Tomato Plants from Seedshow to grow tomato plants from seeds

I MISS THOSE BIG, CRAZY GARDENS

My late husband was a city transplant. What he couldn’t “farm” on acres, he tried to plant in our backyard, my aunt’s larger country garden and at his father’s actual farm.

Every year, he would swear he’d plant only six tomato plants in our backyard, plus a “couple” hills of cucumbers, a row of bush green beans, about four pepper plants, maybe a watermelon plant or two and a few cantaloupe hills. Some radishes and a bit of lettuce (which he wouldn’t even eat), maybe a few sweet peas.

He always lived up to his promise – for at least a week or two. Then suddenly I’d go out and there was more freshly dug soil. “Hey, I just found these beet seeds. You know I love pickled beets.” And, “We really want more tomatoes because we just might want some green ones late in the season to fry or use for relish.”

Somehow, another row or two of green beans always showed up and usually more cucumbers and peppers.

Then my aunt called and said, “I was so glad Delbert wanted to plant a few things out here. We had more ground dug than I had plants for. And you know potatoes and onions do better in this sandy soil than they ever do in your clay.”

She didn’t mention the extra four rows of beets or the 12 tomato plants he’d gifted her with. She didn’t mention more green beans. And green beans not only need picked almost one by one by one, but they definitely need cut the same way.

That was an extremely good tomato year. Between the 12 tomato plants here and the 12 at my aunt’s – who absolutely refused to use any of ours since the 6 she’d planted were more than enough – I had a perpetually steaming canning kettle going.

During the worst day of steam, my father-in-law walked in with a bushel basket of ripe tomatoes. “I couldn’t give any more away,” he said apologetically. Then he went back to his truck to get another bushel basket full.

There Delbert had an entire farm to plant upon! Seems that we had a full two-dozen plants there. Plus a lot more potatoes and onions.

The potatoes and onions did keep in our basement or the cellars and basements of relatives, neighbors and friends.

But like I said, it was a very good tomato year. Once my friends started hiding when I showed up with a box or a sack, I canned more tomatoes, froze at least 30 pints, made tomato sauce, ketchup and relish (the peppers kicked in pretty good, too).

The cucumbers were a semi-decent crop that year. What I didn’t pickle were gift able. So long as I called ahead and said I was not bringing tomatoes.

The beets were a harder problem. We all loved pickled beets and canned beets, but one medium size beet makes a lot to preserve. And only one of my friends even ate beets. Having been totaled out on tomatoes, she specified, “No more than four.”

Today, my garden truly is small. I plant four to five tomato plants of various varieties; some just for snacking. I plant a very short row of cucumber plants. Maybe four pepper plants, also of various varieties. A few zucchini, a few yellow squash. Pots of herbs.

During a good year I may still have to freeze a few tomatoes, but I can give most extras to neighbors and friends without anyone running for cover. Yet…it was such fun, too, with my garden “farmer.”

Yes, I miss those wild and wacky huge gardening days.

Product Description
Our exclusive collection. Perfect mix for the home garden, offered in a unique collection for value and variety. The Family Garden Seed Collection includes seeds for eight popular vegetables, plus marigolds and nasturtiums. Using biodynamic principles, complimentary plants enhance crop health and yield, while nasturtiums and marigolds act as natural pest deterrents. Approximate seed quantities: 500 Romaine lettuce, 300 Little Finger Carrot, 30 Cucumber, 100 Radish B… More >>

Family Garden Seed Collection: Lettuce, Carrots, Snow Peas, Tomatoes, Radishes, Cucumbers, Leeks, Green Pepper, Marigolds & Nasturtiums

Americans are facing their worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than 60 million of us are 30 or more pounds overweight. Where do these two conditions converge? In a home garden.

During World War II, when food was rationed, Americans planted Victory Gardens to get the fresh produce they needed. Now, the need to save money coupled with the need to eat healthier, has many people getting out their shovels and hoes and going to work.

*Deciding What to Plant*

There are three questions to be considered in deciding what to plant:

- What do you eat?

- What will grow in your climate?

- How much space do you have?

Some plants will do well in containers, others will not. If you’re unsure about what will grow in your area or in the space you have available, consult your local plant nursery for region-specific advice.

*Start with Tomatoes and Branch Out*

Almost every beginning gardener starts with a few tomato plants because they will do equally well in containers or in a small patch of dirt. Tomatoes are also versatile and can be used for their juice, as an ingredient in sauces and salsas, or eaten fresh. Tomato plants do, however, tend to get huge quickly. Plant them in their own large pots and use cages to keep the bushes contained.

Fact: One well-tended tomato plant can easily yield 100 lbs. of tomatoes. Estimating on the low side, tomatoes in the store run about $1 a pound; $2 if they are certified organic.

Pepper plants are a good second choice because they can be used to spice up other dishes and work well with a variety of herbs. (Like tomato plants, they do well in containers by themselves, can grow quite large, and will generally require a cage.) Lettuce is also a good choice because its the basis for fresh, healthy salads. (A variety of herbs can easily be incorporated into a container garden or the “left over” spaces of a regular garden.)

*If You Have Land Available*

If you’re lucky enough to have a spot of yard that will work for a home garden, consider augmenting the space with terraced beds and adjacent planters. Not only will this make your garden more visually appealing, it will also make it more productive and allow you to cultivate a wider variety of plants.

A good rule of thumb is to pick a site that gets good sun, but drains well. Different plants require different amounts of sun, so you will need to plan accordingly (probably in consultation with your local plant nursery or a more experienced gardener.) Herbs, for instance, generally need six to eight hours of sun a day.

Although herbs like anise, coriander, fennel, dill, chives, oregano, tarragon, and sage will all serve you well in the kitchen, at least plant rosemary. It takes almost no water, smells wonderful, and grows rapidly. The leaves are excellent for cooking and can also be used as an inexpensive potpourri.

*The Benefits of Your Project*

By starting a home garden, especially if you have children, you’ve provided the family with a low cost project that gets you outdoors and working together. (Exercise is just as important to trimming off the pounds as eating right.) Once the garden begins to yield produce, you’ll also see a positive effect on your tight budget.

*Natural Pest Control*

On a final note, by growing your own produce you can avoid ingesting many of the pesticides and chemicals that find their way into commercial produce. There are many ways to accomplish natural pest control, from planting certain plants close to one another to releasing lady bugs in your garden. You can find more information on Natural Garden Pest Control here.

You’ve been planting your vegetable garden in the very same spot in the very same order year after year. You’ve got rows neatly labeled for tomato, lettuce, carrot, watermelon and peas in precisely that order without variance. At the beginning it seemed great, neat, clean and predictable. At least it was. Every year after the first few seasons, however, the quality and quantity of the vegetables seemed to go down, the plants are looking sickly now and they’ve been inundated with insects. What the heck is going on? You didn’t rotate your crops, that’s what.

Rotate crops in a small garden? Isn’t crop rotation for big commercial growers so they don’t end up with another Dust-bowl as they had back in the days of the Great Depression? So, why should you rotate crops in a tiny, little, insignificant, backyard vegetable garden? Merely because the same principles apply just on a smaller scale.

Let’s take that example of the Dust-bowl and see how it happened. Farmers were using the soil, abusing it actually and over-planting. They never allowed the soil to rest to replenish itself before setting another crop. This stole all nutrients and left just dust. It was no longer rich, vibrant soil alive with micro-organisms, organic matter and lovely, wiggly, under-appreciated worms that do so much for the soil. It was literally dust, a lifeless, mass of dirt with nothing to hold it together. Not even weeds could grow on it in order to keep it from blowing away in the wind. Thus, we had the dreaded dust-bowl.

Now, with much research done to understand where those by-gone farmers went wrong, we are no longer ignorant of the fact that you only get from the soil what you put back into it. This means if you only take from the soil and never replenished it you will be lucky to be able to grow crabgrass.

This is where composting is so vital for the overall health of your garden. A small pile of spent vegetation, kitchen scrapes, grass clipping and leaves from all those deciduous trees decompose into something rich, nutritious and wonderful for you to use on your garden. This replenishes the soil, re-activates those micro-organisms and brings back the wiggly worms we no long take for granted.

So, if all you need is compost then what’s with the crop rotation? How can putting tomatoes where the lettuce was and the peas where the carrots were do anything? Aren’t you still stealing nutrients from the soil? Aren’t you still over-planting? And if so, isn’t compost going to fix it anyway? Yes and no.

You forget or perhaps you are unaware that crop rotation isn’t just to give the soil a rest. Crop rotation also helps eliminate diseases in the soil and hopefully confuses insects so there isn’t a mass invasion to take out your whole crop of cabbage. If you keep planting the tomato in the same place insects will get used to seeing it there, they will tell their friends and woe-be-you! You will not have a healthy tomato plant ever again. Fungal diseases, just like insects, linger in the soil and attack the same place year after year so if you tend to switch things up a bit it will confuse them, upset the status quo and then you may be able to catch those varmints before they latch on permanently causing irreparable damage.

So, knowing all this, next time spring planting time comes around do yourself, your veggies and your soil a favor and mix it up a bit. Put the corn where the peas grew last year, put the tomato where the melons were and switch up the lettuce and broccoli. You’ll be glad you did.

The English word tomato comes from the Spanish tomati. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family and was thought to be poisonous (the leaves are!).

Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? At one point it was considered a fruit to avoid taxation, but in the late 1800′s the Supreme Court ruled it was a vegetable and could be taxed accordingly.

The U.S. passed the 1883 Tariff Act that required a 10% tax on imported vegetables. This law was challenged on the grounds that the tomato was in fact a fruit, not a vegetable.

In Nix vs Hedden, 149 U.S. 304, Justice Gray wrote, “Botanically speaking, tomatoes are fruits of a vine, just as cucumbers, squash, beans, and peas. But in common language .. all these vegetables, which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with or after soup, fish or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not, like fruit generally, as dessert.”

The tomato has a colorful history in that it originated in the Americas, traveled to Europe and then returned to the Americas to produce the tomato we have today. Lycopersicon Esculentum has become a staple in many cultures.

Today eight species of the tomatoes are still found in Peru which leads to what a Russian scientist, Vavilov; felt that to find the center of a crop species you must locate area where it has its greatest diversity.

The range of wild tomato relatives goes from the tip of Chili to Ecuador and inland almost 200 miles. The fruits of the wild tomato species are small. They do not tolerate frost. All members of the tomato family are hermaphroditic, while the cultivated tomato is self fertile and in-compatible with other members of this genus.

The tomato was called “xitomatl” by the Aztecs, while Central America tribes called it “Tomati”.

Ancient Peruvian cultures fail to mention anything like a tomato as being an important part of their diet. The Aztec culture mentions dishes made of peppers, salt, and tomatoes.

The cerasiforme variety continues to grow wild in Central America producing small, cherry size fruit on a vine.

Matthiolus wrote in 1544 describing tomatoes or “pomid’oro (golden apple)” and they were eaten with oil, salt and pepper. This is supporting evidence that the first European tomatoes were of a yellow variety.

The early Spanish name for the tomato was pome dei Moro (Moor’s

Product Description
Our exclusive collection. Perfect mix for the home garden, offered in a unique collection for value and variety. The Family Garden Seed Collection includes seeds for eight popular vegetables, plus marigolds and nasturtiums. Using biodynamic principles, complimentary plants enhance crop health and yield, while nasturtiums and marigolds act as natural pest deterrents. Approximate seed quantities: 500 Romaine lettuce, 300 Little Finger Carrot, 30 Cucumber, 100 Radish B… More >>

Family Garden Seed Collection: Lettuce, Carrots, Golden Wax Beans, Tomato, Radishes, Cucumbers, Leeks, Green Pepper, Marigolds & Nasturtium

Product Description
Our exclusive collection. Perfect mix for the home garden, offered in a unique collection for value and variety. The Family Garden Seed Collection includes seeds for eight popular vegetables, plus marigolds and nasturtiums. Using biodynamic principles, complimentary plants enhance crop health and yield, while nasturtiums and marigolds act as natural pest deterrents. Approximate seed quantities: 500 Romaine lettuce, 300 Little Finger Carrot, 30 Cucumber, 100 Radish B… More >>

Family Garden Seed Collection: Lettuce, Carrots, Golden Wax Beans, Red Cabbage, Radishes, Cucumbers, Leeks, Basil, Marigolds & Clover

Product Description
Our exclusive collection. Perfect mix for the home garden, offered in a unique collection for value and variety. The Family Garden Seed Collection includes seeds for eight popular vegetables, plus marigolds and nasturtiums. Using biodynamic principles, complimentary plants enhance crop health and yield, while nasturtiums and marigolds act as natural pest deterrents. Approximate seed quantities: 500 Romaine lettuce, 300 Little Finger Carrot, 30 Cucumber, 100 Radish B… More >>

Family Garden Seed Collection: Lettuce, Carrots, Golden Wax Beans, Peppers, Radishes, Cucumbers, Leeks, Basil, Marigolds & Clover

I was married to a garden, plant loving, land-scraping, grass-cutting freak.

Yes, it is true. He was a freak, but I loved him and he loved plants. We were young and renting a ranch style home five miles out of the city. It was farm country and he loved it, I hated it. It smelled like cows because they were in our backyard.

“I am going to plant a garden in the empty field next to us,” He told me one early spring day.

He was so excited the owner had given him permission to have a huge garden and had even plowed up the dirt for him. Now I love fresh vegetables and I did not mind a bit of hard work to help. We went shopping for plants and some seeds.

My husband had taken courses in high school in the south so he had the knowledge to take good care of this garden and these plants. There were tomato plants, peppers, green beans, yellow bean, yellow peppers, and even sweet corn. We had cauliflower and broccoli, Brussels sprouts and he was even trying lettuce. He had everything but the kitchen sink.

That was the biggest problem. We worked for days planting the plants and seeds. For weeks, we watch anxiously as the little plants and seeds grew into beautiful small vegetables. Then tragedy struck, we had a drought. No rain came for days and the sun was brutal. The field was too far from our home to run a hose and we were at a loss as to what to do.

“I’m going to lose my garden if I don’t do something real soon.” He was just beside himself with worry.

My husband came up with a plan. Everyday he took, by hand, five-gallon buckets of water from our home and watered each plant. He saved his garden.

We lost the lettuce, and Brussels sprouts but he saved most everything else by his perseverance and back breaking work. Yes, my husband was a freak but he loved his garden plants and took care of them as if they were his children.

Growing your own vegetables can be a very delicious experience, hobby, or necessity. There are many common types of vegetable gardens to choose from. Some of the more common vegetables are cucumbers, squash, potatoes, corn, green beans, onions, lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and peppers. What you can grow depends on where you live and what you like. Keep in mind though that there are many charities that will gladly take fresh veggie donations so planting an extra row of goodies could help a hungry family.

The most common vegetable of all is the tomato although some people consider it to be a fruit. Tomatoes go well with many dishes, are great fried green, and make a wonderful addition to any vegetable garden. If you don’t know how to grow tomatoes, don’t let that stop you. Tomatoes are actually one of the simplest vegetables to grow and require little upkeep. You just need to follow basic gardening techniques as you would with any other vegetable.

If you are growing your vegetables from seed, read the package and follow the directions. For the novice gardener, a great option is starting a kitchen garden. All you need is a little potting soil and some pots. Plant the seeds deep enough in the soil that the roots can grow firmly. When the seeds have turned into plants you can transform them outdoors.

Before starting the vegetable gardening experience outdoors, think about what you want to grow and where you will grow it. Find a place that will get plenty of sun so that your vegetables will get the needed six hours or more of sunlight a day. Find the most effective way to plant your veggies so that they will grow to their full potential.

There are a few vegetable gardening tips that you should follow. Your dirt is important. Make sure that your soil is well tilled, fertile, and free of rocks, roots or other items that can hinder the growth of your vegetable garden. Once you have tilled your land, let it sit for a while and then you can set off your rows.

Because your garden will need a lot of water for your plants grow, you need to make sure that it drains well. Vegetables can and will drown or rot in soggy soil. Water your vegetables as needed when the sun goes down if rain is not plentiful in your area. Avoid over-watering your vegetables to prevent damage to them.

When planting vegetables it is important to leave extra space between the rows so that you can walk through comfortably and to allow your vegetable plants plenty of room to grow and