To avoid this, it's recommended to give tomato seedlings at least a month before mulching to let the soil warm up. Once they're established, cover them with straw, newspaper, or any dry material.

Tomatoes are easy to grow and relatively low-maintenance, but gardeners should be wary of the leaves as April's warm yet wet weather is perfect for a very destructive disease called blight ...

If your tomatoes get full sun (10-14 hours a day), that’s ideal. If not, they may do better in large pots than in the ground. Give each plant a pot that holds 2-3 cubic feet of potting soil.

Plant young tomatoes sideways, in trenches, placing 3-6 inches of main stem under the soil. This would kill some other plants, but tomatoes grow fresh roots from that buried “neck.” ...