For growing tomatoes from seed you need to be thinking about sowing tomato seeds about 6 to 8 weeks before you expect the last frost of the year to occur or when you would like to be putting your plants into their final growing position.

From a temperature perspective the best temperature range for sowing tomato seeds is between 15ºC and 25ºC (60ºF to 77ºF) you could probably get away with 10ºC (50ºF) overnight but you would need to cut back on the watering a little to take account of the lower temperatures.

Equipment
You can either purchase Seed Starting Trays and equipment or alternatively you can use items like yogurt pots or egg cartons to get your tomato seeds under way. If you already have pots or seed trays available and want to reuse them then make sure that you disinfect them first with a mix of 1 part bleach and 10 parts water to ensure that you remove any contamination.

Read More

One of  the most important aspects of tomato growing is selecting a location for your plants that will allow them to flourish.

Tomatoes need plenty of sunshine and a good rule of thumb for ensuring they get enough, is to find a spot in your garden that sees a minimum of 6 hours of sunshine a day. Some will argue that tomatoes need as much as 10 hours of sunshine a day and if you have a spot that can deliver that amount of sunshine then it certainly wouldn’t do any harm; assuming of course you don’t allow the plants to dry out.

Read More

Many of the most common tomato problems actually originate from just 2 causes: -

• erratic watering
• erratic temperatures

These 2 causes are often responsible for a whole range of problems with tomatoes: -

• Flower shedding
• Blossom end rot
• Immature fruit fall
• Split skins
• Sun scald
• Blotchy ripening
• Tomatoes not ripening

Read More

Ripening tomatoes

As with all vegetable growing, the one stage that every gardener awaits with eager anticipation is when the plants start to produce ripe ready to eat produce, this is when you can start to reap the rewards for all of your effort. Waiting for your tomatoes to ripen is no different to any other garden product.

Problem is tomatoes can sometimes be a little tricky and hang on the vine not looking at all like the lovely red tomatoes everyone aspires to.

Read More

The Heirloom tomato is an old favorite with Cherokee Purple and Brandywine being amongst the most popular of these. They are well known for their flavour and are great for the home gardener. The reason they are not generally available commercially is because of the need for robustness during transportation and the supermarkets need for a long shelf life. Consequently they are maintained primarily due to the enthusiasm of the home gardeners who cultivate them from seed for their own purposes.

There are a few other options available to the home gardener and the list below represents a few of the popular ones: -

Alicante – good quality tomato generally with good disease resistance
Big Boy – very large fruit with an excellent texture, great for sandwiches
Eurocross A – a bit like Moneymaker but more vigorous and produces more fruit
Growers Pride (F1) – Great for the beginner, fruits early and useful for most things
Mandel (F1) – Good for disease resistance, dark red colour and can be used for a variety of things
Odine (F1) – Great for a small greenhouse with many uses
Tigerella – Yellow striped fruit, lots of flavour and is available early in the season
Vibelco – very disease resistant
Yellow Perfection – Lovely yellow fruit with great flavour and high quality fruit

Read More

There are quite a few garden pests that will attack your tomato plants so you need to stay pretty vigilant and keep a careful eye on your plants to make sure that they are not under attack. Many of the pests tend to lay their eggs on the underside of the the tomato plant leaves, so try and get in the habit of just lifting the leaves up and having a look underneath.

Some of the most common tomato pests are : -

• Aphids
• Whitefly
• Spider mites
• Leafhoppers
• flea beetles
• tomato hornworm

Read More

If you are interested in growing tomatoes from seed then you can find out the technique for separating the seeds from the fruit and preparing them for cultivation in the following video. The video describes the process in a clear and easy way that most anyone will be able to follow.

Heirloom tomato varieties are very popular for their full flavour and taste. Although the video does not use heirloom tomatoes the technique is pretty much the same for all tomato types. If you want to find out how to cultivate the seeds and turn them into plants you can find out how to grow tomatoes from seed by clicking on the link.

Read More

Home Grown Tomatoes in Limited Space
By Brian R Stephens

Tomatoes are one of the easiest plants to grow at home and there are a number of options for growing tomatoes at home even if you do not have a decent sized plot of land to use.

Many people grow tomatoes in containers that they can sit on a patio or perhaps, if space is very limited, they hang them from a support frame or convenient rafter. I can leave you to use your imagination as to where the best options are, all you have to ensure is that there is sufficient sun light for your tomatoes to flourish.

Read More

How to Plant Tomatoes and Care For Tomatoes When Greenhouse Growing
By Brian R Stephens

One of the main reasons for using a greenhouse when growing tomatoes is because of the climate you live in. If you cannot guarantee warm sunny weather for your tomatoes then you will need to consider using a greenhouse, this will help you control the climate for the tomato plants and give them a better chance of producing lots of edible fruit.

Clearly planting tomatoes in a greenhouse leaves you with limited options, for most people the greenhouse will be relatively small and probably only a little taller than the height of an average man, unless of course you have the space and money for a large more industrial sized greenhouse, but for the purposes of this article I am going to discuss the smaller option that is, I believe, more usual in the home gardening environment.

Read More

Tomato Pruning, Is It Really Necessary to Prune Tomato Plants?
By Brian R Stephens

It seems as though sometimes when working in the garden that there are a lot of tasks that we do that one might sometimes consider as being unnecessary. After all if a plant was growing wild as nature intended they would not get lavish care and attention would they?

Clearly the answer to that question is ‘no of course not’, so why then do we do it. Its a pretty straight forward answer or set of answers really and probably best put in bullet statements: Read More