Cherry tomato

• Letting the soil swing between bone-dry and saturated. Irregular watering, not the total amount, is the main cause of split fruit and blossom-end rot in this crop.
• Skipping a stake or cage until the plant is already sprawling. Support is much easier to install early, before stems are heavy with fruit and prone to snapping.
• Sowing too late in the season and expecting a full harvest. A sowing started after December has less time to fruit before summer heat aborts flowering, shortening the usable harvest window.
• Crowding several plants into one small pot or bed. Poor airflow between crowded plants makes whitefly and leaf miner problems worse and harder to spot early.
• Letting pets or young children chew on the leaves or stems, or eat unripe green fruit. The plant itself contains solanine and is listed as toxic by the ASPCA, even though the ripe fruit is perfectly safe.

• The ASPCA lists the leaves, stems and unripe green fruit as toxic to dogs, cats and horses due to solanine — only the ripe fruit is safe to eat, so keep pets from grazing on the plant itself.
• Fruit set stops once daytime temperatures push past roughly the low 30s°C with warm nights, a well-documented heat response in tomatoes generally, which is why outdoor Dubai crops are almost always pulled by May.
• A container needs real depth — 30cm or more — and rich, amended soil, since native Dubai sand alone doesn't hold enough moisture or nutrients for a crop this hungry.
• Staggering sowings every couple of weeks through the autumn planting window, rather than sowing everything at once, is what turns one short flush of fruit into a steady 8–12-week harvest.

Toxicity: The plant itself — leaves, stems and unripe green fruit — is toxic to dogs, cats and horses (ASPCA), containing solanine and causing drooling, GI upset and weakness if eaten in quantity. Ripe fruit is not toxic.