tomato plants Archives - Page 2 of 6

14 Tips to Grow Happy Tomato Plants

Just dropping in for a quick list of successful tomato tips.

DETERMINATE tomato plants produce a heavier yield at one time and are best for canning.
INDETERMINATE tomatoes bear fruit throughout the summer and tend to sprawl. Best for continual eating enjoyment.
Transplant tomatoes when all danger of frost is past. Put in well drained soil, and mix in some humus or compost if needed.
Putting plastic jugs over the plants creates a greenhouse effect and can help them grow faster. Just keep an eye on daytime temperatures.
Transplant on a cool evening to prevent wilt and transplant shock. Space plants two feet apart in rows three feet apart.
Snip off bottom leaves and plant DEEP. Leave about 4-6 inches of crown above the ground with the leaves on. The plant shoots roots from the entire stem underground, developing a better system.
“Mud in” your new tomatoes. Dig the hole three times larger than the root ball, place the plant in, and fill halfway up with water. Then carefully pack dirt around the plant.
Always “side dress” your new tomatoes. Make a ring around the plant about one foot away, sprinkle 10-10-10 garden fertilizer in the ring, and water well. READ THE DIRECTIONS on all fertilizers so you don’t burn your plants.
Keep the plants watered according to weather conditions. Don’t overwater, as this results in poor aeration and stem rot. Mulch if desired.
Keep the area weed free, but don’t hoe too close to the plant. This breaks off the roots that supply water to the fruit.
Before they start setting fruit, dust the plants about every ten days with a good combination insecticide and fungicide. Do this before they show symptoms, because it’s difficult to stop blight once it’s started. If blight does infest your plants, DO NOT plant tomatoes in the same area the next year.
Two common problems with tomato plants are “leaf roll” and “white shoulders.” Leaf roll is caused by too much fertilizer or herbicide spray. White shoulders appear on the tomatoes and are caused by extremely high temperatures.
Plants may be allowed to sprawl over the ground, but they produce better fruit if tied to stakes at least four feet tall. All indeterminate plants should be staked.
Before first frost, pull up your tomatoes and hang them upside down in a protected place. Many of the green tomatoes will ripen. Keep dry or mold will occur.

These tips will keep your tomato plants happy, and you happy, all summer long.

Great Tips For Plating Tomato Seedlings

Tips on How to Successfully Plant Tomato Seedlings.

Do you think planting tomatoes is that easy? For people who already know the techniques behind tomato planting, it is kind of easy. However, it will be difficult but challenging for those who still want to start planting tomato seeds.

Here are the few tips on how to plant tomato seedlings:

1. Avoid crowding of the seedlings.

Eggshells The Secret To Great Tomatoes

Growing Tomato Tips tomato plant, tomato plants

If you are a gardener trying to produce the best growing tomatoes possible, you have probably come across many different ideas along the way. Have you ever wondered if using eggshells will help you have a healthier tomato plant? Crushed egg shells are an exceptional way to add calcium and nutrients to the soil.

An eggshell contains about 95% calcium carbonate. The remaining 5% is comprised of calcium phosphate, magnesium carbonate, and proteins. Because tomato plants have a tendency towards blossom-end rot, increasing the calcium level in the soil can help the plant avoid that disease.

As an added bonus, eggshells help deter cats from the garden as the shells irritate their paws. Slugs, cutworms, and snails will also be discouraged from bothering your garden due to the sharpness of the eggshell pieces.

Growing Tomatoes The Right Way

Growing Tomatoes Guide tomato plants, tomatoes

Green thumb or no green thumb, a practical way to beat inflation is to learn how to grow tomatoes, garlic, squash and other crops right in your backyard. By learning to plant tomatoes and other vegetables, you and your family won’t run the risk of getting hungry again – no matter what economic status your country will succumb to.

One thing to remember and one thing you need to remind yourself time and time again is that to grow tomatoes successfully, it doesn’t happen overnight. Tomatoes also don’t fall from the sky when you wish for them. It takes patience, time and more knowledge about the do’s and don’t of planting tomatoes.

First things first, don’t crowd the seedlings. This is especially important of you want to grow tomatoes from seed. They need room to branch out. If they’re placed closer together, it can inhibit their growth. This means, you need to transplant them when you see their first true leaves coming out. You need to move them in 4-inch pots about 2 weeks afterwards.

Tomato Plant Diseases

Diseases And Pests soil, tomato plant diseases, tomato plants

There are sooo many diseases that can attack your tomato plants that it’s mind boggling. Here are a few of the most common tomato plant problems:

– Early Blight – caused by a soil born fungus and the culprit is excessive water and affects the foliage and the fruit.

– Blossom Rot – is caused by a low concentration of calcium in the fruit

– Late Blight – also caused by a fungus which manifests in moist soils and affects the foliage and the fruit.

There are ways to help combat these diseases and the fall is absolutely the BEST time to do it. If you are a serious gardener and want to produce your best crop ever, then you need to start conditioning your soil now. The following are some great organic ways to get that soil ready:

1. Pull out all the dead plants and if diseased burn or bag up and throw away.

2. Till up the soil to get it ready for a thick layer of your home made compost.

3. Mix compost and a fertilizer low in nitrogen but high in superphosphate, such as 4-12-4 or 5-20-5, (for calcium) in a big 5 gallon bucket, add water to make a tea like mixture and spread mixture generously over the entire garden.

4. Cover entire garden area with a thick layer of your home made mulch. (Made of grass clippings, wood chips, coffee grounds, dead leaves etc.)

How I Grow Tomatoes In My House

Growing Tomatoes Guide tomato plants

A lot of people love the idea to grow tomatoes in their garden or backyard. But, there are others who are not capable of doing it because of two factors which are the weather and space. In order to address this problem, they should have the knowledge about growing tomatoes indoors. Growing tomatoes indoors provide you with the advantage of growing and harvesting tomatoes all throughout the year. It does not care no matter how good or bad your geographical location or weather is. It also does not really require a very wide amount of space. Now, the question is, “How does growing tomatoes indoors being done?”.

When growing tomatoes indoors, there are several essential things that you must bear in mind: light, heat, humidity, soil balance, and tomato variety. Before growing tomatoes indoors, you should first be able to identify the right tomato variety to be grown. Since, you are onto growing tomatoes indoors, choose tomato varieties which do not grow that big. In order to keep your tomatoes growing, you also have to consider them receiving enough amount of light. But, how would you be able to do that if you are growing tomatoes indoors where sunlight is impossible to penetrate? For that matter, the solution would be to have “grow lights”.

Grow lights are just lamps or bulbs that are used as a replacement for sunlight. Today, there are lots of “grow lights” that are energy efficient. This is because these grow lights should be turn on for 12 to 15 hours daily, and having energy efficient grow lights can save you up some cash. Humidity and heat also play very important roles when growing tomatoes indoors. Without humidity and heat, it would be impossible to grow your tomato seeds. The heat is for the germination process of the seeds and humidity is for providing moisture to your tomato plants. The balanced amount of nutrients in your garden soil is also very necessary in order to provide your tomato plants with the right amount of nutrients that they need to stay healthy.

Preventing Tomato Frost Damage

Growing Tomato Advice tomato plant, tomato plants

Growing tomatoes are the most sought out vegetable for a home gardener. There is something special about trying to produce the best growing tomatoes possible and eating the ripe fruit straight out of the garden – particularly the cherry or grape variety! Nothing compares to the taste of a tomato that has ripened on the vine. It is important to protect and save these sun loving tomato plants during a frost.

The perfect temperature range for a tomato plant is 64 – 75 degrees, and no lower than 55 degrees. If it gets too cold, you might see curling of the leaves, the tomatoes may show scarring with holes, or the pollination may be poor. A tomato plant will stop producing fruit when the nights turn cold, however, any fruit already on the plant will continue to ripen.

The following three tips on how to save tomato plants during a frost will help you produce the best growing tomatoes attainable:

5 Keys to Growing Your Own Tomato Plants

Grow Tomato Plants homegrown tomatoes, plant leaves, tomato plants

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.

14 More Tips For Happy Tomato Plants

Growing Tomato Tips green tomatoes, tomato plants 0 Comment

Just dropping in for a few more fascinating facts and useful tomato tips.

Indeterminate tomato vines can grow up to 50 feet and live for years in the right climate. Northern Minnesota is not the right climate to support such growth.
Tomato plants absorb water and nutrients through their leaves, so give them a good (gentle) spritz once a week or so, in the early morning (never in the late afternoon or evening) until they are thoroughly soaked. Caution: If it has rained, don’t manually top water. Wet plants spread disease, so only top water if you really need to do so.
To encourage bees to visit your tomato garden, inter-plant yellow snapdragons and yellow marigolds. The bees are attracted to the snaps or marigolds and stop off at the tomato blossoms, too, thereby pollinating the tomatoes on their rounds of the garden. This results in greater yields for you. If you’re really worried about pollination, give your plants a gentle shake every day when flowers open up until they begin to set fruit. This helps with self-pollination, or at least my grandmother thought so.
Prune your tomato plants early in the season by using a clean, sharp bypass shears. Please don’t just pinch off the leaves with your fingernails unless you’ve just gotten a new French manicure. Cut off the bottom few leaves and remove suckers (small branches growing in the node of another branch). Don’t over-prune, and stop pruning once your plants are setting fruit.
Night temperatures are almost as important for setting blossoms (and increasing yields) as proper nitrogen fertilization. Keep your tomato babies warm at night by covering with clear plastic or mini-greenhouses (milk jugs with the tops cut off) until night temperatures warm up to a steady 50 degrees.
If you live in a cold area with well water, keep in mind that your water may be 40 degrees or less coming out of the well. Do you tomato babies a favor in the spring and water them with tepid water instead of straight from the hose.
Keep your tomatoes well watered until late August (or near the end of the growing season in your area). After that, water less because dryer conditions cause the fruit to ripen more quickly.
Don’t fertilize your plants after the first week of August because that encourages plant growth at the expense of fruit set. Overfertilization causes many problems, so just stop feeding your tomatoes too much.
Some green tomatoes will ripen after you pick them and some won’t. About two weeks after they are done growing, tomatoes start to lose their chlorophyl ripen into the tastier red color. If you store green ones in the hope they will ripen, choose lighter colored, larger green tomatoes. Use smaller, darker ones in recipes.
Store green or immature red tomatoes in a cool place (50-60 degrees), not the refrigerator. Pop them into a paper bag and keep them dry. They don’t need light to ripen.
Root prune your tomato plants at the end of the season before you dig them up to hasten ripening. Take a spade and make a six inch deep circle all around your plants about a foot away from the base. This cuts off the top roots and and jump starts ripening before you would normally dig up the plants for the season.
Always wash your gardening tools each time you are done using them. A thorough rinse with the hose is sufficient. At the end of the season, wash all tools, stakes, cages, trellises, etc. with bleach solution (10 percent bleach, 90 percent water), dry thoroughly, and store properly.
Mulch is your friend. Want to go cheap on the mulch? Use newspaper (no glossy pages please). Just lay it down around your plants and in between rows, and replace when the paper has composted beyond usefulness. Straw is cheap for some people; clean bark or wood chips cost a little more; or you can spend a million dollars on the latest top of the line mulch just by asking your friendly greenhouse associate.
The fourth Wednesday in August in Valencia, Spain is reserved for the annual La Tomatina festival, during which time more than 220,400 pounds of tomatoes are thrown by the crowds–at each other.

These tips will help you make the most of your tomato harvest!

Cultivating Tomato Seeds Into Blossoming Plants

Tomato Seeds tomato plant, tomato plants, tomato seeds 0 Comment

To grow tomatoes from seeds is very easy.The project is also worthwhile. There are many tomato seed varieties you can choose from, and the fun part is experimenting with the varieties you can buy.

Start Out With Seeds

For growing tomato seeds into plants, you would want to grow them indoors first, which would usually be a maximum of eight weeks in the beginning of spring. The only time you transfer your plants outdoors is after the initial period.

It is also possible to place your plant in a container such as a pot, and then place the pot in a location where the growing tomatoes seeds can receive enough sunlight.

Seeds should be thinly scattered in a tray filled with compost first to aid in their growth. These growing tomatoes seeds grow best in warm conditions; the tray should be kept in a warm place. Cling film can also be stretched over the tray so that the soil will not easily dry out. The cling film can easily be removed as the growing tomatoes seeds become taller.