GardenTomato variety
Mortgage Lifter
✓ In your garden
Mortgage Lifter is a beefsteak tomato that ripens in about 95 days to pink fruit. The fruit runs very large. 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
Mortgage Lifter 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? Mortgage Lifter'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.
—
Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Mortgage Lifter 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 late 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 – late Jul
- Picking
- late Jul until frost (~late Oct)
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
What to plant near Mortgage Lifter — and what to keep away
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 Mortgage Lifter different
| Type | Beefsteak (big slicing tomato) |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 95 days after you plant it outside |
| Color | Pink |
| Fruit size | Very Large |
| 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.
Save it and the plant lights up — kept right here in your browser, no account needed. It's the first thing GardenTrack starts remembering for you.
Kept on this device. Want it safe if your browser clears or you switch phones? Back it up free — just your email, no password.
GardenTrack is in beta now — it'll remember every plant you add here and tell you what to do and when. One email, no spam.
Browse more tomato varieties →
Tier-2 variety page (preview · noindex) · build-derived from the greenlit queue