17 January 2010 | BrianRS
To get you started on tomato growing you can download this free eBook ‘A Rough Guide to Tomato Growing’ which provides the basic steps required to start growing tomatoes.
All you need to do is to click on the eBook image and you will open a PDF file, save a copy to your computer if it doesn’t automatically download it for you.
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That way every time a new post is published you will be the first to get the update and you will make sure you don’t miss any of the new information being posted.
Subscribing isn’t mandatory, it is up to you and if you decide you prefer not to then that is fine. You are also free to share the eBook in any way you like as long as the content is not changed.
14 January 2010 | BrianRS
There really isn’t a lot to do in the garden in January for a tomato garden. You can select some tomato seed and if you have a heated greenhouse you can start to sow your tomatoes during January. But for most people it will be better to wait until early March when the weather warms. Ideally, if you haven’t got a heated greenhouse, you should be looking to have your plants available and ready for planting out around early April once the risk of frost has subsided. You would normally expect the tomato plants to be ready from seed after about 4 – 6 weeks, this is type dependent but usually you can get a better idea from the packet.
Meanwhile you could just spend some time researching and reading up on the different tomato plant varieties and selecting the ones best suited to your needs, irrespective of whether you have decided to grow from seed or purchase the plants ready to go.
There are always some general maintenance jobs you can do in preparation for the growing season. Greenhouses in particular generally need a bit of sorting out.
Wash down the glass to get rid of any accumulated grime, clear out the gutters and replace any damaged panes of glass if required. This is also a good time to sort out your water butts if you have them, just empty them out and give them a good clean inside, use a dilute solution of disinfectant and if you are feeling industrious its always a good idea to give the inside of your greenhouse a wipe down with disinfectant as well to ensure you get rid of any contaminants.
If you are going to be planting outside and have some clear areas, these can be dug over in preparation and a good mix of compost and well rotted manure can be dug in to put some richness back into the soil. A good tip is to cover the ground with plastic sheeting if you find that the soil is too wet to dig, once protected from the rain it will soon dry out enough for rough digging.
Gardening isn’t all about tomatoes and at this time of year there are other gardening jobs in January that need to be done, a bit of pruning or general maintenance of your gardening equipment. Just take some time to have a look around and you will find plenty of little jobs to keep you occupied.
That said there will be some days when it is better just to put a log on the fire, sit with your feet up and watch a bit of TV. Then before long the weather will warm the sun will shine and you will be off on another year of cultivating your own crops.
8 January 2010 | BrianRS
There are 2 choices to make when deciding on where and how you are going to plant your tomatoes with respect to soil preparation.
- Planting directly in the soil
- Planting in a pre-prepared container
Planting Tomatoes Directly in the Soil
For the best results consider preparing the soil by digging a trench about 18″ deep and long enough to accommodate your tomato plants. The plants will normally require to be spaced about 18″ apart.
To help with water retention you can place a thin layer of a suitable mulch in the bottom of the trench, something like a layer of newspaper would be a suitable choice. Then fill the trench with a mixture of nitrogen rich compost and top soil. The all purpose compost should be well rotted and matured to ensure an adequate supply of nitrogen to the plants.
It is also a good idea to warm the soil slightly for tomato growing, this can be achieved by placing a dark layer over the ground that absorbs the heat from the sun and transfers it into the ground. Once the soil has warmed a little the plants can be put in; typically in the UK this would be in the early part of April, assuming there is no further risk of frost.
Once the plants are in, many people like to add a further layer of mulch over the top of the soil. There are advantages for doing this, but also disadvantages. The advantages are, that depending on the mulch selected, not only will the mulch prevent proliferation of weeds but can also supplement the plant feed if a nitrogen rich mulch is selected.
A disadvantage is that certain mulch types can keep the soil from being warmed, so look for a suitable compromise. You can visit Tomato Mulches for more detailed information.
Planting Tomatoes in Containers
The term containers has been used loosely here, because it refers to both pots and growbags. If you use a plant pot then ideally it will be around 12″ in diameter. Growbags tend to come in 35 or 40 liter sizes and the recommendation is that you would put 2 to 3 plants per growbag ideally. Visit Tomato Containers for a range of options.
Before using a plant pot you should clean the inside with a dilute solution of disinfectant, Jeyes fluid would be a good choice. Then fill the pots with a good quality, well mature, nitrogen rich compost to about an inch from the rim of the pot. Once the plant is established, you may find that you need to top up the compost a little as time goes on.
The main source of contaminants to a tomato plant is from the soil it is planted in, particularly after several seasons. That is why using containers is a good option and also why digging a trench and then renewing the soil in a trench can save you quite a lot of grief. You could probably get by with renewing the trench perhaps every 2 or 3 seasons, unless of course you have experienced any problems.
6 January 2010 | BrianRS
Tomato seeds can be sown from January onwards but need temperatures of around 16 to 18 degrees C, so if you are in the UK you will need a heated greenhouse for the early part of the year. If you don’t have a heated greenhouse wait until around March time before sowing to ensure you get healthy plants.
You should transplant into small pots once the tomato plants are large enough to handle and then finally plant out into large pots of around 12″ diameter, growbags or in soil about 18″ apart for final planting.
You should also note that the hybrid F1 plants are a little more difficult to grow from seeds, so if you prefer to err on the side of caution select an alternative variety for an easier time.
If you like to buy your tomatoes in plant form rather than as tomato seeds, you will find a range of Tomato Plants suitable for the UK climate using this link.
Includes Alicante, Apero, Beefeater and Cherry Belle tomato plants plus many more.
You should be looking to get these planted out around the beginning of April having ensured that there is no risk of a further frost. Frost will see off the hardiest tomato plant over night so make sure you do not risk losing your plants unnecessarily by keeping them sheltered until the weather forecast is favorable. Better a little late than not at all.
22 December 2009 | BrianRS
Tomatoes rely heavily on regular and frequent watering to produce healthy well developed fruit. The recommendation is that you should water 2 or 3 times a day to ensure that you maintain a moist but not saturated soil condition. It really is better to water tomato plants regularly and often rather than trying to provide the whole days watering in one visit or missing the odd day completely.
Many of the problems people encounter with their tomato crops arise from irregular watering and or extremes of temperature. These include blossom end rot, split skins, flower shedding and ripening problems but there are more.
Many people these days can lead very hectic lifestyles and are constantly under time pressure to get everything done, so taking care of the garden can sometimes drop down the list of priorities. For those people I would say that considering an automatic garden watering system of some sort is a good way of making sure that you address at least one of the tomato care factors that is very important for ensuring a full and healthy crop of tomatoes.
There are a number of options available that vary in both price and efficiency to suit your budget and the level of assistance you need. These can range from a simple roll mat that sits under your plant pots to a full blown Micro Water Irrigation System.
Two of my favorites are the ‘Big Drippa Watering System’ and the simple water spike which you just fill and leave, topping up periodically as and when you get the chance, just make sure they don’t run dry. You can purchase the water spikes ready made as below or you can adapt your own version, maybe from an old lemonade bottle which you puncture to allow the water to leak out into the surrounding soil. There are obvious benefits to using something designed for the job, but as long as you take a little care there is no reason why you cannot get your own self fashioned version to work equally as well.
I have included a couple of the better automated systems in the options available, one that runs off a large storage tank for longer periods of watering and the other that runs off your tap for a fully automated system that really does take the pain out of watering if you do have one of those very busy lifestyles.
A word of warning before we finish this post, there are other factors to consider when growing tomatoes, such as pest control, pruning etc. If you do decide on a fully automatic system don’t forget that you will still need to check your plants for other problems so that you can nip them in the bud, so to speak. Sorry about the pun.
19 August 2009 | BrianRS
Around the end of the growing season for your region with the colder nights coming in and perhaps a possibility of frost on the horizon, you need to start thinking about how to ripen tomatoes that are still green before you loose them completely.
One of the ways of ensuring that your tomatoes ripen is to continuously harvest your tomatoes as they become ready for picking, this releases energy to the tomatoes that are not quite ready and will encourage them to ripen.
Another general suggestion is that if you note that your night time temperatures are dropping below 70F then there is little to no chance of any new blossoms becoming fruit, so pinch these out and direct the energy they would otherwise have taken to your fruit that still needs to ripen.
Another handy way of turning tomatoes that are in a greenhouse is to hang a bunch of bananas in the greenhouse with the tomatoes, the ripening bananas will give out ethylene gas, which is the gas that causes fruit to ripen and bananas give it out in abundance, even after they have been picked. Why this works in a greenhouse is because its an enclosed environment which allows the gas to be effective.
Removing large fruit that is still green will give the smaller fruit more of a chance of getting the energy needed to ripen and if you select them correctly you may be able to place the removed tomatoes somewhere dark and dry to ripen them off, just check them every few days to make sure there is nothing going wrong or to see if they are ready to use.
If all else fails you can ripen tomatoes indoors but you have to get them off the vine before a heavy frost gets them, they can be protected up to a point by covering for light frosts but this is a little risky.
One method of ripening indoors is to take each tomato and wrap it in newspaper, place the wrapped tomatoes in a cardboard box up to 2 layers deep, any more and the tomatoes on the bottom layer will tend to get bruised and damaged as they ripen so stick to the 2 layer rule to be safe.
You can place a banana on the top to aid ripening if you want to, the tomatoes will produce their own ethylene gas as they ripen but a banana will add additional quantities of gas which is actually a ripening hormone. Place the box in a dark dry place, avoid high humidity as this will tend to cause rotting of the fruit and check periodically for progress. Make sure any fruit that is showing signs of a problem is removed and disposed of.
Temperature plays a part in the ripening process and the minimum temperature should be 55F for reasonable results, any lower and you will have tasteless, bland fruit. The ideal is between 65F to 70F for a speedy ripening period (2 to 3 weeks) and tasty fruit.
Things that prevent tomatoes ripening: -
- insufficient sun light
- extreme temperatures cold or hot
- if the tomato is large in size, just needs more time
- erratic watering schedule, tomatoes like consistently damp soil that is neither dried out or saturated, although you can back off on the watering a little as they start to ripen
- not picking off the ripe fruit
- allowing too many blossoms especially late in the season
- over fertilizing
6 August 2009 | BrianRS
A very common tomato pest is the aphid, on their own these little beasties look fairly innocuous and harmless, unfortunately they are not stone kickers and when they arrive, seemingly out of thin air, they arrive by the droves.There are also hundreds of different species of aphids.
There are loads of different ways to treat aphids and if applied at the right time they will work pretty effectively. A small but significant problem however is their ability to multiply, without having to mate and their persistence.
They see out the winter as eggs which hatch in the spring to turn into the winged females that go looking for nice juicy sap filled plants where they can lay their eggs. The eggs once laid only take about a week to hatch and the resulting aphids, which have a piercing bite will start to feed off the plant and produce young of their own and so the cycle begins.
Each aphid can produce up to 100 offspring so its not hard to imagine that within a very short time frame you could be faced with dealing with several thousands of these little creatures. When the food supply starts to get exhausted the young then start to appear with wings ready to fly off looking for fresh plants and food but by that time it is likely that their relentless feeding on the sap of your tomato plant will have killed off the plant and any chance of tomato fruit.
The symptoms – leaves start to curl up an turn brown, there will be secretions of honeydew which will tend to foster fungus which often looks sooty and black in colour.
Prevention – use Aphid Traps
, they should be placed in position in your garden early in the spring ready for the aphids winter eggs hatching and probably before you have actually planted tomatoes. Aphids are more resilient to the cold than tomatoes are and will happily feed off any plant that will provide sap while they are waiting for the nice tasty tomato plants to arrive.
Treatment – aphids can be killed using a similar method to the ones used for whitefly, Savona is a safe alternative to chemical insecticides and which I have provided a link to above or you can use a mix of 1 part insecticidal soap with 4 parts of water applied using a spray gun, this will generally see them off.
Like whitefly they hide on the underside of leaves so make sure you lift the leaves up and give the underside a good soaking. They also gather near the base of the plant so don’t forget to get right down to spray around the base. The soap mix unfortunately doesn’t last too long so will have to be re-applied quite regularly until you are sure they are completely eradicated.
If the Savona or the soap solution doesn’t work you could try something a little more drastic, use either a deltamethrin dust or permethrin dust.
19 July 2009 | BrianRS
This is a short video that discusses which are the best tomatoes to grow in your garden and giving the reasons why, some of the suggestions include cherry tomatoes (sweet one hundred), patio type tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes like Brandywine or Cherokee Purple.
For best flavor choose Heirloom they don’t travel well but it shouldn’t be too far from your garden to your table so that doesn’t really matter and don’t worry what they look like if you are after flavour.
18 July 2009 | BrianRS
Tomato blossom end rot is a common tomato disease where the lower half or blossom end becomes brown and dry.
There are a number of potential causes for this including the wrong soil type, too much nitrogen and extremes of either wet or dry weather.
Tomatoes don’t really like limey or sandy soil so if the ground you are using has this constituency you are either going to have to use containers or be extra vigilant when preparing the soil. A good idea for the latter is to dig a trench, line the bottom with newspaper and then fill it back in with a good well rotted compost and soil mix, potentially getting soil from another source if yours really is very sandy or full of lime.
If you think that perhaps you have overfed the plants with nitrogen then just stop feeding for a while and if you have put down a high nitrogen mulch, like coffee grounds, you can scrape it back off and try to eradicate the source.
A scenario called variable soil moisture has also been known to cause this condition, which is why it is a good idea to perform consistent and regular watering of the plants to establish a situation where the soil is neither saturated nor ever drys out.
With a little extra attention to your preparation and ongoing care it is relatively easy to avoid blossom end rot.
18 July 2009 | BrianRS
Tomato Plant Care
By Michael Russell
The tomato is one of the most popular plants kept in home gardens. They are easy to grow and provide food for your family. Tomatoes do need to be cared for to grow though.
The tomato is actually a fruit even though most people think of it as a vegetable. At one time, people thought it was poisonous to eat and they were only grown for decoration. They were referred to as “love apples” then. There are literally hundreds of varieties to choose from for your home garden and all of them have different size, color, shape, season of maturity, disease resistance and taste. Choose a variety that you will enjoy having!
Tomatoes can be either determinate or indeterminate. Determinate means that they develop a flower cluster at the terminal growing point. The plant will stop growing at this height. Indeterminate plants do not form this flower cluster and will continue to grow taller indefinitely. Indeterminate tomatoes also produce very flavorful fruit, but are usually late to mature. Most of the older varieties of tomatoes are indeterminate. Determinate vines are easier to control but they also have ripe fruit for a shorter time period than indeterminate plants.
Tomatoes do not tolerate freezing temperatures, so it is best to plant them once the weather is warm. For adequate harvest room, you will need to space your plants apart. The spacing for each variety is different, however. For dwarf plants, they will need to be twelve inches apart in the row. Staked plants will need to be 15 to 24 inches apart. Some indeterminate varieties even need four feet of space between them in the rows and five to six feet in between rows.
When you plant your tomato plants, you should fertilize them right away. You can also cultivate shallowly or hoe to keep the weeds down without doing damage to the roots. Mulching is highly recommended, especially if you want to have your plant for the full season harvest. Organic materials or black plastic is okay to use for mulching. However, don’t put down organic materials until the soil has warmed up all the way. If you put it down too early, the plant will not grow very well.
You will need to water your tomato plants regularly and thoroughly. If you are keeping your plants in containers they may need to be watered every day or even more. You will also need to feed your plants with a liquid tomato fertilizer once every two to three weeks until the end of August. The fertilizer should be high in potash. Once September arrives, just feed it with a regular fertilizer that is high in nitrogen. Weed around the plants as much as you can to prevent bugs and diseases from getting to your tomatoes. As the plant grows, you will also need to use stakes to support it. Tie the main stem to the stakes.
If you give this plant the care it needs, you will be rewarded with delicious tomatoes. Tomatoes are the best after they have just ripened so for the best taste eat them as soon as they are ripe. This is a great plant to keep at your home!
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Gardening
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Russell
http://EzineArticles.com/?Tomato-Plant-Care&id=209539
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