Can You Expect 20 or 200 Tomatoes from Your Plants?

When you google how many tomatoes you can expect to harvest from one plant, you'll find answers ranging from 20 to 200 tomatoes. That's a pretty significant margin!

Well, if you love garden-fresh tomatoes as much as I do, one of your pressing concerns in the garden is probably how you can harvest as many tomatoes as possible from a couple plants. Let's look at average tomato yields based on type of tomato plant, and then I'll give you some tips to ensure your tomato fruit production's always on the higher end!

How Long Do Tomatoes Take to Produce?

Tomatoes are what we call a long and lengthy plant, meaning they take up a lot of space in the garden and they grow for a long time. But we can all agree the oh, so sweet results are worth both the space and time commitment. When you plant a tomato, you're typically looking at about 65 to 90 days before your first harvest.

I start my tomatoes by seed indoors. After about a month, I plant them outside in my raised garden beds at the end of May. I harvest regularly from my tomatoes throughout the summer, before their production begins to slow down at the end of September.

How Many Tomatoes Can You Get from a Determinate Variety?

Determinate tomatoes, aka bush or patio varieties, give you the majority of your fruits all at once. You'll have a big harvest, and then you may get a couple more fruits here and there, but your plant is pretty much done producing. Gardeners who are into canning typically grow this type so they can have one big harvest to process.

You can expect to get about 10 to 20 tomatoes per plant, depending on the type you're growing. If you're shopping for determinate tomato seeds, look for packets that say things like "heavy producer" so you can get a bigger tomato bang for your buck.

How Many Tomatoes Can You Get from an Indeterminate Variety?

My favorite tomato varieties to grow are all indeterminate tomatoes, or pole types. These tomato plants grow as a vine and will produce fruit in clusters over a longer period of time, sometimes months and months.

A lot of information on the internet about fruit production for tomato plants seems to pertain to large tomatoes, rather than cherry and grape varieties. I personally prefer to grow smaller tomatoes because I get to harvest them more often and pop out to the garden for juicy snacks. I'm not much one for making my own tomato sauces or salsas, nor am I into jarring and canning. For those reasons, I stick to smaller varieties like Sungolds and Juliets.

For simplicity's sake, I'll say that you can expect to enjoy between 20 and 30 tomatoes from a strong and healthy indeterminate tomato plant that's a larger variety.

Now, if we're looking at smaller varieties like the ones I prefer to grow, then we're talking about several hundred tomatoes off of one vine in a given season. I'm not exaggerating.

For those of you skeptics out there, let me say that I harvest around 60 or so tomatoes from four plants about every five days during their production window. At six harvests per month, I'm pulling in 360 tomatoes. That means a conservative estimate for the total number of tomatoes harvested during the season would be over 400 tomatoes, or roughly 100 tomatoes per plant.

If you grow tomatoes the way I do, it's safe to bet on getting at least 100 tomatoes off your plants within four to five weeks during your peak season. And believe me, each one of those 100 tomatoes tastes so good.

Let's now look at ways you can maximize your tomato production to ensure you get as many juicy little fruits as possible.

Follow these tips to keep your hungry tomatoes happy and, in turn, get tons of fruit from each plant that you're growing. 

Tip Number 1

Start with a Good Setup for Your Tomato Plants

The first thing you want to do is have a really healthy home for your plants, and that means raised beds filled with great soil. A general rule about plants is that however much growth you see above the ground, that same kind of growth is happening below the ground, as well. So when you have a plant that needs a ton of space above the dirt, then that means it needs a lot of space below the dirt, too. Raised beds give the large root systems of your tomato plants room to spread out and dig down deep.

If you're growing an indeterminate plant, your setup should also include a strong trellis for your vines to climb. Your plants will be most productive when they feel supported.

Tip Number 2

Dig a Really Deep Hole for Your Tomato Plant

When you put your tomato plant in the garden (this would be either a plant you started from seed indoors or a healthy plant you bought from a local farmer or grower), you're going to bury it deeper than what might feel normal. You bury most plants up to their neck, or where the stem grows above the roots, but you'll actually plant your tomatoes much lower under the soil line. You can even bury some leaves. Tomatoes will produce roots on whatever plant parts nestle below the ground, and this helps form a strong structure for the plant, which you'll need later when it's bearing lots of fruit for you.

Tip Number 3

Feed Your Tomato Plants Often

Plants in the Nightshade family (i.e., your tomatoes) are heavy feeders, which means the plants take up a lot of nutrients from the soil. But how often is too often to fertilize tomatoes?

I learned from another gardener that every time your plant is doing something new, you should feed it. When I see my plants starting to flower, setting fruit, or growing new vines, I know it's time for me to come in and give them a little bit of extra food.

The food that you'll give your plants depends on what they're growing. When your plant is just getting started in the garden, you'll want to add nitrogen to strengthen the plant's main stalk and help it form green leaves. If your plant is fruiting or flowering, you'll want to give it a phosphorus-rich fertilizer to help it form fruit. You could also add more compost to the base of the plant. Make sure to water deeply after fertilizing.

Tip Number 4

Prune Your Tomato Plants Weekly

I've had years where my tomato plants were huge, yet there was little to no fruit forming on the vines. It wasn't until the year I started pruning them that I got way more fruit than leaves from my tomato plants.

Pruning is a way of talking to your indeterminate plants. You can speak their plant language and tell them, “I want less of this and more of that, please.” If your plant is producing too many non-fruiting branches, you can say, "Hey there, I actually want more fruit and fewer leaves," to your plant.

About once a week during the growing period of your tomato plant, prune from the bottom up and take the oldest leaves away to help your plant focus on fruit production. This is essential for getting more tomato fruits from your plant.

This may be controversial, but I recommend keeping the tomato suckers instead of pruning them. You'll get more fruits overall, but they'll be a little smaller. To me, more is still more.

Tip Number 5

Help Your Tomato Plants Grow in Optimal Conditions

Plants growing in optimal conditions love to thrive. Tomatoes growing in optimal conditions can literally take over your garden space if you're not carefully pruning them and training their growth up a trellis.

These plants love to grow in warm to hot temperatures (think 60s, 70s, and 80s) and receive loads of sunshine (at least 6 to 8 hours of sunlight per day). Tomatoes struggle to form fruits once the daytime temps climb into the 90s and the nights are no longer cool. As I've said, they also prefer a lot of space for their roots to dig down deep, they need support, and they'll take whatever nutrients the soil gives them and still want some more.

Learn more about the best conditions for your tomatoes in our tomato growing guide.

That's How to Maximize Your Tomato Harvests!

Keep these tips in mind to get impressive results from your tomato plants. You'll soon be picking tomatoes for weeks on end and popping them into your mouth for a light snack right there in the garden.

Thanks for bringing back the kitchen garden with me!