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How To Conduct a Tomato Garden Year In Review
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Posted 9.5.26
Your tomato plants are looking tired. Vines are winding down. Maybe you're still picking a few stragglers—or maybe you're staring at a mountain of green tomatoes wondering whether they'll ever ripen.
Before you pull those plants and move on to next year's garden, take a little time to look back by conducting a garden year in review.
Because here's the thing about growing tomatoes: every season teaches you something.
- Maybe you discovered a variety that's destined for a permanent spot in your garden.
- Maybe you learned that your favorite tomato is gorgeous but cracks at the first hint of rain.
- Maybe you planted six varieties and discovered that, honestly, three of them weren't worth the garden space.
That's useful information.
And if you write it down now, you won't have to rely on your memory next spring—which, conveniently, will have forgotten almost everything by then.
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Why review your tomato season?
Gardeners tend to remember the highlights.
- "That Cherokee Purple was AMAZING."
- "The plants were huge this year!"
- "Something ate every single tomato."
But a garden year in review helps you capture the details behind those impressions.
- Which varieties produced the most?
- Which tasted best?
- Which plants struggled with disease?
- Which ones cracked, split, or attracted every pest in the neighborhood?
- Most important, what do you want to do differently next year?
A few minutes of reflection now can make next year's tomato garden much more successful.
What to check for during your tomato garden year in review
1. Start with the big picture
Don't worry about remembering every tomato you picked. Start with the overall season. Ask yourself:
- How many tomato plants did I grow?
- When did I plant them?
- When did I harvest my first ripe tomato?
- When did the harvest really get going?
- When did production slow down?
- How long did the plants produce?
- Was the growing season unusually hot, cool, wet, or dry?
- Overall, was I happy with the garden?
Give the season a simple rating—maybe 1 to 5 tomatoes.
Then ask yourself the most important question: Would I do anything differently next year?
Don't worry about having a perfect answer. You're simply looking for clues.
2. Review your tomato varieties from this season
You may have chosen your varieties based on seed catalogs, recommendations from friends, beautiful pictures, or the fact that you couldn't resist ordering one more packet of seeds.
Now you have something much better: Your own growing results.
For each variety, consider:
Flavor
- How did it taste?
- Was it sweet, acidic, rich, juicy, mild, meaty—or just disappointing?
- Remember that a tomato can be productive and still not deserve a spot in your garden if you don't enjoy eating it.
Production
- Did the plant produce a handful of tomatoes or buckets of them?
- You don't need an exact count. Even a rough assessment—low, medium, high—can be useful.
Plant performance
- How did the plant grow?
- Was it vigorous? Slow? Huge? Compact? Easy to manage?
- Did it need constant tying and pruning, or did it behave itself?
Disease resistance
Did the plant stay healthy? Look for signs of common problems such as:
- Early blight
- Septoria leaf spot
- Bacterial diseases
- Fusarium or Verticillium wilt
- Blossom-end rot
- General decline
Don't worry about diagnosing every problem perfectly. Record what you observed.
Fruit quality
Were the tomatoes beautiful and usable—or did half of them split before you could eat them? Think about:
- Cracking
- Catfacing
- Sunscald
- Poor ripening
- Tough skins
- Misshapen fruit
- Fruit size
- Storage quality
These details can be surprisingly valuable when you're choosing varieties next year.
Give each tomato variety a score
Here's where a Tomato Season Review & Variety Scorecard comes in handy. Give each variety a quick rating for things such as:
Flavor • Production • Plant Health • Fruit Quality • Overall Performance
You don't have to make your scoring scientific. A simple 1–5 rating is enough, such as ...
The goal isn't to produce a laboratory-quality tomato study. It's to answer a much more practical question: Which tomatoes earned their garden space?
Don't forget the losers
It's tempting to record only your winners. Don't.
The tomato that produced nothing but disappointment might be one of the most useful entries in your garden journal.
Maybe the plant:
- Never got very big.
- Produced very little.
- Cracked constantly.
- Got sick early.
- Took up too much space.
- Didn't taste good.
- Ripened too late.
- Required more work than it was worth.
Write it down. Next spring, you'll be glad you did. After all, "I hated this tomato" is useful gardening information.
3. Review this year’s growing conditions
Your tomatoes don't grow in a vacuum. Think about what was happening around them.
Weather
- Was this an unusually rainy year?
- A scorcher?
- A late spring?
- An early fall?
Weather can have a huge impact on tomato performance, so make a note of anything unusual.
Watering
- Did you water by hand? Use drip irrigation? Rely mostly on rainfall?
- Were there periods when the plants dried out?
- Inconsistent moisture can contribute to problems such as cracking and blossom-end rot.
Fertilizer
- What did you use?
- How often?
- Did the plants seem to respond well—or did you end up with enormous plants and disappointing fruit?
Location
- Did you grow tomatoes in raised beds ... containers ... grow bags ... the ground?
- Was the location sunny enough?
- Did the plants become crowded?
Sometimes the problem isn't the tomato variety. It's the spot where we planted it.
4. Review your tomato problems
Every gardener has tomato problems. Some years, it feels like the problems have tomatoes. That’s why as part of your garden year in review, it’s useful to make a quick list of what went wrong. For example:
- Pests: Hornworms, aphids, stink bugs, squirrels, birds
- Diseases: Blight, leaf spot, wilt
- Growing problems: Cracking, blossom-end rot, poor pollination
- Environmental problems: Extreme heat, heavy rain, drought, wind
Once you’ve made notes about these issues, ask,
- What can I change next year?
- Maybe you need better support.
- Maybe your plants need more space.
- Maybe you should rotate your tomato location.
- Maybe you need to improve your watering routine.
Or maybe you simply need to stop planting 14 tomato plants in a space designed for six.
Yes, that's a lesson too.
5. Identify this season’s biggest wins
End your garden year in review on a positive note. What worked?
- Maybe you found the perfect tomato for sandwiches.
- Maybe your container tomatoes surprised you.
- Maybe you finally figured out how to keep your plants supported.
- Maybe you harvested enough tomatoes to make sauce, salsa, and enough BLTs to make you temporarily tired of bacon.
Write down your victories. They're worth remembering.
Finish your garden year in review by making two lists
1. Make your “Grow Again” list
Here's one of the most useful things you can do before ending your tomato garden year in review. Divide your varieties into three categories:
- Grow again. These are your winners. You loved them. They performed well. They earned their space.
- Maybe. These tomatoes weren't bad—but they didn't exactly knock your gardening gloves off. You might try them again under different conditions.
- Skip next year. Enough said. This list will make next year's seed shopping dramatically easier. And possibly prevent you from buying 27 varieties because the seed catalogs got you excited in January.
2. Make a short "Do This Next Year" list
Finally, write down three to five things you want to change next season. Keep it short. For example:
- Plant tomatoes farther apart.
- Try drip irrigation.
- Grow more Sungold.
- Skip the variety that cracked badly.
- Start seeds two weeks earlier.
That's your roadmap. You don't need to reinvent your entire garden … just make it a little better.
Your garden is your own best teacher
Garden advice is everywhere: books … blogs … YouTube … seed catalogs … gardening groups … your neighbors … even on Tomato Dirt!
All of it can help.
But nothing beats what happened in your own garden.
Your soil is different. Your weather is different. Your growing space is different. Your watering habits are different. And your taste buds are definitely your own.
That's why your tomato garden year in review is so valuable. You're creating a record of what worked for you.
So before you pull those last tomato plants, take a few minutes to look back.
- Record the winners.
- Record the failures.
- Record the surprises.
- And write down what you want to try next year.
Then, when spring rolls around and you're standing in front of a wall of seed packets wondering which tomatoes to grow, you'll have something better than a vague memory.
You'll have your own gardening data. And that's how every tomato season gets a little better.
Ready to review your tomato season?
Grab your Tomato Season Review Printable & Variety Scorecard and spend a few minutes recording this year's results while they're still fresh in your mind.
Your future gardening self will thank you.
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