Most gardeners try their hand at tomatoes, and many consider them the staple crop of their gardens. One of the problems with tomatoes is that they are not very frost tolerant, so trying to get them out in the garden early can be an adventure, with the possibility of a late frost or freeze not just slowing them down but actually killing your crop. So here we take a look at some ideas to not just get your tomatoes to live through the early spring but to flourish and reward you with some early spring tomatoes.
The best strategy is to pick a few plants and start them as the designated early tomatoes. You will want to pick a variety or two that is bred to tolerate the frost but to set fruit in cold weather as well. Look at your seed suppliers catalog, they will usually feature one or more varieties that are early season types that are good to try for your region of the country.
The other thing you have to do is to protect the plants from late frosts. This can be done in a couple of ways. One is to plant your early tomatoes in some type of container, ideally ones that can be moved easily to a protected are like a garage or a basement when there is the threat of a frost or freeze. This can be done with hanging containers or those on the ground, since the threat of frost is usually the greatest when the plants are still small, so this can be an effective approach. For ground container plants you will probably want to select one with casters so it can easily be moved out of harms way.
But just surviving the possibility of frost is good in that it allows you to set the tomato plants out early, but that alone is not enough. You need to do whatever you can to make sure that the plants thrive, not just survive. There are a number of things to do to both container grown tomatoes as well as protecting and encouraging those plants you've put in the garden. Cloches, mulches, and location are just a couple of examples of things that have been tried in the past.
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