Also, should you ever snip off the top of the plant designated for GIANT tomatoes?

Start out with the right variety. Large fruit can be produced by any beefsteak variety but fruit above 3 pounds are only produced by a very few varieties. Contrary to popular literature, Delicious rarely produces even 3 pounders. The largest varieties I have grown are Big Zac, Crnkovic Yugoslavian, Faux Red Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, Omar's Lebanese, Richardson, and Zogola. There are a few other varieties with reputations for producing huge fruit, Mong and Heirloom come to mind.

Preparing the soil is paramount. If you want really big ones, either dig or till up to 3 feet deep. A guy I know rents a trencher for a few hours and trenches beneath each row of tomatoes to a depth of 2.5 feet. This gives plenty of room for roots to expand in search of water. Plan on at least 50 pounds of compost for each plant. More is better.

Transplant healthy plants into the prepared soil. Note I said "plants". This means at least a dozen plants in hopes one of them will produce a huge fruit. Provide a water source so the plant is never stressed for moisture.

Watch carefully for the first blossom cluster... and remove it. You want the second blossom cluster to set fruit. Select the biggest bloom on the second cluster and pinch off the rest of the blooms. The plant should be supported either with a stake or with a cage. Get some old pantyhose to hold up the fruit. When a tomato gets above about 3 pounds, it will break its stem if it is not supported. Use the nylons to tie a support under the fruit to hold it up. Don't bind the fruit, just support it.

Fertilize with a high quality source of NPK. The N should be pretty low while P and K should be high. The plant will require side dressing at least 3 times while the fruit is maturing.

Fusion

I see, Thank you very much.

This is my plan.

I am growing Delicious Tomato Plants from seed. I have already started them right now... they will get alot of TLC.

I will till and hoe in manure and compost (maybe fertilizer?) into the soil once seedlings develop true leaves. I will try to till as deeply as possible,

Transplant the designated plants into the veggie garden, providing them wall o water.

I will feed them liquid fertilizer every week.

When first flower cluster comes out, i will pinch it out

Always sucker

When second cluster comes out, pinch out all but one of the biggest flower

begin to take out any developing buds and suckersm leaving one or two flowers alone
Fertilize like crazy when fruits appear

Provide water everyday

Good enough for a 1+ pound tomato?

It sounds like it should be good enough for a 1+ pound tomato to me. Delicious has never done all that well for me, others have done much better. I am also under the impression that watering every day encourages shallow root growth which causes them to dry out fast and not go deep searching for the moisture and nutrients like they should.

I do not know if this will work or not, but here is what I have done. Two soil tests this spring said that my soil is in excellent shape basically, with only a couple of elements like zinc being a little low. From ammending heavily over some years, the clay beneath my topsoil has become conditioned so that I am convinced that it holds nutrients and moisture much better than it did in the beginning, and that roots can go deep into it.

I recently obtained a trailer load of premium aged, composted {{gwi:271664}} and have spread an inch or so on the surface of my

. I then opened a deep furrow with my plow and put strowed a generous strip of the horse manure in it, followed by an equal amount of my good home made compost made of many diverse fruits, veggies, shredded leaves and kitchen scraps, along with a strip of fine some handfulls of epsom salts and some powdered all purpose fertilizer like you put in a hose end sprayer.

I then covered the row {{gwi:56500}} and soaked it down good to settle and work until my little

are big enough to transplant. I am running late with them, health reasons delayed my getting them started, but by the time they are ready the ground should be good and warm and the danger of frost past.

I have a number of the varieties that have the genetics to make big tomatoes, including Big Zac, Mortgage Lifter, Big Beefsteak, Neves Azorean Red, Burpee's Porterhouse Beefsteak, Supersteak, Box Car Willie, Amish Big Rain Bow, Cherokee Purple, Aunt Gerties Gold and a few others.

I grow as a hobby for taste, and productivity but have not tried anything extra for a big tomato like pinching blooms, pruning etc. thus far. I may devote one or two plants of a couple varieties for that this year, to see if some will beat this {{gwi:259068}} that I grew last year. I had several others of similar size.

I do use soak hoses and lots of good shredded oak leaves for mulch and deep soak my rows when needed.

If I get anything worth bragging on, I will come back and post a picture.
Bill P.

Get "Omars Lebonese", do not pinch "suckers" but trim off baby fruits (don't worry about blossoms). This plant produces big ones. 1 -2 pound easy, 3-4 is what Im working with.

How is progress going this year.

Fusion is right on. The only thing I'd add is that after you get that big flower on the second cluster going snip off ALL future flowers but never prune the plant. All the plant's energy will go into that single flower.

I'd also add Porterhouse to fusion's list. I only trialed it this one season but it has shown tremendous potential to produce a really large tomato!

This can be a fickle challenge especially in my area. I list as zone 7 but we are hotter than 7 in the summer. These zones since they are based on freezing can be deceiving. Growing the large ones can be difficult depending upon the area you live in. In the high desert, sometime we are lucky to get any tomato we can. Soil preparation is crucial because at tomato set time the size of the fruit is determined. If you try to add more fertility later it will not help. I do not clip the blossom off the tomato and I am sure this may get the larger ones but it that your only goal? Add lots of phosphorus and potash (k) to your soil before planting and also some mgso4 (Epsom salt), Do not stress you plant for fertilizer or water in any way. Water deeply, when you water so all the nutrients are made available to the plant. If you surface water you are doing your plant a disfavor. Remember in normal healthy loam 1 inch of water will penetrate the ground eight inches. So if you put on 3 inches of water it will penetrate to a depth of 24 inches. Try to use composted fertilizers. If you use chemical fertilizers you are force feeding your plants and will get growth that reflects that at a cost. I have grown Goliath to over 1 & 1/2 pounds where the description say 1 lb. These are not a huge tomato, but this year I have one that is Porterhouse and it is going to beat that. Like I said a huge tomato in the desert is extremely hard. Our soil to begin with is sterile so we have to amend, and amend and amend and... I am trying other large tomatoes such as Super Steak, Champion, but so far Porterhouse seems to be the best. Just be sure and pick a large variety to begin with. You just cannot make a 4 ounce tomato into a large one.