Plant Now for Fall Tomatoes

By Stephanie Suesan Smith

Fall seems a long way away, but if you want juicy tomatoes this fall, you need to plant them now. With global warming shrinking the time between too cold and too hot in the spring, fall tomatoes are out producing spring tomatoes hands down.

Benefits of Fall Tomatoes

Fall tomatoes grow during the heat of the summer. They may begin to bloom at the end of the summer, but won’t really produce tomatoes until the temperature at night is below 90 degrees. However, they will produce tomatoes until the first hard freeze. For the 2025-2026 fall garden season, we didn’t get a hard freeze until the one in February. You could potentially have garden fresh tomatoes all winter if the weather is mild enough.

Rip Them Out

Rip out the old tomato plants you put in this spring. By this time, they are barely producing any new tomatoes. The large plants are usually disease and insect ridden and while they may produce a few tomatoes in the fall, just won’t give you a decent harvest anymore. Throw them in the trash, not the compost pile, so you don’t infect your compost pile with dieases and spread them when you use the compost.

Preparing the Ground

If possible, plant the new tomatoes where something else grew this spring. Planting them in the area your spring tomatoes grew lets diseases and pests get a head start. Spread about an inch of compost on the area and mix it in the top two to three inches of soil to start your tomatoes off right.

Varieties to Plant

The same varieties of tomatoes that grow well in the spring will grow well in the fall. For our area, Texas Extension suggests the following:

Summer Tomato Care

Tomatoes need to be watered often enough for the soil to stay evenly moist. In the summer, you will usually need to water twice a week. Give the tomatoes an inch of water each time. Do not get the foliage wet when watering as that can lead to diseases.

Small Fruit (Cherry and Grape tomatoes)

Baxter’s Early Bush
Cherry Grande
Juliet
Red Cherry
Small Fry

Large Fruit

Better Boy
Big Box
Carnival
Homestead
Big Beef
Bush Beefsteak
Celebrity

Don’t fertilize your tomatoes until you see small fruits beginning to grow. You will then need to start fertilizing the plants with a teaspoon of 10-10-10 fertilizer scattered around the plant every 2-3 weeks as long as the plant is producing tomatoes.