The main advantages of growing tomatoes in raised beds

• You can more easily control the mix of the soil and utilise compost specifically suited to growing tomatoes
• The plants are generally easier to access for staking, weeding, watering, pruning and pest control
• The soil tends to warm up more quickly than non-raised beds
• Its easier to apply a mulch to aid contamination prevention, supplement feeding and keep weeds down
• You can avoid standing on the soil causing it to compact
• raised beds tend to be free draining and do not get over saturated
• the soil can easily be dug out and replaced should any contamination occur. This should be done on an annual or bi-annual basis in any case
• Feeding the tomato plants is much more targeted and effective, follow the instructions on the feed of choice or as a rule of thumb you can apply a high nitrogen liquid tomato feed around once a fortnight
• Pests are less likely to infiltrate a raised bed but when they do they are easier to deal with

If growing tomatoes in raised beds doesn’t appeal then you might want to take a look at how you can create a lasagne garden which is another option for growing tomatoes.

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.

Of course I should mention that you cannot grow tomatoes with seeds taken from the Hybrid varieties. They have for the most part been specially produced for commercial use and you cannot take the seeds from these varieties and cultivate them, just doesn’t work. So stick to the varieties that mother nature concocted for us and you will be fine.

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:

• We want to increase and optimise the amount of yield we get from our plants
• we want to increase and optimise the best tasting fruit in terms of flavour
• We want our fruit to look great when served
• We want our plants to last as long as possible in the growing season and continue to produce fruit.

So in order to meet these objectives we take actions that would not necessarily occur in nature, after all what is nature’s prime objective, I think it is survival of the fittest and strongest but that does not always meet our objectives and it is why we develop plant strains that do, so the price we pay occasionally is to increase the level of care required to ensure we meet our objectives.

This has never been truer than when growing tomatoes, so when asked the question is it really necessary to prune tomato plants the answer has to be a resounding yes, as long as we are clear that we are discussing the tomato vine option and not the tomato bush option. The reasons are also fairly clear when listed:

• Keeping the vine clear of the ground by clipping off the lower stems will help ensure that they remain disease free.
• Taking out the excess stems that are not doing so well will mean that the remaining healthy stems get their full quota of nutrients and produce lots of wonderful fruit
• Keeping the plant down in size with only healthy thriving stems will mean you can utilise available space for more plants but still allow the plants to receive the optimum amounts of sunshine and nutrients they need to flourish.

So yes there is a price to pay for producing great tomatoes, but that price is very small in comparison to the rewards. If you haven’t already experienced the satisfaction of picking your own fresh fruits from your garden then when you do you will fully understand what I mean.

Visit Home Grown Tomatoes for more tips and advice on tomato growing and to get access to expert advice that could double or triple the size of your crop of tomatoes.

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Hard to believe in these days of fast food and supermarkets, which supply every kind of produce that you can imagine from all around the world, that I am only talking about one generation removed where literally if you could not grow your own vegetables there was a good chance you were going to go hungry. Clearly over the years things improved and gardening out of necessity turned into gardening out of a love for it. There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained from growing your own fruit and vegetables, being able to put the freshest possible produce on the table and to have the satisfaction of having grown it yourself.

My father as he was, could not help himself from turning the extra he produced into a tidy little profit by selling it on to the local villagers who would be very happy to pay for the extra vegetables and tomatoes that were invariably available, he had in absolute abundance what we and many others referred to as ‘green fingers’.

Of course as a child and given the work ethic of the family, we all had to do our bit to contribute and I remember many hours spent helping my father out, building a greenhouse, digging the soil and of course when necessary planting and watering the vegetables. I like to think that during these times I picked up a few tips for growing tomatoes and other plants along the way, but it was tomato growing that became my fathers passion and the subject I am going to discuss in detail here.

Given that we lived in the UK it was pretty much essential that the tomatoes were grown in a greenhouse, I will leave you to surmise why, but a greenhouse became one of the number one essential tools for growing the best tomatoes the village had to offer.

So lets get to what you are interested in, how did he actually do it?

It actually breaks down into four distinct areas of tomato cultivation: -

• Soil preparation
• How to plant tomatoes
• How to support the tomatoes
• How to care for tomatoes

Soil Preparation

The tomatoes would be planted straight into the ground inside the greenhouse, so in order to prepare for the planting a ditch would be dug about 18″ deep. The bottom of the ditch was filled with a mulch to form a 6″ layer or so, on top of that was placed a mixture of soil and compost, ideally the compost was rich in nitrogen and typically made from grass cuttings, kitchen vegetable waste, annual weeds (i.e. once pulled would not recover or try to re-root) and, if you have access to it, well rotted manure. You can of course add a further layer of mulch on the surface of the soil, as is more traditional, to help with weed control and moisture retention, for tomatoes a coffee ground mulch is a good idea as this will contain a reasonable amount of nitrogen which will help supplement the fertiliser. Remember to wait until the plants are in and established with the soil nicely warmed before adding a mulch to the surface.

How to Plant Tomatoes

The tomatoes themselves whether grown from seed or bought as plants would be planted fairly deep, remember that tomatoes can develop roots from any part of the stem so putting them in deep is not a problem. The lower part of the plant would have any offshoots removed so that it is easier to plant them deep and also to ensure there is no contact with the ground.

How to Support Tomatoes

In a greenhouse it can be a little tight for space, or certainly any I have been involved with that has been the case, so a neat way of supporting the tomatoes is to drive 3 decent sized stakes into the ground at either end of your planting row and to run gardening string fairly taught between them. The plants then grow through and hang over the string like a vegetable washing line.  Obviously you have to use string that can take the weight and if you are planting a long run you may need extra stakes along the length, try and do this up front though , because you do not want to disturb the roots later on, string is the best product for this as well because tomato plants can bruise easily so need a nice soft material to support them.

How to care for tomatoes

Caring for tomatoes once planted is relatively easy but very important. You need to keep a careful eye on them for disease and pests, any leaves that look ill or suffering should simply be removed, bagged and binned. Occasional spraying with a pesticide should be done as required to keep the predators under control and other than that it is supplementing the plants with a suitable tomato feed, this should be done twice per week.

Watering should be done 2 or 3 times a day, the objective being to never let the soil dry out completely but also not over drenching either. When the fruit is ripening you can back off on the watering a little to help firm the fruit up, how much you back off is a bit of a judgement call based on how juicy you like your tomatoes.

Now my father being the perfectionist he was, always insisted on warming the water to ambient temperature before watering, this was to ensure the plants were not shocked. This is a bit of a faff  initially but actually if you get into the routine of simply refilling a few buckets after emptying them and sticking them back in the greenhouse overnight, that will be enough to reach the required temperature. I can’t argue with his results so I am not going to disrespect his methods or attention to detail, he was the master.

Still on the subject of care and really most relevant to greenhouse growing, a couple of other tips are:

• ensure that the tomato plants do not get too hot, open the roof light and door of the greenhouse and if it is really hot you can whitewash the south facing side to reflect the sun away at the hottest part of the day.
• gently shake the plants when they are in flower to help pollination, I emphasize gently, remember there is no breeze inside a greenhouse so this is simply to aid a process that would normally happen naturally outside with a little bit of breeze going on.

You can actually buy mechanisms for opening and closing windows based on temperature if you would like to automate this process.

So that is it for now, the basics of  tomato growing as taught by an old master.

I would imagine that I will be expanding on some of his other techniques for growing some other plants in time, for instance he was pretty legendary when it came to growing runner beans as well and he used to get them by the bucketfull as sweet and tender as you could possibly imagine. So watch this space if you like what you have read so far.