William Moss: Tomato, tamato, Wolf apple, love apple whatever you call them, tomatoes are the world's most popular home grown fruit, which is good, because the nutritional content is highest when it's picked fresh from the garden.

Hi! I am William Moss, Master Gardener with the National Gardening association and today, I'm at the Historic Oatlands in Leesburg, Virginia and I'm going to show you how to keep your tomatoes healthy and productive all season.

The first tip is consistent watering. Tomato need about an inch of water a week. If you keep those moisture levels constant then you have less problems with the skin splitting and also will blossom-end rot. It's when there is uneven watering like a lot this week, none next week and then a lot the following week, that you end up having the fruit splitting and cracking and also you find yourself with more blossom-end rot problems.

The second tip is to pinch suckers, and it's sounds funny, but basically what it is as you reach in end, you want to take out some off the sucker, it's just a sprout on top of a branch, it's going to turn into another branch itself. And when you already have a lot flowers like we do on this particular plant, we really want the plant to concentrate on ripening these flowers into fruits. So we pinch out some of this and basically redirect the energy.

The third tip is to keep stacking and supporting your plants. As the season progresses you may have to add a stack or maybe even another cage or a whole another system just to keep the plant supported well, that's important because it keeps the fruit clean and also makes it easy to harvest.

With those tips you'll be harvest the tomatoes all summer and have plenty to give to your friends and neighbors. Get out and grow.