Tomato Plants from Seedshow to grow tomato plants from seeds

I love a fresh tomato any time of the year. Don’t you? I love my tomatoes so much, that when I am eating others that were store bought and they are not in season (which is like every month of the year at the store) I pick them off and set the aside. Why eat cardboard?

My Gardening approach is simple, for I don’t have a lot of time and I am sure that you don’t have a lot of time either. If I had the time to go out and weed every day, water my plants, talk to them and do everything everyone tells me that I should be doing for them, I probably would. Here are the simple truths to what I am about when it comes to me and my green thumb. I like it easy and productive.

At first, I always used plastic for ground cover. Not the plastic that is sold at the stores, that is as bad as poison. The garden soil needs to be able to breathe. So I use the plastic that comes from the lumber store that covers the wood. This plastic is woven and makes it so that the ground can breathe and at the same time eliminate the weeds. Black side up, white side down. I played white vs black one year…black is best for the garden.

As for fertilizers, I keep it simple. I don’t use much of anything other than one simple rule. What I use this year, I won’t use next year. One year I will do all leaves and till it into the ground. The next I will use manure. The next I will find some compost. The next I start over with leaves. Or if I am feeling really “vigorous”, I proclaim it the year of the Jubilee as found in the Bible and do nothing for the ground, for it is the year of rest.

I have a few variety that I buy as seedlings over and over. When buying, I buy the ones that look like plastic. Meaning the darkest shade of green. I also pick the tallest plant and it can have its first flowers. I don’t buy plants that come in larger pots that are super big… that’s just a waste of money. All my plants get at least 5 feet tall eventually, some have even grown to be 9 feet.

“Is that one suppose to be that tall?”

“Sure…”

So we have bought which ever type you prefer and are ready to shove them into the ground. Wait!, not so fast, the next part is the most important. There are certain plants that have the ability to grow roots up its entire stem. Tomato is one of those beauties. Look at the seedling and find, counting from the top, the top four branches. After identifying them, pinch off all the remaining branches. Dig your hole as deep as the plant is, loosening up the dirt, and fill the hole

Tomato plant can be grown anywhere in the world and is thus well known as the plant in every home garden. It has been estimated that almost 90 percent of the vegetable gardeners have this crop in their garden. This is because the tomato plant requires very little attention from the gardener during the time of growth. The important elements needed for perfect growth is enough sunlight, a little patience and adequate water.

Tomato is considered to be a summer crop. Select the tomato variety from the wide variety which is easily available. Always check with your neighbors, nursery professionals and other online sources to find the most dependable and disease resistant variety of tomatoes.

The soil is to be prepared well before starting off with the tomato growing process. It should be mixed well with compost and well rotten manure if you are using sandy soil. Super phosphates are recognized to be the best nourishment for appropriate growth. Another balanced fertilizer would be 6:3:2 which should be mixed well with the soil before the process. It is considered as the perfect alternative in case of any short supply of manure.

It is highly advisable to sow the seeds as early as possible because tomatoes take more than four months to start with the bearing process. In places where winters are cold, make sure to sow the seed in seed boxes which are sheltered during the later winter season. In frost-free place, start out with the sowing process during the late autumn or summer season. Within six weeks, the seedlings attain the height of 15centimeters and can be easily transplanted before the passing of frost. Always be very particular in the transplantation process to choose only the strongest seedlings. They should be planted during the coolest climate in the afternoon. Sprinkler can be used and spraying should be done early in the morning much the sun rises up. It is highly recommended to dust the crops with fungicides so as to prevent the formation of any kind of diseases. Appropriate fertilizers should be used to stimulate the growth of the plants. Day long sun is what the tomato plant requires for healthy growth and perfect yield. For vertical growth, always ensure to plant the crops in cages or stakes.

The fruits shall be hand picked when the color changes to red. It can be then ripened by placing on any sunny windowsill so as to prevent them from being eaten by any bird or rotting on the vine. The taste of these fruits are enhanced if they are ripened in the vine, therefore a perfect balance is to be maintained between the taste as well as the ripening process.

So you love that red vegetable that is actually a fruit, do you? When you spy a plump, glistening specimen it just calls you to slice it and have a BLT. I know how it is! I grow tomato plants during the summer so I can munch on BLT’s every weekend. So here are some tips for making sure your tomato plants are nice and productive.

*Get them in the ground early. If you do box gardening, this is even easier, as you can control the environment around and the soil in the box easier. Basically, you want to get your tomatoes planted when you can work the soil and you are pretty sure maybe only one more frost is on its way. Also, plant starts, not seeds. Waiting for those seeds to germinate takes longer and the fruitful season will be shorter.

The thing is, the sooner you get tomato plants in the ground, the sooner you will get fruit! If you can have fruit ripening early on in the growing season, you can have fruit coming for a longer period of time. Now on to the next tip!

*Fertilize the soil. When you are getting your spaces ready for your tomato plants, be sure to fertilize that soil well, and naturally. These days my family has a neat composting system, but back in our less organized days I found that steer manure mixed into the top four to six inches of soil would help yield tons of tomatoes. So I say again, get that soil fertilized naturally and then plant your tomatoes. One important thing here is to not put too much steer manure in there. Really you only need about two inches of the stuff spread over the ground, then you mix it in. If you use too much, it might burn the roots of your plants.

*Fertilize again. You want to fertilize at least one more time during the growing season. Keeping your soil naturally full of excellent nutrients will keep your tomato plants healthy and abundant. During the season, I like to use some water soluble fertilizer to feed my plants, and this stuff is not hard to find.

*Take care in where you plant. If you plant your tomato plants in the same soil you planted the year before, they will usually be sickly and not yield as much. This is because tomato plant roots leave a fungus in the ground that does not disappear for at least a year. So maybe have two or three spots that you can rotate your tomato plants to each year.

*Harvest on time and regularly. It is true of jalapeno plants, it is true of bell pepper plants and pea plants as well. If you harvest when things are ripe and take care to not damage the plant when you do so, more fruit will come.

*Carefully and wisely prune. Don’t go into this task blindly. Be sure to get advice from your extension office and perhaps from a local nursery. If you prune badly, you will actually reduce the number of tomatoes that you get. The truth is, I have never bothered with this, because the above tips always have yielded enough tomatoes for my family to can about 20 quarts of tomatoes each year.

So good luck and enjoy your BLT’s!

So far in my gardening career I’ve never had a Tomato plant that hasn’t produced a bounty of Tomatoes. Some I grew from seed and some I bought at a local garden center. This is the first clue to a productive Tomato plant, i.e. so long as it is living, healthy and young it can generally be made to produce. What I do for my Tomatoes is illustrated as follows:

- Sunlight: Tomato plants love sun, the more the better. When my Squash plants were struggling in the July heat the Tomato plants were cruising along at full speed along with the Kale.

- Soil: Tomato plants like rich soil. My soil is a clay base and I added 3 40 lb 1:9 manure and compost mix to two 25 square feet clay based plots previously held by Bell Peppers and Kale. In other words, Tomatoes like rich soil with lots of nutrients. If you have a sand based soil it might need some rich supplementation like manure and/or compost. Early spring is when I cultivated the soil but adding fertilizer mid-season may help. Be careful with manure, it needs time to degrade and it could damage the plants if added directly. Usually manure is added in fall or spring before planting. Also, when you plant your seeds or Tomato’s have the soil well worked and weed free to eliminate root complications and competition from other plants.

- Crop Rotation: Maybe you already know this but rotating crops every year reduces plant diseases and returns nutrients to the soil as different plants have different issues and use different nutrients. For example, Beans return nitrogen to the soil while Tomato’s use it. Planting Tomato’s in a patch used for beans the previous year will improve the health and productivity of the plants. Also because Tomato plants get big it’s a good idea to keep them well spaced i.e. about 18+ inches.

- Water: Tomatoes need water, when they’re thirsty they will Wilt. When they wilt it is often a good idea to water them as soon as the Sun sets and/or early in the morning. If their desperate water them immediately at the base of the plant only to prevent leaf burn. Depending on where you live, Mother nature may or may not help you with this task.

- Staking: Tomato plants get big and Tomato’s can be heavy so by supporting the branches it not only maximizes space but allows the plants to grow more.

- Wait for second harvest. Tomatoes have two major harvests. That is at least mine have so far; one in the summer and one in the fall. I had a huge bag of Tomatoes in October that I picked just before

What is the best way of getting your children interested in growing vegetables?

Well in my view you need to give them their own space. Tell them this plot is yours. It doesn’t have to be large, about 2 feet square for younger children or you could even get them started by growing crops or herbs in pots. Older children may prefer something larger. I know that a small high density bed that is only 2 foot by 2 foot doesn’t sound very big, but it will be to a young child. A larger bed may just seem too big to do anything with to them, so start them small. If you have more than one child, give them their own high density bed each or just make a larger bed and divide this up into a section for each child and then divide this into mini plots for each crop. For very young children I would not make the bed more than 2 feet wide as they can reach the middle of this from each side.

What I would do is start them off with their own high density gardening raised bed built from timber that is at least 6 inches deep. This will give a soil depth which is deep enough for most easy to grow crops. You need to fill this with a soil mix and I would recommend buying this in the form of bagged peat or coir, bagged well rotted manure and maybe a bag of sterilized topsoil as well. As you have some manure in there you need to instill in your children good hygiene with hand washing after gardening and before eating. Mix your soil ingredients together and then fill the high density garden bed. If you are using 6 inch timber you will only need 2 cubic foot of soil mix. Once you have done this I would divide the bed into 4 mini plots using a brightly colored plastic string. I have gone for plastic as it does not rot and is safer for little hands than wire. Simply staple this to the timber. To increase interest, get your child involved in building the high density garden bed and even a trip to buy the soil mix and the seeds.

You are now ready to start planting. But what do you plant. It all depends on the age of your child. Younger children want to see things happen quickly and the crop be ready as soon as possible. Older children may be prepared to wait to harvest the crop. For this reason I would suggest thinking about what crops to grow. Things like radish and lettuce are best as these are fairly quick to grow. That takes care of 2 of the mini plots and in the others I would suggest something like mixed salad, land cress, rocket or possibly 1 outdoor cherry tomato plant. Older children will have a much better idea of what they like and want to eat so go along with that but remember, the crops talked about here are quick growing.

Cherry Tomato

I know tomatoes take a long time to grow but a seed should be up in a week and then there is all the fun watching it grow to about 3 to 4 foot tall, keep tying it to the stake, pinching out the side buds, watching the flowers appear, then the tiny green fruit and so on. There is a lot to watch with tomatoes. You can start the plant off in a pot in the house. Try the kitchen windowsill. Put 2 or 3 seeds in and choose the strongest seedling. There is watering to be done, so buy a child size watering can for this job and make sure you stand the pot on a drip tray or old plate. If it is warm enough outside, you can just put the seeds straight into the mini plot. Make sure this is at the side farthest away from the sun as otherwise it would shade out the other smaller plants.

Back to the high density bed, what to do now? It should be divided into 4 mini plots and each one of these will take a different crop.

Radishes

I would get your child to sow radish in one of the mini plots. Try dividing this up for them into 3 strips and sow 2 rows of radish in one of them, 2 rows in the next 2 weeks later and 2 rows in the final strip 2 weeks after than to give a timed cropping. Simply draw your finger to make 2 drills in which to drop the seed about half an inch deep. Try to get the seeds about an inch apart but this will not be easy for little fingers and cover the seeds with soil mix. It doesn’t matter if there are gaps or too many seeds in some places, it is all part of gardening experience. If there are too many seedlings simply thin them out. You should be able to fill gaps in with these thinnings but they do not always transplant but there is no harm in trying. When your child is planting the final third of the bed there will be radishes nearly ready for harvesting in the first third.

Lettuce

I would start these off growing in small flats or seed trays or better still in cells as these make a nice little plug to transplant. Rather than a hearting lettuce, I would grow a loose leaf type as they grow much quicker and can be harvested earlier. They also have the benefit of keeping growing as long as you harvest a few leaves of each plant when you need them.

Once they seedlings are large enough, plant out 4 in a mini plot. Watch out for slugs and other pests but otherwise just watch them grow. Harvest the young leaves when ready.

Mixed Salad Leaves

I would get your child to scatter these on the surface of the soil mix. Tip the seeds out on to your hand or a piece of paper and get your child to pick a few up at a time, scatter these and then add some more. Gently cover the seeds and I find a simple garden seed sowing sieve is best for this. Do not cover them too thickly. You treat these the same as for loose leaf lettuce but rather than one type of lettuce you will get a mixture of different salad leaves which can all be harvested together.

Land Cress or Rocket

These may be a little strong in taste but if your child has grown them they may be far more likely to eat them. Sow them as you would for lettuce. Grow in flats or cells and plant 4 to a mini plot. They will develop to fill the mini plot over time.

By starting your child gardening at an early age you may set them off with a lifetime hobby. There is the old saying “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.” Well it is the same with young children and gardening. Start them gardening now and they may develop a life long interest in growing their own fresh vegetables and there is nothing finer than fresh, wholesome and tasty vegetables except the ones you have grown yourself.

Would you believe that I ate a yellow tomoto, a purple tomato and a striped tomato last year? It’s true! Let this be a lesson to you that tomatoes come in, literally, all sizes, shapes and colors.

My neighbor, Shirley, is a professional tomato grower. She has been raising tomatoes for decades and she is the one that let me try some of her more funky varieties. Her head is filled with all sorts of science and moisture ratios regarding her art.

But happily, growing regular, red, delicious tomatoes can be really quite simple. The main issues to work with are the soil, the plants and planting, the ripening and the harvesting.

The Soil

Tomatoes, like most veggie plants, do best in a loose, freely-draining soil. How do you acheive this Valhalla of soils if you are starting with clay? Simple. First get a nuclear-powered tiller, then add several cubic tons of manure.

Just kidding. What you want to do is get some manure, not tons, or some compost and spread it over the top of your planting area. Then water it well. Leave it for three or four days, then turn the soil over and break it up, trying hard to mix in the manure well. This can be done by hand or with a good, front-tined roto-tiller.

Once you’ve got your planting area turned up, go ahead and water again, then leave the area for another day or two. This lets things steep and meld, helping nutrients get released into the soil.

Then you make your rows, mounds or whatever shapes you plan to plant on. Tomatoes can be planted on regular old, flat ground.

The Plants and Planting

You want to take some care in choosing your tomato plants. And you want to get them as plants, as planting seeds outside in many climates will not yield fruit. This is because the seeds can only be planted when it’s warm and then the tomato plants won’t have time to mature and give fruit.

So get plants. And get ones that will not take over the area. If this is your first time with tomatoes, try getting one roma plant and maybe some others. This way you can decide what you like best.

To plant tomatoes, you need to have plants that are about six to ten inches tall and are hardened off. If you get plants from the nursery, they are ready for planting. Space the tomato plants a good two to three feet apart. You also want to get some wire cages around the young plants if you are growing tomato bushes. These cages will keep the plants from falling over when they’re full of luscious red fruit.

Putting tomato

Tomato is considered to be a summer crop. Select the tomato variety from the wide variety which is easily available. Always check with your neighbors, nursery professionals and other online sources to find the most dependable and disease resistant variety of tomatoes.

The soil is to be prepared well before starting off with the tomato growing process. It should be mixed well with compost and well rotten manure if you are using sandy soil. Super phosphates are recognized to be the best nourishment for appropriate growth. Another balanced fertilizer would be 6:3:2 which should be mixed well with the soil before the process. It is considered as the perfect alternative in case of any short supply of manure. The fruits shall be hand picked when the color changes to red. It can be then ripened by placing on any sunny windowsill so as to prevent them from being eaten by any bird or rotting on the vine. The taste of these fruits are enhanced if they are ripened in the vine, therefore a perfect balance is to be maintained between the taste as well as the ripening process.