homegrown tomatoes

5 Keys to Growing Your Own Tomato Plants

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If you follow these 5 keys to growing tomato plants you are sure to get a healthy crop of tomatoes throughout the growing season – even if you’ve never planted them before! Homegrown tomatoes taste so much better than commercial ones and with so many varieties to choose from you can enjoy some unique tastes in your kitchen.

Step 1-Make Sure it is Warm Enough:

Before you plant outside make sure the temperature is high enough. For growing you need a minimum 60F (15C) night-time temperatures and 65-85F (18-30C) during the day. Tomatoes need a lot of sunlight for healthy fruit – a minimum of 6 hours is ideal. Find a spot in your garden or patio where where you can achieve these numbers.

Step 2 – Select The Right Plants:

Decide on which varieties of tomatoes best suit your needs and select a disease resistant variety. If you are planting in containers you will want a smaller plant such as the “dwarf” tomato. If you have more space you can go for larger plants like the “beefsteak” variety. You can plant from seed or buy the seedlings from your local garden center.

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6 Reasons Why You Should Be Growing Your Own Tomato Plants

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Growing tomato plants is not as hard as you might think. Not only that but homegrown tomatoes taste much better than those in the stores! I’ll show you 6 important reasons why you should grow your own tomatoes – even if you don’t have a garden.

Reason #1 Homegrown Tomatoes Taste Great!

Healthy tomatoes grown at home will always taste sweeter and juicier compared to commercial tomatoes. One reason for this is that commercial tomatoes are picked before they are ripe to be transported to the stores where they ripen off the plant (sometimes artificially). Being out of the sun for longer means they have created less sugar and therefore less flavour.

Reason #2 You Can Pick Your Tomatoes from Hundreds of Varieties

Typically you only find 4 or 5 standard varieties of tomatoes in your supermarket that are suited to efficient picking, packing and transport. But there is a whole different world out there when you look at all the tomato varieties available. The heirloom class of tomatoes has hundreds of different sizes, shapes, colors and flavours with tomatoes from all over the world. For example there are the large juicy “beefsteak” varieties that can reach 2lbs in weight, the salty flavor of the “Black Krim” from Russia and the superb “sausage” tomato that is named after its shape! With tomatoes like these you will be adding many unique tastes to your kitchen and cooking.

Reason #3 Growing Your Own Plants Will Give You a Great Sense of Achievement

Nurturing your tomato plants from seedling to maturity and seeing it bear fruit from your efforts will give you a wonderful sense of accomplishment. You will receive a reward for your patient efforts and understand what went in to producing your fruit when you eat them.

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Factors to Consider in Growing Tomatoes On Your Own

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Everyone appreciates fresh and homegrown tomatoes. Everyone wants to know how they can grow their own lovely batch of tomatoes. You can follow some tips in growing tomatoes to make sure that you can harvest good, healthy crops. The tomato growing tips listed below can help you achieve your desired goal.

Using Heat to Grow Tomatoes

The most important among tomato growing tips is that tomatoes love heat. The soil found in your outdoor garden should be preheated before you plant the tomato plants. The area should be covered with plastic, whether red or black, weeks prior to the date when you want to plant. The plastic will warm up your soil faster.

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Hanging Tomato Plants – An Option For Small Gardens

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Tomato plants are one of the easiest and most popular vine plants to grow but, as with all homegrown vegetables and fruits, it pays to do your homework up front to make sure you can successfully grow your own tomatoes or any other vegetables. Selecting the right location and using the right soil or compost mix will set you on your way to successful tomato crops.

One of the best options available to people with small gardens that will still allow them to grow a few tomato plants and enjoy the satisfaction of eating fresh homegrown tomatoes is to use a hanging planter, the planter can be hung in any convenient location, remembering of course that tomato plants need plenty of sun and plenty of water.

The main benefit of using a hanger in a small garden is that you need very little space in which to hang it and instead of spreading out to take up a large area they tend to hang straight down and occupy vertical space rather than horizontal space. So plenty of scope for the fruit to grow but in a long vertical line.

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5 Steps to Stop Weeding Tomato Plants Forever – Tomatoes Containers Heaven

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You can get simple and easy tomatoes by growing them in containers to get those delicious homegrown tasting tomatoes that only green thumb gardeners grow. If you don’t have a lot of space or live in an apartment then tomato growing is great! There are just a few steps you absolutely must know or else you will get those tiny, rotten tomatoes.

1. Tomatoes need sunlight

Tomatoes need at least 6 hours of sunlight. You can put your new tomatoes containers on a patio or in a window sill. Window sills are especially great because they provide a lot of direct sunlight, where the suns shines directly on the plant. Make sure to move the pot around so that it gets the full six hours of sun when growing tomatoes containers.

2. Pick the right plant

You don’t want to get a tomato plant that grows six feet tall, in your kitchen at that! No better to choose a determinate tomato variety. Determinate tomatoes are varieties that only grow a foot or two max. Which is great for you, because one things they go is ripen fast. Just think in as little as two weeks you can have fresh tomatoes in your salad. The smaller varieties ripen quick and with the plant being small you won’t be left with tons of tomatoes that you can’t use.

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Solutions To Growing Tomatoe Problems

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I know you can’t help it. You can never deny that homegrown tomatoes are certainly a top grosser. You love it and you want more of it. But the fresh tomatoes you have in your homes are not products of one day labor. To have a piece of the best, you need to work for it and you need to be very cautious of some problems that may be observed as your tomatoes grow. These problems may be caused by natural conditions while most are caused by diseases, viruses and pests. But hey, you don’t have to worry so much. These troubles are very easy to handle especially if you could handle them earlier.

Here are the signs that you should look for in able to avoid tomato growing problems. You need to observe if green patches are evident on your fruit. These green patches signals that your tomato plant is exposed too much to the sun. This will later lead to fruits that will turn yellow instead of red. Blossom end rot is another problem that you might encounter as you grow your tomatoes. This is the condition wherein the fruit rots down. This disease occurs because of the lack of calcium or if there is an irregular water intake on your plant. Early signs of blossom end rot are the black spots that are formed on the bottom of your tomato’s blossom (just like how it is named).

The most common symptom for tomato plant infection is actually checked through the observation of the leaves of the plant. If the leaves that are found at the lowest part of the stem bows down and when there are brown stripes formed at the midribs, that means the plant may soon suffer from Bacterial Canker. If there are black spots on leaves specially the old ones, this is a symptom of Early Blight. This later on will continue until it includes the stems and even the fruits.

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