I've never had success growing tomatoes. This year my plants are producing blossoms and even some green toomatoes, but I think I am behind the power curve. My plants are still rather small even though they are over a month old., I do have some red cherry tomatoes, not many and some marble sized green large tomatoes. The plants are a little yellow near the bottom leaves. I have them planted in organic mulch and compost. What can I do?

Yellowing coming from the bottom leaves and moving up could be a soil-born fungus.

A cheap and easy way to rule this out is to use a spray bottle to coat the plants and nearby soil with milk every other day and see if that suppresses the yellowing. Also, you can scatter plain old corn meal on the soil surrounding your plants to treat the soil.

I know an experienced gardener who finally gave up trying to grow tomatoes in Dallas! After years of trying, he always had devastating problems.

I've never had real good luck myself, but not ready to give up yet.

You need a good, rich organic planting mixture. The tomatoes need to be in the ground by the 1st week in April, preferably. They need even moisture and need to be fed every 2 weeks once they are blooming. Check out the Fruit, Veg and herb forum too for more info.

I thought if I shared my tomato ideas with you, maybe it would give you some ideas as well. I have success with tomatoes. I have grown 14 plants this year, different varieties, and some just do plain better than others. So far, my most successful are cherry, celebrity, and green zebra. If planted out too late, they may not do much. Mine were put out in early March (due to all the early warmth) and we were able to can up plenty of salsa and tomato sauce from them. My program is this: lots of good composted soil, mulch (like cedar, leaf bits, etc), watering deeply every other day, heavy duty tomato cages, coffee grounds a couple times around the base of the plants. I get yellowing leaves in the summer too so I'll go around the plants and cut off all the small distressed looking branches and let them fall to the ground as mulch. This gives the plant a chance to focus on new growth and not be as distressed. Any hornworms get picked off and put in the backyard. I should use some compost tea or organic fertilizer or something but never get around to it. I'm a fairly lazy organic gardener but a high-value crop like tomatoes is worth it. Sometimes, we'll sprinkle some corn meal, dry molasses, or lava sand around the whole garden to help it out. I have a LOT of large green tomatoes on my celebrity plants right now and am looking forward to a fall harvest, however brief it is. Next year, there will definitely be more celebrity plants in our garden. Oh, also, they get ZERO shade during the day. Nothing but sun out in the front yard garden! Veggies require sun so make sure yours are getting it, otherwise it's pointless.