving things around to different beds will go a long way towards preventing issues!
The standard rotation goes something like this: Salad (leaf) first, Tomatoes (fruit) next, carrots (roots) third and peas (legumes) after that.
Tomatoes are more susceptible to diseases if they are crowded and if their leaves get wet. If you live in a climate where it rains in the summer, you have to give the plants more space: plant them farther apart, prune some branches so that they are not as crowded and air can move freely through the garden, etc.
If the healthy plants are too close together, the leaves will touch each other and disease can easily spread from one plant to another. The plants will compete for resources in case they are planted too close together, Therefore the tomatoes will be smaller and less flavorful.
If you opt for rotation, tomatoes should be rotated on a three-year cycle–tomato one year and other vegetables the next two years. (Either way, the potting soil should be refreshed every one to two years.)
Vegetables that don't need crop rotation
Sweetcorn, peas, beans, salads, courgettes, squash, cucumber, radish. Fit these in anywhere that suits, though ideally not in the same spot for many years in succession.
You can successfully grow tomatoes in the same spot, but you will have to improve the soil immensely before planting each season. Growing tomatoes (or other crops) in the same position each year does deplete the soil of the nutrients they need and there is a higher risk of disease.
Vegetables, especially heavy feeders like cucumbers, need to be rotated so they aren't planted in the same spot each year. This allows the soil to replenish lost nutrients as well as helps to minimize diseases and pests. Try to not repeat planting locations for 3-4 years if you can.
What to plant after tomatoes? Try beans. Legumes and then the cruciferous crops, including brassicas, are what to plant after tomatoes. Legumes are known to trap nitrogen in nodules that form on their roots, adding nitrogen to the soil.
To keep the vegetable garden healthy, avoid repeating the same planting plan in the same spot. This practice, called crop rotation, can feel a bit like juggling, but it's important to prevent crop-specific pests and diseases from building up and carrying over from one season to the next in the soil.
Water correctly: Do not overwater. The first week tomato plants are in the ground, they need water every day, but back off watering after the first week, slowly weaning the plants down to 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week.
All determinate variety tomatoes produce fruit over a two-to-three-week window. Indeterminate varieties continue growing and fruiting until the plants are killed by frost. Indeterminate varieties can produce fruit for 2 to 3 months. Add weeks to the end of your tomato season by planting several indeterminate varieties.
Give them consistent watering (deep and infrequent trumps a daily sprinkle), well-draining soil (incorporate generous helpings of compost into beds or containers at planting time), plenty of heat and light (direct, unobstructed sunshine for a minimum of 6 hours daily is best) and a slow-release, balanced fertilizer ...
Pruning, or selectively removing some of the tomato plant growth, can improve harvestable yields and prolong the harvest season. Further, keeping tomato plants off the ground reduces common fungal diseases like early blight, Septoria leaf spot, and anthracnose, and improves fruit quality.
High quality compost—material that is well-decomposed, dark in color, and crumbly—is the best tomato fertilizer to use regardless of the soil you're working with. Not only does an annual application of compost boost the nutrients available in the soil, but it also improves soil structure.
Root vegetables such as carrots, celeriac and root parsley are also good neighbors for tomatoes. They loosen up the soil nicely and act as drainage. This benefits tomatoes, which do not like waterlogging. Onions, leeks and garlic are particularly good vegetable neighbors for tomatoes.
Upside down planters are an option if you can't grow tomatoes right side up for reasons of space or sunlight. Otherwise it is easier to grow them right side up. When you grow tomatoes upside down, you don't have to worry about cutworms or ground fungus.
Alyssum and white clover will protect the soil and feed nutrients back to it. They can be planted around your edibles without out-competing them, and they have the added benefit of drawing in pollinators. The team at Stone Barns Center often plants alyssum and clover under the tomato crops.
The proteins in pulp and peel may contribute to protein contact dermatitis. Until more is known about the allergens, the diagnosis of contact dermatitis caused by tomato plants and fruit may be established with the use of ether extracts and fresh fruits, respectively.
Tomatoes. Although it's usually recommended to not plant tomatoes and peppers right after each other in the same bed every year, they can be grown together in the same garden bed (and then rotated to another bed next season).
Early/mid-season
Remove flowers until plants are 12 to 18 inches tall, so plants can direct more energy to the roots. Remove all leafy suckers beneath the first fruit cluster so they won't slow the development of the fruit.