Okay, you started your seeds indoors last spring, or made a quick trip to the garden center for bedding plants, and now you've transferred your beautiful, healthy seedlings to the garden. If you're like most of us, though, the road to a bountiful harvest isn't a paved interstate; it's a walking path through jungle, tropical forest and desert, with equal parts beauty and peril along the way. A little attention as the season progresses will help ensure more of the former, less of the latter.

Soil Sauna

Heat up the root zone, do what people in short growing season climates have done for years. Lay some black plastic sheeting around your tomatoes, peppers and other heat lovers. Be sure to poke plenty of holes in the plastic with a pitchfork or other instrument to allow water to penetrate to the soil. Weigh down edges and seams with soil or stones.

Required Weeding

Weeds aren't just unattractive. They compete with your garden plants for moisture and nutrients, shade out lower vegetables, and often provide host sites for damaging insects. The sooner you tame them, the easier it will be to keep them controlled. If you didn't use the black plastic described above, a 4-inch layer of straw or hay mulch applied after the soil has warmed into the 60s will discourage weeds, retain moisture, and prevent soil-borne fungal spores from splashing onto the leaves.

Cutting the weeds off at soil level will cut off their energy supply, and while the roots may send up new shoots, they'll be less aggressive each time, and-hopefully by the time midsummer heat makes the practice unbearable--will eventually give up.

Water, Water

Most caregivers of houseplants follow a watering routine that allows the soil to dry slightly between drinks. With tomatoes, alternate periods of wet and dry will result in cracked, split skins. For best results, water regularly, keeping soil evenly moist but not saturated. Watering at ground level rather than overhead will eliminate many disease problems. Tomatoes need about 1-11/2" of water each week.

Feed Your Bed

The better the soil, the less you'll need to feed plants, but most vegetable gardens will require supplemental feeding to perform their best. Lower nitrogen and higher phosphorus content, which will encourage flowering and fruiting, and keep plants from getting too leggy.

Prop Up, Pinch Back

Tomatoes don't require a lot of maintenance, but a bountiful harvest will require some intervention on your part.

For indeterminate varieties (those that continue to produce new fruit throughout the season, use stakes, trellises or tomato cages to keep the plants from sprawling on the ground. Tie the plant to its support as it grows, positioning the tie between each leaf cluster. Don't tie too tightly, and use a wide, stretchy fabric like a cloth strip or old nylon, rather than a thin string, which could damage the plant. To concentrate growth in bigger, healthier tomatoes, pinch the suckers that develop in the leaf axils (at the stem above where another leaf emerges), particularly in the first two feet of growth. Also, thinning out some of the blossoms will result in earlier, bigger tomato production. You also may wish to pinch the top of the plant after 4-5 flower bunches have formed.

Determinate plants (those that produce a single crop over a period of several weeks) won't need as much assistance, but will probably benefit from a tomato cage or other structure to keep them upright. These procedures allow more sun and air to get to foliage and flowers, and prevents rot and bug damage caused by fruit in contact with the ground.