Tomato Advice
Advice and Tips for Growing Your Own Tomatoes
If you would like to grow your own tomatoes, then we would like to help. Home-grown tomatoes taste so much better than shop-bought and they are easier to grow than you think.
To guide you on your way we have put together handy information, advice and tips that we have collected over our 15 years of growing.
Our Gardening Angels love to grow up to nine varieties each season using our Grow range of growing kits.
The bumper harvests that our pots and planters produce means there is always plenty to share with our visitors.
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Where to grow
The key to growing successful tomatoes is to find a sunny, sheltered spot and keep them regularly watered and fed.
When growing tomatoes, you need to choose a variety that will be suited to your location and the space you have available.
Tomatoes varieties either grow as vines or bushes. Vine types are best suited to growing in greenhouses due to their large size and the care they require. Bush types are more compact so they're the ideal size for pots.
Varieties to grow
There are literally hundreds of varities of tomatoes to choose from with many different colours, shapes and flavours.
Here's some of our favourites....
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Country Taste |
Cristal |
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IIdi |
Rosada |
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Tigerella |
Sowing
To grow successfully from seed, tomatoes require an optimum tempertaure of 18°C to 22°C (68°F to 75°F) and plenty of bright light. The seeds will need to be germinated indoors (on a window sill or greenhouse) to protect them from frosts.
When to sow your tomato seeds depends on where you plan to grow.
Here is a guideline:
• Heated propagator or heated greenhouse - sow January to early February
• Unheated propagator or unheated greenhouse - sow late February to early March
• Outdoors - sow late March to early April
Once the seeds are strong and healthy young plants, they can be transferred to their final growing position - if this is to be outside, you need to ensure that all chance of frost has passed.
What do I need to get sowing?...
1. Seeds - From a garden centre or choose from our range of new starter seed packs.
Each starter pack includes 4 packets of seeds for £5.80.
2. Compost
3. Seed trays or small pots - For sowing your seeds until ready to re-plant at 12 - 15cm tall.
Growing On
Unless you are growing in one of our Grow kits and using our plant nutrients , feed your tomatoes with a general liquid fertiliser until they are established. Following that use a high potash fertiliser to encourage your tomatoes to flower and fruit. Keep them weed-free and keep an eye out for the common pests.
For easy maintenance and superior yields (more to feast upon), a growing kit can make all the difference. Growing kits ensure your plants will get just the right amount of nutrients and will never be over or under-watered - helping to keep you stocked up with tomatoes..
What do I need to get growing on? ...
A large growing container (usually a large pot) or our clever Self-watering Pots
Quadgrow Self-watering pots (set of 4 or 8)
Standard pots are fine, but this best-selling set of self-watering veg pots let’s you go on holiday while it keeps plants perfectly nourished so that they produce bigger harvests. We think you’ll never use a standard pot to grow edibles again. . We harvest over 7.9kg of tomatoes in our Quadgrow.
Harvest results - Click here to see ours
Caring for
Bush varieties require no sideshooting and just tying to a cane should provide enough support.
Cordon varieties do require sideshooting - this involves removing the new shoots that grow between the leaf and the stem.
Much of the time it is usually better to tie cordon varieties up with string and twist the growing point around the string as the plant grows.
Usually the growing tip is pinched out when the plant reaches a required height (dependant on greenhouse space and length of season). However, due to the speed of growth achieved with our hydro systems, we employ a technique called layering, which allows the plants much greater length.
Taller plants will require some removal of the lower leaves, known as deleafing, to encourage ripening of fruit.
To get the earliest fruit, dampen the pollen slightly by spraying the first flowers with a fine mist of water.
As flowers appear on indoor tomatoes, tapping the trusses gently will help encourage fruit set.
Need more advice?
Our Gardening Angels are always on hand to help you with any 'caring for' questions you may have.
Simply pop us an email at info@greenhousesensation.co.uk or give us a call on 0845 602 3774. We will have your questions answered in less than 2 working hours.
Pests and diseases
Tomato blight is your main worry here as it will directly affect the fruit. Leaf edges become brown and the fruits develop with blackened patches. You will need to remove and burn any affected areas as soon as you spot them. Unfortunately, there is no organic treatment for blight, but newer species (Ferline for example) have some resistance.
Watch out for slugs.
If growing in a greenhouse, you’ll need to check plants for aphids, whitefly and red spider mite. A damp greenhouse will keep red spider mite under control as will washing your plants down with soapy water. Plant some French marigolds nearby to deter whitefly.
Did you know?
Plants that receive the perfect balance of water and nutrients are healthier and stronger, helping them to also have a greater resistance to pests and diseases.
Most problems occur when plants receive too much water or too little so knowing how much to provide usually involves a little guesswork and green fingers.
If you would like to grow tomatoes more successfully then our Quadgrow 4x Self-watering Pots may be just what you are looking for. These 11 litre pots are the ideal size for your tomatoes and thanks to clever SmartMat Strip powered watering, we guarantee you'll have a bumper harvest.
Harvesting
Harvest can begin from mid-May and continue through October depending on where they're grown (when using our hydro systems in a greenhouse you could even still be picking in December).
Pick the fruits as and when they ripen.
As the end of the season you’ll find a lot of green fruit. These can be picked and left to ripen in a sunny spot. Place a couple of ripe bananas or apples next to them to help them ripen.
In 2009, we enjoyed a fabulous harvest of 7.9kg of tomatoes.
We grew 4 varieties, Scarlatto, San Marzano, Rosada and Sweet Million in our Quadgrow 4x Self-watering Pots and our Gardening Angel Victoria closely followed their progress.
To see and follow this growing diary, just click here.
What Do I Need?
To get started you will need ...
Seeds -
from a garden centre or choose from our range of new starter seed packs.
Each starter pack includes 4 packets of seeds for £5.80.
Compost
Seed trays or small pots -
for sowing your seeds until ready to re-plant at 12 - 15cm tall.
To 'grow on' your seedlings you will need ...
A large growing container or our clever self-watering pots for a guaranteed successful harvest.
For Great Tomatoes Simply..
choose our set of 4x Self-watering Pots - Quadgrow
Grow bumper tomatoes on your patio or in your greenhouse with our self- watering pot kits. Your tomatoes are kept nourished thanks to the clever Smart-Mat powered watering.
We harvest over 7.9kg of tomatoes in our Quadgrow.
Harvest results - Click here to see ours
Need more help? Ask our Gardening Angels
If you would like more information on growing tomatoes or simply have a question you would love answering, our Gardening Angels can help.
