Today is Grow Your Own. And a celebrity cover; the number 1 home grown crop – Tomatoes.
Where it all begins – sowing:
Recommendations: use a tray, sow 2.5 cm apart, cover lightly with compost and keep the surface of the compost moist.
A quick and inexpensive seed tray can be had from using the bottom half of supermarket fruit and veg packaging and transparent tops used as a ‘mini greenhouse’ or the surface of the tray covered with cling film, remove the cling film when the first shoots show through.
Hello Seedlings:
Within the first few days of the 1st leaves appearing (plant not seed leaves, seed leaves are only ever 2 in number and the easiest way to describe them is like propeller blades) prick out the seedlings into 13-18 cm pots filled with potting compost. Where they can stay until being transplanted to their Cropping position.
My initial reaction to those pot dimensions …. they’re large…the seedlings are going to look very lost ! On the other hand by starting off large, it reduces the number of times a plant will need to be moved into a new pot. And like us, plants find moving stressful!
Cropping position:
But the time will come when needs must. Tomato plants are ready for their Cropping position when 15cm in height (5cm shorter than KG) and flowers are just appearing on the 1st truss. Cropping position can be in a large pot, a grow bag or border soil.
Use garden canes as support and tie the plant loosely to them.
I’m a star – look after me (the care regime):
Pinch out the side shoots when 2-3cm in length.
When fruits form on the lower trusses, it’s feeding time. Delight your tomatoes with a potash rich tomato food once a week.
I found the dilution rate for tomato feed made it tricky to do only once a week without over watering on that day (in fact I think the bottle instructions were every 2 weeks which also made remembering difficult). So this year I’m going to experiment with dividing the amount of food into smaller amounts and then feeding more frequently. (I’ll write this up when I’ve worked it out.)
When the plants reach 1.2 meters in height remove the leaves before the 1st truss of fruit. There are two reasons for this recommendation; to improve air circulation round the plant and with some leaves gone, that means more energy to divert into leaf production.
I diverted a lot of my energy into removing leaves last year! If like me you can’t resist just a bit more snipping here and there then beware, there’s something very moreish about defoliating tomato plants!
Keep to a regular watering regime. Irregular leads to the fruits splitting (and potentially Blossom End Rot).
When the plant has produced 5 trusses, pinch out the growing tip. I don’t remember having this precise numeric approach last year. I think I kept hoping to squeeze in one more truss. The balance to get right is giving everything time to ripen before the end of the growing season.
Recommended Varieties:
Alicante: cordon, ideal for beginners. Last year was my first year and I grew Alicante but didn’t find it (or Moneymaker) the easiest to grow. Maybe this was linked to the sturdiness of my plants. I found cherry varieties such as Sungold and Tumbler easier. Although you have to keep an eye on Sungold – it’s definitely the little tomato plant that grew….
Beefeater: cordon, beefsteak, full of flavour.
Gardeners Delight: cordon and top home growers choice, yields lots of small, flavour filled, colourful (red) tomatoes. This really does come up time and time again as people’s favourite (them being gardeners ‘n all). For me, it didn’t outshine Sungold (though the colour’s prettier) but if I find a GD sitting on a trestle table at a plant sale, I’ll grow it again.
Tumbling Tom: bush and destined for patio pots and hanging baskets from where it’ll deliver cherry sized fruits all summer long.
Other tips I came across through out the magazine were to start feeding young tomato plants with a dilute liquid seaweed feed once a fortnight.
Then picking up on the advice in KG to initially fill a pot only 2/3rd full with compost and top up later. In GYO I came across advice to cut a grow bag in half and grow a plant a piece, in the upturned ends. I’ve done this and it works well but what I didn’t do was as the magazine advises which is to top up the halves with multipurpose compost after a few weeks and sprinkle with blood, fish and bone. So again something to think about doing.
And if this is all too much and you want to get away from your own gardening responsibilities then GYO has a feature on the UK’s best Kitchen Gardens. Audley End, Essex with its organic Victorian methods and period varieties is on my list. For long distance escapes –Culross Palace, Fife , a reconstruction of a 17th century garden sounds wonderful as do the resident ‘Scots Dumpy Hens’ which have the run of the place or indeed palace!
