GardenTomato variety
Big Boy
✓ In your garden
Big Boy is a beefsteak tomato that ripens in about 78 days to red fruit. Everything else — full sun, spacing, soil, and watering — is the same as any tomato, so those basics live on the Tomato hub.
Growing basics — shared by every tomato
Big Boy grows like any other tomato. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Tomato page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 18–36 in
- Row spacing
- 36–60 in
- Planting depth
- 0.25–0.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–6.8
- Water
- Moderate
Bush or vine? Big Boy's size & support
- Grows as
- A tall vine that keeps growing all season (indeterminate)
- Height & support
- Tall — plan for 6–8 ft of cage or stake
- Trimming
- Optional: snip off the little side sprouts (called “suckers”) for a tidier plant
- Picking
- A few at a time, right up to the first frost
Our take for a vine like this — the real height depends on your soil and summer.
Does it ripen all at once, or a bit at a time?
A little at a time. You pick a few every few days, from the first ripe one until frost.
A plant like this keeps making new fruit for weeks, so you pick a few at a time. Plan your kitchen around it.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Big Boy in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around mid Jul, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Start seeds indoors
- mid Feb – early Mar
- Toughen up outside
- mid Apr – late Apr
- Move plants outside
- late Apr – early May
- Growing
- early May – mid Jul
- Picking
- mid Jul until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near Big Boy — and what to keep away
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BasilTrialed
Basil can cut thrips numbers on tomatoes, and a modest yield gain shows up when it is planted at good density. They also want the same heat and water, so the bed suits both.
-
French marigoldTrialed
Grown thick and turned into the soil, they suppress root-knot nematodes. A couple between plants mostly just look nice.
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Sweet alyssumTrialed
Its flowers feed hoverflies, and hoverfly larvae eat aphids. Commercial lettuce growers interplant it for that exact job.
-
LettucePractical
A tall tomato throws exactly the shade lettuce wants once summer heat makes it flower and turn bitter (bolt).
-
CarrotsTraditional
'Carrots Love Tomatoes' is a book title, not a trial. They coexist fine — just expect the tomato to shade them by August.
-
Onions & garlicTraditional
Chart canon says onions and garlic make good tomato neighbors. No trials to point at, no conflict either.
-
Black walnutPractical
Walnut roots release juglone, and tomatoes are on every sensitivity list. Keep beds well clear of the canopy.
-
FennelPractical
Fennel foliage and seed are rich in trans-anethole, and extracts of them held back germination and seedling growth across a range of species in testing. Whole-plant effects at garden spacing are milder than the "fennel kills everything" reputation, but the chemistry is real — give it its own pot.
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PotatoesPractical
Same family, same late blight. One sick bed infects the other.
-
Sweet cornPractical
Corn earworm and tomato fruitworm are the same moth. Side by side, you're setting its table twice.
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Cabbage familyTraditional
Flagged on the classic charts, mechanism murky. Skip the pairing if you've got the space.
The badge is the honesty. Trialed = a published field trial · Practical = a real mechanism · Traditional = companion-chart lore. These pairings hold for every tomato.
Pairings compiled from University of Minnesota Extension, USDA Agricultural Research Service (Salinas, CA), West Virginia University Extension, Penn State Extension, El-Kenany & El-Darier.
What makes Big Boy different
| Type | Beefsteak (big slicing tomato) |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 78 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Red |
| Best for | Thick slices for sandwiches |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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