My grandfather lived up the road from me as I grew up and he grew Grosse Lisse tomatoes every year and had a reputation for his gardening skills in the town. Two things he always told me about growing tomato plants were 'Feed the soil to support a crop' & 'Don't water tomato plants so the foliage gets wet', two things that I remember well.
My grandfather has been gone for many years, but I guess I listened to him as I still do these things now, the only thing is my grandkids aren't interested in gardening, so what I've learnt over the years won't get passed on.
So with feeding the soil, my vegie garden has been added to with a great topsoil with Mushroom Compost added, along with Dynamic Lifter and now today we'll add Cow Manure, Sheep Manure and Straw Mulch, so my tomato crop lasts a long dry Summer and will be fed right through.
As for watering from above, we have used a technique on each plant, where a poly drain hose is buried below the plant so watering can be achieved from above without splashing water on the leaves of the tomato. I'll look up some photos and show how this works.
Improving our garden bed soil after adding new soil/mushroom compost.
Before this cow manure and straw mulch went on, Jan dug a trench down the middle of the two garden beds, while I opened up the compost bin. We filled both trenches with compost, as both gardens were devoid of worms. The compost had 1000's of worms, so half are residing in each garden bed now. The trenches were covered with soil which will allow the worms to move through the soil.