The Aluminum Foil Hack That'll Speed Up Your Tomato Harvest

If you grow tomatoes, you know that it's always a gamble on how they will turn out. Factors like the weather and the state of your soil can affect the growth of your plants and make for a disappointing tomato plant harvest. Alternatively, your tomatoes could be growing but just at a slow rate or not to a particularly impressive size. Perhaps the way the fruit tastes is a little lacking as well. Whatever you're struggling with, it can be tempting to throw everything you can at your tomato plants to help them. However, perhaps all you need to do is test out this simple trick, which involves placing pieces of aluminum foil along your garden rows.

With this hack, there's no need to go out and buy tons of products to try and encourage your crop to turn out better. You can't control the weather, but with this crafty aluminum foil trick, your tomatoes could turn out bigger than ever and may even ripen faster. Best of all, this hack is super inexpensive to pull off and will also help keep wildlife away from your precious plants so they can grow to their fullest potential. Here's everything you need to know.

To get started with this juicy tomato hack, all you need is aluminum foil. Lay down large strips of aluminum foil on top of the mulch or soil that's between your rows of tomato plants, ensuring that you're placing the strips shiny side up. The strips will in turn give your plants more sunlight due to the reflective quality of the foil, even on cloudy days, which could lead to a faster harvest. As it's important for the foil to stay in place, line the edges with rocks or other heavy items to keep the strips from blowing away.

Though using aluminum foil is already extremely beneficial to your tomato plants as it allows them to receive more light, this hack will also stop birds from pecking the tomatoes as they're growing — a major bonus if your budding produce always seems to attract visitors. Not only should your tomatoes grow faster because of the extra sunlight, but once they're ready to be picked, they should look plumper than ever.