Gardening season is right around the corner so it is time to decide what, and how much of everything to grow. This article will share how many tomatoes per plant with an idea of how many you should grow depending on your goals.
Whether you are new to gardening, or wanting to up your game, this post will go over the basics of planning for your goals and give you some ideas of how much to grow for a successful garden year.
Last year, I upped my garden game and was able to provide my family with a years worth of salsa, pasta sauce, and pizza sauce. I grew all of my plants from seed and I feel very confident, with some proper planning, you can too!
Let’s dive into how many tomatoes per plant and how many you should grow!
Let's start with the big question first. How many tomatoes will each plant give you
Obviously this will depend on which variety. Cherry tomatoes will provide less pounds than a large, heavy variety. Let’s break it down in a chart.
Cherry tomatoes- a single cluster can produce 100 tomatoes! That is quite a few! (For reference 7-10 cherry tomatoes equal 1 medium sized regular tomatoes.)
Roma tomatoes- If they are kept healthy, they can grow 20-30 pounds of tomatoes during a single season. Yes, that is a lot of tomatoes lol
Paste tomatoes- These vary quite a bit depending on your growing season, when you start them and how healthy they are but you can expect 7-20 pounds off of this variety.
Beefsteak tomatoes- These are the big and juicy variety that is perfect for slicing and eating. You can expect 10-20 tomatoes per plant.
In general, you can expect somewhere around 10-30 pounds of fruit per plant. This will give you a ballpark number of how much to plant.
Next, let's talk goals
This section is going to go deep so I would suggest grabbing my handy dandy tomato planning guide so we can walk through these next steps together.
If you are looking for some fresh tomatoes to add to your salad or on top of burgers, You could get away with one tomato plant. You could pick a cherry tomato or beefsteak variety (I would pick and indeterminate variety as they fruit at different times throughout the season allowing you to have fresh tomatoes the whole time.)
When we are talking about such small quantities of tomatoes, It may not be in your best interest to start them from seed yourself. For the cost of the package of seeds, you could get a plant ready to plant from a greenhouse. That is without the seed starting trays and soil as well!
Things get a little more complicated when you start planning to grow enough food for a years supply of canned goods.
The main food items made with tomatoes
Salsa
Pasta sauce
Good old fashioned tomato chunks (or puree)
Tomato paste
Pizza sauce
Ketchup
Hot sauce
BBQ sauce
Grab your planning sheet and write down how many cans of each you use per week. You could do it on a monthly basis but I find weekly takes the stress down a little bit.
Now we need to figure out how many pounds of tomatoes you need per recipe
Salsa
Salsa: Here is the salsa recipe I use and it is phenomenal.
For this recipe, it will make you 10 pints and we need 9 cups of diced tomatoes. This works out to 3.5- 4 pounds of tomatoes.
Here is my example. We go through 1/3 pint of salsa per week. That is 1 pint every 3 weeks.
We can take 52 (weeks in a year) and divide it by 3 (average length it takes to finish 1 pint of salsa) and end up with 17.3. We will round up to 18 so we need 18 pints of salsa per year for our family.
This recipe makes 10 pints so I will double it and end up with 20 pints of salsa for the year.
How many tomato plants do I need for salsa for the year
We know we need roughly 4 pounds of tomatoes per salsa batch so to make 2, we will need 8 pounds of tomatoes. If you will remember above, a good paste tomato will produce between 7 and 20 pounds of tomatoes so I would plant 2 to be on the safe side. You can also factor this plant into the next tomato recipe you plan.
Our total is at 2 tomato plants
Pasta Sauce
Let’s do the same process with pasta sauce. I will have a pasta sauce recipe coming out soon but for now, I will just share with you how many pounds of tomatoes are needed for one pint.
Most recipes call for 25 pounds of tomatoes which will make you around 20 pints of pasta sauce.
As an example, we use 1 can of pasta sauce every 2 weeks. 52 divided by 2 equals 26 so we would need 26 jars of pasta sauce. Since this recipe makes 20 pints, I would make 1.5 times the recipe leading to 30 pints of sauce.
How many tomato plants do I need for pasta sauce for the year
I mentioned we would need 1.5 times the recipe so we will need 37.5 pounds of tomatoes.
(25 + {25 \2=12.5}= 37.5 pounds)
To grow 37.5 pounds of tomatoes, you will need 2-3 tomato plants. So between the salsa and pasta sauce recipe, we would need 4 tomato plants. Pretty cool how it all works together hey?
Pizza Sauce
Pizza sauce recipes usually call for 15 pounds of tomatoes and it will produce around 12 small jars. Keep in mind that pizza sauce gets cooked longer to thicken up so the tomato amount is higher.
I tend to make pizza sauce in small jars as we use one jar per pizza. One of these small jars are 125 ml (so around half of a cup.) If you want to make larger amounts you will get less jars in general. We have pizza almost every other week so I make 26 small jars (or 7 ish pints.)
How many tomato plants do I need for pizza sauce for the year
For the amount of pizza sauce I’d like in a year, I would need to make 2.5 times the recipe. We would need a total of 37.5 pounds.
(15 lbs for one recipe + 15 lbs for one recipe + 7.5 lbs for half a recipe = 37.5 lbs)
If each plant will grow between 10- 30 pounds, I would be planting 2-3 tomato plants.
This brings our running total to 7 tomato plants.
Hot Sauce
For hot sauce, you will need 8 cups of chopped tomatoes for 8 pints of hot sauce. This works out close to 3.5 pounds of tomatoes. We do not use excessive amounts of hot sauce so one batch (8 pints) should be more than enough for the year.
Tomato plants needed for hot sauce for the year
As we know, this hot sauce recipe uses 3.5 pounds of tomatoes so 1 plant will be more than enough.
With our salsa, pasta sauce and pizza sauce tomatoes, we are staying with 7 tomato plants.
Ketchup
Some families use ketchup on everything and others only use it once and a while. Here is a link to the highest rated ketchup recipe on google. My family is one of those who uses it only when necessary. We use it in BBQ pulled pork and as a dipping sauce occasionally, but I will still make 8 quarts to be able to last the year.
For 8 quarts of ketchup, you will need 22 pounds of tomatoes.
Plants needed for a year of ketchup
If you are looking for 22 pounds of tomatoes, I would grow 1-2 tomato plants. Let’s go conservative here since we have been planning on the high side for the other recipes.
Our one plant will bring the running total to 8 tomato plants.
BBQ Sauce
BBQ sauce is one of those amazing foods that can elevate a dish so much. Here is a recipe with super high reviews on google. For 7 quarts of sauce, you would need 12.5 pounds of tomatoes. We don’t go through that much BBQ sauce so we will likely half the recipe.
For 7 quarts of sauce, you will need 12.5 pounds of tomatoes.
How many plants should I grow for a year of BBQ sauce?
If you are happy with 7 quarts of sauce (14 pints) you can stick to 1 tomato plant. This will give you one pint of BBQ sauce per month.
This brings our running total to 9 tomato plants.
Tomato Chunks
Depending on what you use your chunked tomato for (homemade sauce, chili etc) you may or may not want to add this into your roster. Here is the highest rated tomato chunk recipe on google.
For 7 quarts of sauce, you will need 21 pounds of tomatoes.
How many plants do I need for a year of tomato chunks?
Typically in a year, we don’t go through that many cans of tomato chunks. I would maybe make one batch of this.
One batch will equal one tomato plant.
If you are following along, we are now at 10 tomato plants.
Tomato Soup
This is a new one for me, but we use so much tomato soup. I will use it in hamburger soup, to dip grilled cheese, and sometimes in my bolognese. This year I am going to make way more tomato soup. This recipe calls for 7 pounds of tomatoes for 4 pints. I use around a pint a week so we would need 13 batches of this recipe. That is a lot!
52 (jars per year) divided 4 pints (for this recipe) equals 13 batches.
Now we have to take 7 pounds (amount of tomatoes needed for 4 pints) and multiply is by 13. This equals 91 pounds.
To grow 91 pounds of tomatoes we would need to plant 3-9 tomato plants. For security, we will go in the middle and plant 5.
Now we are at 15 tomato plants!
{Related: How to grow tomatoes from seed}
Finally, we get to tomato paste
Tomato paste is one of those recipes that uses a lot of tomatoes and provides you with very little paste. I find making my own dehydrated tomato powder makes the most sense as you can make it using all of the scraps from your other recipes. This means you don’t need to grow any extra plants!
For most of these recipes, you either run the tomatoes through a food mill or you peel off the skins. These can be dehydrated and then used to make your own tomato paste. (Combine equal parts tomato powder and water.)
If you have been following along...
We are at a running total of 15 tomato plants! That sounds like quite a bit but you can grow them in containers (one per grow bag) or you can grow them in a square foot garden (one per square foot) so you really only need a 4×4 garden box for tomatoes.
I wrote a post on container gardening if you are interested in checking it out.
Now, if your number is high like mine, it makes more financial sense to grow your own tomatoes from seed but if you only have 1 or 2 to plant, buying them from the store may make more sense. That way you do not have to commit to a long indoor growing season and you can choose 3-4 different varieties. It is totally up to you and your goals!
If you're feeling overwhelmed...
I totally get it! It was so overwhelming my first year getting started as well. There are so many things to think about including space, favourite recipes and canning jar requirements. The most important thing you can do when you are overwhelmed is pick one thing to start with.
Pick a tomato product that you use the most and would make the biggest dent in your budget and go from there! My first year I canned up salsa, pasta sauce and pizza sauce. The next year you can add more and so on!
Also ensure you are keeping your space requirements in mind as tomatoes will need either a 5 gallon pot to grow, or 1-2 square feet (depending on the variety.)
Thank you so much for reading this far! I hope this post helped you plan out your garden and know how many tomatoes grow per plant!
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