How Not To Grow Tomatoes exists because tomatoes are supposedly one of the easiest vegetables to grow — right up until yours starts curling, cracking, wilting, turning yellow or refusing to produce a single tomato.
Everyone tells beginners that tomatoes are foolproof. Then the leaves roll themselves into cigars, the fruit goes black underneath, and the internet offers you either a forum thread from 2009 or a research paper about calcium ion transport.
What this site does
It helps ordinary gardeners work out what’s wrong with a tomato plant, why it happened, and what to do next — without drowning anyone in horticultural jargon.
- Every problem article starts with a direct answer, not a 600-word preamble.
- Symptoms are described the way you’d actually describe them: black on the bottom, rolled up like a cigar, weirdly tall with three tomatoes.
- Advice stays honest. Where a plant can’t be saved, we say so instead of selling hope.
Where we’re writing from
The site has an Australian streak, which mostly shows up as an unhealthy focus on heat, blazing sun, dry summers, water stress and fruit fly. That happens to be useful almost everywhere summers are brutal. Where growing seasons or pests differ by region, the articles say so rather than pretending the whole world gardens in the same month.
What we won’t do
We won’t invent experts, fabricate garden anecdotes, or make confident claims about plant pathology to fill space. Where detailed horticultural content is still being written, it’s marked as in progress. For serious suspected disease, chemical contamination, or region-specific pest issues, your local agricultural or horticultural authority is the right call — see the disclaimer.
Otherwise: welcome. Something’s wrong with your tomato and that’s genuinely the best reason to be here.