Tomato Plants from Seedshow to grow tomato plants from seeds

“You know what this sandwich needs?”, I would always say to my wife when she made BLT’s. “A real tomato, THAT”S what it needs”. I could never make her understand that these red bags of water, that the grocery store called, “tomatoes” wasn’t the real thing.

“Well plant your own, since you think you’re so smart”, she replied one day. I thought to myself, “Why the heck not”. “My Mom’s a great gardener, surely I must possess some of that skill”.

So began the odyssey of our tomato patch.

I’m one of those fathers who employs his kids in all family chores. I figure the labors cheap, and besides my parents did it to me. My girls (ages 5 and 3) were drafted to be my crew. We went down to the Home Depot to scope out some plants.

“What are we doing Dad?”, they asked. “We’re planting tomatoes”. beamed their father. I’m was gonna teach the girls, the value in home grown vegetables. By the time we got home I’d spent $112.95 in tomato plants, fertilizer, potting soil, and big pots to put them in. (Did I mention we lived in an apartment?)

The terrace was nice and sunny. We got all the plants put in. My oldest daughter made a scarecrow out of an old shirt of mine, a stick, and a Styrofoam wig head that my wife gave her. It looked scary enough to me, so I set it right smack in the middle of our tomato patch.

The next morning I stepped out to look over my tomato plantation, only to find cats had dug up 3 of the plants, and what looked like bird poop on the scarecrow. “What the heck”, I yelled. “There’s varmints in the mator patch!” After work I got some netting at the military surplus store. They had tons of it for $50.00 bucks.

6 weeks go by. Nothing…

Finally one early Saturday morning. (I mean early) My daughter comes rushing into our bedroom. “Daddy, daddy, we got a mato”. “Thats nice, go back to bed”. I moaned.

“DAD!”

I got up and went out to the terrace, and sure enough, there was a tiny little tomato. I was choked up with pride. My little girl and I just staring at our little tomato. We knew that all the hard work and sacrifice was going to pay off. Considering that all but that one plant had succumbed to one disaster or another. A bird had even made a nest in our scarecrow. We named it Charley.

Through the rest of that summer, we babied and nurtured that freaking little tomato. Lord love me it was the only one to grow on that stupid plant.

Finally the day came, and we picked it. I took it inside, and my wife sliced it up for BLT”s. I took my first bite, and gloried in the marvel of fresh ripe heaven. “Now that’s what a BLT is supposed to taste like.”

That tomato cost me $162.95 but I swear it was worth it.

THE PRACTICAL SPRING GARDENING LIST

You’ve got your own garden routine every spring which you more or less stick to, depending upon your ambitions. In some years, a few tomato plants suffice because you don’t feel like going through the whole gardening rigmarole. In other years well, there’s no stopping you. Changes, they are a coming!

For those ambitious years, the first choices to make deal with which seeds you’re going sow indoors by the end of February in order to have enough strong plants for the garden in May. You’ve been flipping through those wonderfully illustrated seed catalogues and decided on some of the old stand-bys and some new ones. Great. Now, order the seeds.

Once they arrive, make sure that you have the appropriate seed starting soil mixture and enough plastic starter trays. You’ll want potting soil with a small amount of time released fertilizer already included within the soil matrix. Now, plant those pumpkin and tomato seeds. Get those cucumber and eggplant and pepper seeds into the trays as well.

You’ll want to plant those Brussels sprouts and broccoli seeds in their trays a week or two later. If you’ve decided to finally try your hand at potatoes, take some older potatoes from the vegetable bin. They don’t need to be large potatoes. The small ones work fine. Plant them individually, one potato each, to extra large Styrofoam cups with potting soil. The tubers will need to be completely covered by the soil.

It’s still far too frozen and too early to dig soil amendments into the garden. That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to do.

The pile of last year’s tomato stakes still requires checking. Some of the wooden stakes cracked while you were removing them last autumn and will need to be replaced. The old T-shirts in the laundry room which you were going to use as dust rags need to be cut into long, two inch wide strips. Remember last year, when you ran out of cloth strips with which to securely tie those indeterminate tomato plants to the stakes? Well, now is the time to make a whole bag of additional strips for this summer’s tomatoes.

You’ve been checking for the first germinations in the seed trays. After a full tray has germinated, you’ll want to make sure the seedlings have access to sufficient light, otherwise they’ll grow spindly. Have an extra Gro-light on hand if you are using artificial lighting. You never know when one of them is going to burn-out.

You’re ready for the warm weather. Patience is a virtue; summer will be here before you know it.

Growing your own salsa garden is a fun, simple way to harvest fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs for delicious homemade salsa.

You can grow a salsa garden on your patio or patio in an old barrel with one or two drainage holes drilled in the bottom. Cover drainage holes with wire mesh to prevent soil from washing out or bugs from creeping in. Fill container with quality potting soil. Potting soil with peat will retain moisture well. Select a spot on your patio where plants will receive 6-8 hours of full sunshine.

Select small starter plants that seem healthy and bushy; young, healthy plants will accept the transplant to their new home better than larger, older plants. Do not purchase plants too early in the spring; tomato plants need a soil temperature of at least 60 degrees to bear fruit.

Water and feed your plants regularly. Smaller pots need more watering. When summer is at its hottest and driest, you will need to water your plants more frequently. Soak the plants for best results; it will promote better harvests. Choose either water-soluble or time-release plant food. Closely follow instructions on the package to prevent over-fertilizing your plants, which can ruin your harvest. Check your plants often for signs of disease and pests.

Plant two or three tomato plants in the center of the barrel. Meaty tomatoes with little juice and lots of flavor are best for salsa. Try Patio Roma, a super-hardy variety that will tolerate some neglect and grows well in a container. As the tomato plants grow taller, they will need support in order to grow vertically. Use wire cages, or gently tie tomato stalks to wooden stakes with old pantyhose or twine.

Plant two or three pepper plants next to the tomato plants. Jalapenos have a rich flavor that works well in most salsas.

Plant a few onions and garlic bulbs at the perimeter of the barrel. Consider planting a tomatillo plant, the husked cousin of tomatoes. Their crunchy, tart, yet mild flavor will add new texture to garden salsa. Tomatillo plants can reach three feet tall and yield several golf-ball sized fruits.

Plant two to three of each: parsley, sweet basil, and cilantro next to the pepper plants. Cilantro is very easy to grow from seed and yields harvest in about six weeks.

Use all of these ingredients to experiment with different flavors of salsa. A basic recipe is included below for a starting point.

Basic Garden Salsa Recipe

onion

green bell pepper

cup cilantro

5 slices of jalapeno pepper

6 tomatoes

2 teaspoons olive oil

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

Juice of lime

1/8 teaspoon salt

Chop onion, bell pepper, cilantro, jalapeno pepper, and tomatoes in food processor or by hand. Mix with olive oil, red wine vinegar, lime juice, and salt.

Finding the perfect place for your garden, a spot where your plants will get the most benefit from the sun, is the first step. If the location you choose gets direct sunlight for most of the day, choose vegetables that will do well there. Tomato plants, cucumber, and eggplant do well in direct sunlight.

Now comes the hard part, getting the soil ready for planting. You will need a good shovel, and some elbow grease. Map out the garden in your mind, and start turning over the soil. You should dig down about six inches, turning the dirt over, and breaking up the large dirt clods. Make sure the soil is free of weeds, and finish turning over the dirt in all of the spots where you are going to be planting something. After all of the dirt is turned over, mix in some fertilizer and potting soil, and turn the mixture over until you have a nice area, ready to receive your new plants.

Before you start planting, take a minute to think about the plants, and how they grow. Tomato plants, egg plants, and other taller vegetables or tall plants, should be placed in the back of the garden. Since tomato plants require stakes or cages to help them stand tall, you should put them in the last row. You can purchase these items at any Home Depot, or garden store. Some plants, such as cucumber, squash, or pumpkins, can spread out quickly, and require a lot of room to grow. Smaller plants, should be placed in the front of the garden. This layout will not only look nice, but will allow the plants to receive the most benefit from the sun.

When you are ready to plant, you should dig small holes approximately three inches down, and spaced out enough to allow growth. Add a little potting soil around the plant when you put it into the hole, to help it grow. Make sure the dirt is filled back in around the roots of the plant, to give it a nice start. Also be sure to leave enough room between the rows of plants, so you will have access to them when they are grown.

After all of your plants are firmly in the ground, give them water. Make sure the plants have enough water to start growing, but be careful not to over water the new plants, or seeds, as this can cause the seeds to float away, or grow in a spot where they weren’t meant to grow.

You can personalize your garden in lots of different ways. You can add stepping stones to form a pathway between the rows of plants. This not only looks nice, it gives you room to walk between the rows of plants when you are ready to harvest, or weed your garden.

Your garden can be as simple, or as elaborate as you would like. The main thing is to consider the location of the garden, the amount of sunlight the area receives, the type of plants that will do well in those conditions, and the amount of time you have to spend on your garden. With a little work, you can have a garden to be proud of.

Let me start by saying that I am not a very good gardener. I simply don’t have the patience or time to properly devote to a well maintained, weed free garden. However, I have learned to excel with one crop in particular. Tomatoes. Really big, really juicy, really sweet tomatoes. It took me a few years to figure out what exactly it was that I was doing to make the tomato growth so exceptional. I have grown tomatoes in rocky soil, a raised bed and even in potting soil alone. They have all grown to incredible plant size with literally hundreds of fruits. The last few years I have had multiple plants that have grown to well over 6 1/2 feet tall with one spreading over 8 feet wide from tip to tip. I grew beef steak, cherry, Roma and a yellow hybrid this year.

I would estimate that I have picked at least 5 gallons of fruit so far this year from those 6 plants. They usually bear tomatoes from mid July to the first of October. Keep in mind this is in the extreme growing climate of northern New England.

So what is my secret you ask? Don’t laugh, worms. Lots of worms. What I had been doing the last 4 to 5 years was bringing home my left over worms from fishing and I would release them into my garden. In a typical summer this amounted to about 15-20 dozen worms. The year after I started this ritual was the first season I had the tomato growth explosion. It took me about 2 years into this practice to realize the correlation between the two. If you have a fisherman in your family this is a simple non-wasteful way to increase your tomato yield. In fact this summer I actually saw a product at local home improvement store called “worm poop.”

Who would have thought? Isn’t America great!

Give it a try and best of luck.

If you are a parent, then you know how excited children can get when we involve them in “grown-up” activities. That is exactly what happened to me and my husband last year when we decided to let our kids help out with the gardening. I decided to let them start out with something simple…big mistake. I still laugh when I think back to that day. My kids were 9, 6, and 3, and feeling very mischievous. It was late February, and in Alabama, late February is perfect for gardening. I had just bought a pack of tomato seed from the local hardware store, and thought planting them would be the perfect activity for the kids to help with. I divided the seeds between them, and gave them each five Styrofoam cups filled with potting soil in which to put their seeds. First, I showed them how to poke a hole in the dirt with their little fingers to make a 1/2 inch hole for the seeds. This led to a back porch covered in top soil. The next thing I showed them was how to water their seeds, which led to a back porch covered in mud. When we were finished watering, I guided the children through a thorough cleaning of the back porch. We had all of our little tomato seed Styrofoam cups arranged nicely on a table placed at the edge of our porch where the morning and evening sun touched down perfectly for the little seedlings to thrive and grow. It hadn’t even been an hour since our project was complete that our wonderfully mischievous cat, Garfield, decided to inspect our seed cups. In doing so, our wonderfully mischievous kitty managed to knock our table off balance, sending all our seed cups to the ground. There was no saving the poor seeds. I mourned our deer departed seeds for about an hour after, while my kids were laughing so hard they began to cry themselves. It wasn’t funny at the time, but the saying goes; never cry over spilled milk, or in this case, tomato seeds. Later that spring, we had a few surprise tomato plants to spring from the ground right off of our back porch. It made a wonderful story for my kids to pass on through the generations, and a wonderful memory that I will cherish always.

A tomato plant growing outside your kitchen door in an attractive pot is not only decorative but is heart healthy. Even better than one, why not have two, one on each side of the door. For this you will need a larger than usual container, maybe even a tall kitchen trash substituting. At least with a large pot, there will be enough soil to allow the roots to spread and or a tomato stake. Although, smaller containers can be used successfully.

What kind of soil for container growing? Ordinary potting soil that has about a third of the soil organic matter with a pH level 0f 6.0 to 7.0 will do fine. A calcium healthy soil is one with added bone meal if you are growing in questionable soil. This may be just the perk the plant will need to set on flowers and fruit.

Of course you can readily purchase prepared soil from the garden center. Yet in container growing keeping nutrients from leeching out is another consideration. All in all, soil

Requirements should be no problem, but keeping the plant well watered but not overly watered will take a little of your time. You will need to have some kind of drainage for your soil; if you have rainy growing season you could end up with tomatoes that are watery and not at all tasty or none at all.

The basic requirements for container growing of tomatoes are a soil allowing for quick drainage, a well aerated soil, and some water remaining the soil after drainage. You can readily see why drainage is an important part of container growing. Sand or perlite – sponge rock – are good additives that keep the soil breathing after drainage. Were this not so, the soil particles would stick together and block the needed nutrients.

If the container does not already have drainage holes, put some in with a pick or an ax and use gravel or small rocks in the bottom of your pot. This is a must. It will keep the roots from getting waterlogged. Once this is done, then fill the pot with your specially prepared soil and set out your plant. If there still is danger of frost in your area, you may have to cover the pot, or pots, during the night.

Sunshine will be a key growing necessity no matter if you are growing your potted tomatoes in areas where it is unlikely to have at least eight hours of continuous sunlight, then place your pots on a wheeled platform and moved them to where the sun is. Admittedly, this could become a chore if you are growing your tomatoes in large pots; therefore it may be better to consider a smaller variety that adapts well to being moved around.

Regular fertilizing should begin about three weeks after starting the tomato plant. A good fertilizer to use will be Miracle Grow and this can be bought in dry or liquid form. Whatever type you use it should have a nitrogen-phosphorous ratio-potash ratio of 6-18-6.

Most enthusiastic gardeners eventually want to start their own tomato plants from seed rather than buying seedlings in the nursery. It’s a point of pride. The desire to start the tomato garden at the very first possible moment dictates, starting early, from seed, indoors. It can be pulled off! Get your seeds. Get ready. Get set. Plant!

Because tomato seeds are very small it takes them much longer than other, larger seeds to develop from seed stage to fruiting stage. It seems reasonable, then, to start early, indoors, before spring has sprung. It is also worth it to start your own tomatoes from seed rather than having to depend on what your local nursery might stock.

There are many different ways to start tomatoes from seed, but you’ll need some type of medium for the seedlings to sprout in, tomato seeds, and potting soil. I save my plastic seedling containers from my spring planting specifically for this purpose, but that is only one way to get the job done. Creativity is the key. You can order peat cubes or peat pots specifically designed for this purpose, also. Other than the unnecessary expense of buying them, I find them satisfactory. It’s nice to have a greenhouse, but my dining room often fills that purpose. I’ve taken to using white, paper cupcake cups (not the foil kind) as my nursery for tomato seeds. After the seeds have sprouted, the cups can be planted directly into the ground without disturbing the young plants. The paper will decompose in the garden.

I save the plant trays from the nursery when I buy seedlings to use for my “cup cake” tomato nursery, but an aluminum foil type cake pan or cookie sheet will work just as well. You need a tray to help the cup cake forms hold their shape since they are a bit flimsy. Double the cups to create a bit more durability. Determine how many cups you want, fill the tray with cups, and then gently sprinkle potting soil into them, filling each about half full, just like you would if you were going to bake muffins that need room to expand. Leave room for another layer of soil to cover the seeds.

Gently drop two tomato seeds into each cup. The seeds are tiny. Don’t sneeze into them or you’ll have tomato seeds everywhere! You could put more than two in a cup, but most commercially grown seeds germinate well. Putting more in a cup would lead to waste because you’ll have to thin them. Two is insurance that one will sprout. You really only want one plant per cup. After

Every year for the past many, many years, I’ve had this almost fanatical propensity to grow the biggest, reddest, juiciest and most abundant crop of tomatoes in the entire world. Or at least, in the neighborhood!

In some neighborhoods, the biggest house was the chief motivating factor at becoming the overall neighborhood King. Other neighborhoods relied on the most expensive car, the smartest or best looking children, Super Bowl tickets. To me, it was always about the size of your tomatoes.

So, every year, just like this year, I set out to strengthen my manhood, to grow the biggest, reddest tomatoes in the entire world. I would feel the stinging pains of defeat if my tomatoes were judged the best only in the entire Western Hemisphere. I started out where the most proficient growers begin, Home Depot.

The last time I grew tomatoes from seed, I planted them early, around January, and emptied a full package of seeds into a small bread loaf pan and put it on a special table at the sunniest window in the house, facing south. I planted the seeds in a mixture of the finest loam and potting soil, with so much Miracle Grow that the soil turned Green. Then I watered them faithfully, 4 times a day.

Every night I would cover our germinating, neighborhood conquering monster seeds with our finest dishtowel so they wouldn’t get cold. Then one morning, my wife asked me what I was growing. “Tomatoes,” I said proudly! She told me I had better look again, and after I picked out about 10 fully ripe mushrooms, I decided I was probably watering them too much. I probably needed to get rid of the towel too!

Two days later, I had about nine thousand rabid tomato plants in one very small bread loaf pan. I knew I had to do something drastic because they needed to be replanted outdoors, fast, and mid-January in Northern Connecticut was not the time to plant summer tomatoes. In the room with the sunny, Southerly exposed window, I had what looked like overgrown elephant grass growing down the table legs and germinating little elephants in the carpet. The tomato delta had to go, and I would have to resort to plan B.

Until God would again bring His torch over Connecticut and thaw out the ground, I would take the time to further study the life cycle of the perfect tomato. And, in May, I shoveled out the car and drove back to Home Depot.

The first thing I learned is what I like to call “The Tabloid Theory”. Growing good tomatoes is all about the “dirt”. Real dirt! Loads of compost and

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