Do you have problems growing healthy tomatoes? Don’t know where to start to improve your crop? Follow these quick & easy tomato growing tips and you will have a stocked kitchen full of healthy, juicy tomatoes for the whole growing season.
Tip #1 – Make Sure You Have Enough Sunlight:
Sunlight is essential for healthy tomato plants and producing a large number of tomatoes. Your tomato plant produces sugar and fruit through photosynthesis. The more sunlight it receives the more fruit it will grow and your tomatoes will have a stronger, sweeter flavour.
Tip #2 – Get Your Soil Right:
Tomato plants grow best in slightly acidic soil with a PH between 6 and 7. You can test your soil with a simple kit from your garden center. Make sure you plant bed has deep soil and add plenty of compost before planting. All those rich organic nutrients will be turned into healthy leaves and tomatoes.
Tip #3 – Give Your Plants Space:
When you first plant your tiny seedlings outside they may look a little isolated being spaced at least 2 feet apart! Understand that they will grow up rapidly and produce a large number of leaves. Keeping them spaced apart increases the amount of sunlight the leaves receive and reduces the spread of diseases.
Tip #4 – Stake Your Tomatoes Early:
Staking is the process of providing a solid support for the plant branches. If left unsupported your plants branches will sag to the ground and many of your tomatoes will start to rot. Your leaves will get less sunlight meaning less fruit. You can hammer a stake or sturdy pole into the ground next to your plant and tie the stem to it as it grows. Other methods include using cages and trellises.
Tip #5 – Look Out for Tomato Diseases:
If you are unlucky your plant may catch a tomato disease. You will be able to spot this if some of your leaves develop brown spots and turn yellow. Take a diseased leaf to your garden center and they will be able to provide you with the right fungicide to attack the disease. As with humans prevention is better than cure! Before you start growing try to select a disease resistant variety of seed or plant. Most tomato diseases occur on wet leaves – by supporting your plant well and exposing it to sunlight you will keep the leaves dry.
Tip #6 – How to Store Your Tomatoes:
If you have followed these tips when growing you will produce a large number of tomatoes – maybe more tomatoes than you can eat! Don’t worry they won’t go to waste if you know how to store them. Don’t be tempted to put your excess tomatoes in the refrigerator – they will lose their flavour very quickly. Instead, you can keep them in a paper bag in a dark place and that will slow the ripening process but keep the flavour. For longer term storage you can freeze your tomatoes either whole or sliced for cooking.