How To Grow Tomatoes

How To Grow Tomatoes

Article by Jack West

Learning how to grow tomatoes is not as difficult as you might think, provided you follow a few simple rules.

There are many different types of tomatoes – and hundreds of varieties. You need to decide which you want to grow.

Most tomatoes are grown for use in salads, but you can also grow them for cooking.

There are also varieties you can grow outdoors and others that will only perform well under glass.

Let’s take a quick look at the different types:

1. Standard sized tomatoes2. Cherry tomatoes3. Beefsteak tomatoes4. Plum tomatoes

There are also yellow tomatoes and even a variety called Black Cherry (which I’m growing for the first time this year) and is an extremely dark red – almost purple – according to the picture on the seed packet.

Then there are tomatoes that you grow as a cordon and others that are bush varieties. Confused? Don’t worry – all will become clear.

Let’s rule out one type straight away – yellow tomatoes. I’ve grown them and they DO look different in a salad, but that’s about it. I find they just don’t have as good a flavour as red varieties, so I don’t grow them any more.

Whichever type – or types – you grow, sow the seed in February. Take a 3″ pot, threequarters fill with a good seed compost, water it and then sow 9 or 10 seeds. Cover with a little more compost and place in a propagator.

When the young plants are about 2″ high you can transplant them into two and a quarter inch square pots which will make fifteen to a standard-sized seed tray.

Now I don’t grow 15 plants of any one variety – that would be far too many – I usually do 5 or 6 of each, but the seed tray makes for easy handling and moving about.

If you have more than one variety to a seed tray, you DO need to label very carefully, otherwise you will be up the proverbial creek without a paddle in very short order!

Grow the plants on under glass.

When the plants have reached about 6″ high you can plant out, but do remember that you must have no risk of frost. Tomato plant + frost = dead tomato plant.

Greenhouse varieties you can, of course, plant out into the border early on. You need 5′ – 6′ canes set 1′ into the ground and plant them 12″ – 15″ apart. As the plants grow you need to remove all sideshoots which start growing from the leaf axils very quickly. Many varieties also send up shoots from below ground and you need to pull these off also.

Tie the plants to the canes at 6″ – 10″ intervals.

Most gardeners recommend only letting four fruit trusses set, but I always let them go to five. I get more fruits from the same plant. When they reach the top of the cane, or when five trusses have set, then pinch out the growing tops.

When the first truss has set it is a good idea to water with a tomato fertiliser every couple of weeks or so.

Outdoor varieties are treated in exactly the same way, whether you are growing cherry tomatoes, standard-sized or beefsteak. I don’t grow beefsteak, as, again, I find them not very full of flavour.

Bush varieties are treated differently. I grow a type called Roma VF which is a plum tomato and is recommended only for cooking. However, I find that this variety has as good, if not a better flavour in salads than many of the usual salad types!

These types do not require you to remove the sideshoots – you just let them go. However, be aware that when the fruits start getting heavy the plants can flop over on to the ground and get very dirty when it rains. You can either place straw under the plants (as you would with strawberries), or tie them in loosely to a cane, or both.

I freeze ALL my surplus tomatoes, of whatever type. It is recommended that you dunk them in boiling water for a minute or two and then remove all the skins, but I find this far too tedious.

I simply rinse them in a bowl, dry off on kitchen paper and place them into a freezer bag – about 14oz to a bag which is the same weight as you buy in cans.

When the recipe calls for a can of tomatoes, you just use a bag from the freezer instead. Best thawed before you add them to your recipe. You will find that they produce a surplus of water when they thaw which I just squeeze out of the bag before use.

Now you can see how to grow tomatoes and how easy it really is, you’ll want to do so every season.

About the Author

Jack West is a garden writer who has been growing for over forty years. His main interests are growing food and flowers for the house. Very recently he has discovered an amazing new way of making garden compost which is far, far better for plants than traditional methods! This is truly groundbreaking (sorry) stuff! Get the red-hot info here:- http://kmeister.turnwill2.hop.clickbank.net/

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