Best Tomatoes - Growing Tips

Someone living close by took down their greenhouse. Nothing wrong with it, just decided they didn't want it. They buy in garden plants each year rather than grow them from seed. When I asked whether they missed their tomatoes they replied "No and anyway it seems a waste of time growing them. They mature when there is a glut of them in the shops". Unbelievable! For me the taste of my own tomatoes picked fresh as they can be from the vine and straight onto my plate cannot be bettered. Some supermarket tomatoes are better tasting lately due to consumer demand but they must be picked before fully ripe to get them through the supply chain.

I have grown my own tomatoes for 30 years now and my grandfather led the way for more years than that. My family would not forgive me if I did not provide a crop each year.

The variety I used to grow is Harbinger. An old variety with bags of flavour but not being an F1, the fruits ripen in various sizes - not that I find that a problem. It got a bit harder to source the seed, not being F1 I also did save my own seed, and for the past four or five years I have gone over to Shirley. Still a very nice tasting tomato.

Since writing this article, many questions have come in by email about growing tomatoes. Great, keep them coming. If you cannot find what you are looking for here try Growing Tomatoes | Questions and Answers | Hints and Tips where I am doing my best to get slowly through the postbag!

Making a Start

The first thing you have to do once you decide to grow tomatoes is to choose your variety. There is so much choice when it comes to tomato varieties. It very much depends upon your own preference. There are the cherry tomato types such as Gardeners Delight, renowned for their taste but some complain that you have to have several of these bight sized fruits on your plate to make a meal! At the other end of the scale are the beefsteaks Tomato Mamande which as the name suggests are somewhat larger. Experiment, maybe grow a few from each end of the scale and settle on your preferred varieties. The other thing to consider is the environment that they will be grown; some varieties are better sui ted to a green house than outside and vice versa. Read the seed packet or catalogue and that will give you a good indication.

How do you grow your own tomatoes?

Much has been written about how to grow tomatoes and those of us who are tomato growers have probably read most of it! There are not too many tomato plant diseases to worry about, aphids can be a nuisance but you should not encounter too many problems as long as you think about cleanliness, water and feed to keep your tomato plants fighting fit and keep down those pesky aphids, preferably not using chemicals to do so.

Buy Plants

You can go to the garden centre and buy small tomato plants. If you do not have a greenhouse this is not a bad way to go. If you buy them early you will still have to keep them in a frost free environment. Maybe you have an unheated greenhouse that you can line with plastic bubble or a large windowsill.

From Seed

This is the method I have always used.

Fill a 3 inch pot with compost, water and let drain.

Scatter seeds thinly across the surface of a good quality seed compost or general purpose compost.

Cover with a thin layer of vermiculite. You can sieve compost to cover but I find better results with most seeds if I use vermiculite which covers the seeds but lets through some light.

Don't forget to label! We all do it sometimes which is fine if this is all you are growing from seed.

Tomato seed is large enough to plant into individual modules which is a good alternative to the above method. Dampen the end of something like a stick to pick up the seed and place on the top of moistened compost. Cover with sieved compost or vermiculite.

Put on a windowsill or into an electric propagator. These are not so expensive to buy or run these days. You can use the middle ground solution which is a mini propagator that is unheated that sits on the windowsill or provides a bit of bottom heat by sitting on a radiator.

The seeds will germinate quite quickly. Once they are large enough to handle "prick them out" into individual 3 inch pots. If they seem to be stretched, "a bit leggy" plant a little deeper than they were when they came out of the seed pot. Hold them by the seed leaves and not the stem. Damage the stem and your careful work to date might be wasted.

Once in their new pots they may seem that they have come to a standstill. They are starting to push down their roots and the top growth will soon follow. When you spot roots starting to come through the drainage holes pot on into 5 inch pots.

When the first flowers have appeared it is time to plant into their final positions.

Planting in final position

Options:

1. Greenhouse soil or Garden Soil

Nothing wrong with planting out directly into your greenhouse or garden soil.

If this is your preferred method make sure that you change your soil every couple of years, preferably each year, otherwise you will build up disease in your soil and you can guess what the effect will be on your crop.

A good thing is to sink a plant pot or a piece of plastic pipe by the side of each plant. This way the water will get down to the roots which is where they need it and not just run off the surface.

If planting outside ensure that your plants are "hardened off". You have kept your youngsters warm and cosy for about four months and they will not thank you for a shock to their system. If you have a cold frame, leave the lid open during the day and closed at night to acclimatise the plants. If you do not have a cold frame, put your plants outside in the day and bring them in for the night.

Once planted outside, just keep an eye on the weather and if a cold night or frost is threatened cover your plants with a piece of horticultural fleece.

2. Pot and greenhouse soil

A very good method is to sink large pots into the green house soil. Cut off the bottom of the pot and fill with good compost, maybe from a grow bag. This way the plants are good, healthy and strong before they encounter anything that your greenhouse soil hits them with.

3. Pots or Grow bags

Plant into a grow bag or fill a large pot with the compost from a grow bag.

Be extra vigilant in regard to your watering if planting into a grow bag. It is easy for grow bags to dry out.

Support

Tomatoes need support, unless of course you are trying the hanging basket variety such as Tumbler.

Put a cane by each plant of train up strong and secured strings. Tie in regularly but remember not to tie too tightly. The stems will fatten out and you can easily "strangle" your tomato.

Remember, if you do your job well, your tomatoes are going to produce loads of fruits and they will weigh down heavily on the plant.

After four trusses (or branches of flowers) have formed, nip out top of the plant. By this stage you should have plenty of fruits forming that need to grow and ripen. Let the plant put all its energy into these potentially succulent fruits.

Feeding and watering

Keep the compost moist and feed weekly with tomato fertiliser.

Irregular watering or drying out of the soil or compost in very hot weather can result in the fruits splitting. The inside grows faster than the skin, splits and unless eaten quickly, disease very quickly enters the damaged area and the tomato disposed of.

Tomato feed is very high in potash. Be careful not to overfeed as this can lock up other elements in the soil / compost that the plants require.

Growing as cordons

You can grow bush varieties of tomatoes that do not need side shoots removing.

To grow as a cordon you need to regularly check your plants and remove and side shoots. What is a side shoot? Side shoots grow from where the leaf joins onto the main stem. Pinch out using your thumb and finger nail or a garden knife.

If you miss one and it grows quite long the knife method is preferable as you may find you tear down the skin of the main stem. What you can do with one of these large side shoots is to use them as a cutting. Do not use rooting hormone powder or solution; just dibble them into the side of a pot of good compost. You will be surprised how quickly they produce shoots and provide you with a bonus plant.

Pests

Look out for greenfly and white fly.

There was a time when we were encouraged to spray chemical onto our food to tackle these pests. Thankfully, not now.

You can try companion planting by planting Tagetes around the base of the plants or hang yellow sticky pads over the plants which attract the little devils and they cannot escape.

The Best Tip for Growing Tomatoes

The best tip I can give you for growing tomatoes is "Have a go".

You might not get it right the first time but quite frankly there is not that much that you can do wrong, they are quite accommodating. If you get it a bit wrong you will more than likely produce a crop but maybe not as good as if you had got it right.

Any fruits that have not ripened by the end of the season can be picked and put into a box alongside a banana which will speed up the ripening. If you have enough green tomatoes, why not use them to make a tomato relish? Green tomato chutney is delicious.

However, a word of warning, taste your own freshly picked tomatoes and you will probably become hooked just like me!

Growing Tomatoes
Growing tomatoes is so rewarding. Not only good to look at but delicious to eat picked fresh from the vine!

Growing Tomato | Questions and Answers | Hints and Tips
By far the largest postbag of questions received is about tomatoes. There are still many more questions in the bag and I will attempt to answer them here, it may take a while to get through them all!

Growing Cherry Tomatoes
Growing cherry tomatoes is a treat waiting to happen. One thing that can be said about cherry tomatoes is that there are several ways to grow them and most people with a little space can achieve results.

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