Growing Tomatoes

Let's get growing tomatoes... let's get growing the BEST tasting tomatoes.

Gastronomically they are a savoury delight and incredibly versatile with other vegetables and main dishes.

Originally called pomme d'amour or love apple by the French, we still adore tomatoes even though those aphrodisiac qualities from several hundred years ago have been disputed.

Tips for Sowing Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes brings out a gleam in a veggie gardener's eye. How long can we make the tomato season last, is the magic question? With a bit of TLC we can stretch it out.

In your chosen early starting place such as indoors or a greenhouse, push your luck and sow in December in the Northern Hemisphere and July in the Southern Hemisphere. These are general guidelines not accounting for climate extremes.

Coddle your seedlings, harden them off and in 6 weeks or so you should be able to plant them out by March in the north of the world and September in the south.

Keep the soil damp but not sodden. Plant 2-3 times the number of seeds needed and thin them out to the strongest plant after approximately 4 weeks. Use trays or single pots. Peat pots or similar are great, as the whole pot goes into the soil and soon disintegrates with no disruption to the plant's roots.

The single best tip for how to grow tomatoes successfully is to keep their roots warm.

Your spot for growing tomatoes should be as sunny as possible and you can try a few tricks to get that early start, even if there are still a few night frosts in the air.

Tips for Growing Tomatoes Early

• Remove any mulch or straw and lay a sheet of plastic as close to the soil as possible, held in place around edges with rocks, boards etc. This will warm the soil down to a hand's length and you can remove plastic (to use again), then plant your plants and mulch, mulch, mulch.
• Make mounds of earth which exposes the soil to more sun. Plant seedlings in these mounds and mulch, much, mulch. This provides good drainage for growing tomatoes, as they hate soggysville.
• Cut the tops and bottoms out of large clear plastic bottles and put over plants. Or take several thicknesses of newspaper and make a collar of about 25cm (10") circumference and secure to small stakes.

General Tips for Growing Tomatoes

• Plant your plants deeply to give a good hold with the roots. New roots will happily grow even if you bury some of the stem.
• Always get your main strong stake or wall trellis in place before you plant out your tomato seedlings or at least within a few weeks when you won't harm the roots.
• A good rule with watering is at least a 1 gallon (4-5 lt) watering can of water added around the roots of each plant per week. They have many fibrous roots just under the soil so don't let them dry out but don't let them sit in water, and keep them mulched.
• Pinch out the new shoots or suckers that grow in the axils between the main stem and other branches. This ensures strong plants and better fruits. Some gardeners leave these suckers to produce a few leaves for photosynthesis before nipping off the tips.
• Near the end of the season, as soon as there's a bit of a yellow tinge on your green tomatoes (which means they will continue to ripen), they can be picked and ripened inside. Anywhere dry and dark is fine. The temperature will ripen them to a rosy red. A sunny windowsill will sometimes make them shrivel and lose flavour.
• By early picking of a few tomatoes for later use, you can get the double benefit of encouraging the plants to set even more fruit. For longer storage of these tomatoes, make sure they have got to that stage with a bit of yellow tinge, then wrap each tomato in newspaper and store in a cool, dry spot such as a garage or cellar.
• Another strategy for growing tomatoes and being able to truthfully say in the middle of winter, "Look here's my just picked tomato," is to pull a whole plant up and hang it upside down in your garage or cellar.

Tomato Varieties

Truly there are hundreds of choices when growing tomatoes. There are the determinate plants which grow to a set, limited size and that's it more or less, then the indeterminate plants just keep on growing up and outwards, if you let them.

Remember that the smallest tomatoes have the shortest growing season and usually the mildest taste and the biggest tomatoes are the slow coaches but pack a powerful taste punch.

Those little cherry tomato darlings, like Tom Thumb, Sweet Million, Cupid and Sun Gold, take 8-10 weeks from seedlings to salad.

There's heirloom tomatoes which can be bought from specialised suppliers, such as the European Stupice, which ripen in only 7½ weeks, and some pretty striped varieties such as Green Zebra which is ready in approximately 12 weeks.

There's early, very hardy northern European varieties, which come in shades from maroon through to purple and brown, and don't mind a bit of frost beginning or end. A popular one is Paul Robeson which is ready in 11 weeks.

Some good cropping and tasting tomatoes for main season picking are Grosse Lisse, Roma, Zapotec Pink and Oaxacan Jewel.

The most luscious of all the love apples are the slow maturing beefsteak varieties, such as Ox Heart, Brandywine and the beefsteak hybrids like Beefsteak VFN and Beefmaster VFN. They are worth waiting 13-14 weeks for.

Back to List of Vegetables to read about other vegetables.