Growing Tomatoes In Pots

by admin on May 17, 2011

Growing tomatoes in pots is a great idea if you are living in an apartment or in a house on a small block or live in a cooler climate.  Growing your own tomatoes and learning how to grow tomatoes is a lot of fun and going in to spring is the time to get thinking about planting your first seeds and seedlings.

Click here for a complete guide to growing tomatoes

Why would you grow tomatoes in pots?  There are lots of advantages!  While many people love gardening they hate weeding!  That’s the first big advantage of growing tomatoes in pots, no backbreaking work to remove weeds from your large garden bed!  That has to be a big plus!

In addition, even if you do live in an apartment or a house on a small block, growing tomatoes in pots is a big space saver.  The only essential, apart from keeping the water up to them, is to get at least 6 hours of sunlight so, while you might have to move them around to do so, you will enjoy the luscious, succulent taste of vine-ripened tomatoes for a minimum of work!

That’s another thing.  It takes very little time to plant and maintain your tomatoes during the growing season and the little work you do helps keep you in touch with Mother Earth.  Perhaps the greatest advantage though, is that you minimize the chance for fungal disease through soil-borne bacteria and fungi.  If you use a reputable potting mix which has a slow release fertilizer and water-retaining crystals added there is virtually no chance you will get any attacks from soil borne fungi during the growing season and if you use a new batch of potting mix next season you will continue to grow disease free from soil borne nasties.

This is the biggest disadvantage of growing tomatoes in a bed in the back yard.  Every year you have to rotate your crop and you won’t be able to grow tomatoes in the same patch for another 3 to 4 years.  Why?

Because tomatoes take the same set of nutrients out of the soil each year and the soil becomes depleted in those nutrients but even more importantly the nasties which are attracted to your tomatoes lie in wait for the same crop next season but if you don’t grow them there, you’ve tricked them!  So if you grow your tomatoes in pots you overcome those problems.

The other advantage of growing in pots is that you can experiment with different types of tomatoes.  I would recommend at least one pot of Romas.  They are not only delicious fresh in salads but beautiful frozen or preserved  for sauces,  casseroles and jams.  As well, you can semi-dry them and store in a light olive oil with garlic and basil and use fresh for salads.  THE most versatile of the tomato varieties.  But try other varieties as well.

In Australia, the Apollo is a popular early fruiting variety, popular because they mature before Christmas in the southern hemisphere (unless you live at high altitudes).  But there are many others.  Experiment and find the varieties you prefer.

So, you’ve decided to give it a go.  What to do now?  The first thing is to decide whether you are going to growing tomatoes from seed.   But if you decide that is too much trouble, nick down to your local nursery and buy a few punnets of your favorite varieties.

Next, the pots.  If you’re going to use last season’s, make sure you wash and disinfect thoroughly, even if you are using a new potting mix.  This will ensure there is no contamination from last year’s crop.  Once done, almost fill the pot with the new potting mix.  Then dig a hole deeper than the pot from which your plants are coming because you are going to plant each tomato plant deep enough to just leave exposed the top 4 leaves.  This will ensure a stem strong enough to support the crop and if it is in a windy situation strong enough to support the stake and plant if your plant requires a stake.  It will if it is an indeterminate (tall growing vine) but it probably won’t if it is a determinate (bush tomato, e.g., Roma).

Give it a go and try growing tomatoes in pots. Get started now and learn how to grow your own tomatoes and enjoy the fruits of your labor! Picking your own tomatoes and having them so fresh is just the best taste and feeling.

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    Growing Tomatoes From Seed

    by admin on May 10, 2011

    Growing tomatoes from seed is a truly satisfying experience.  Keen to get these tomato seeds out and ready to produce! OK, so you’ve been down to the local nursery and bought the types of seeds you think you will enjoy. What’s the next step?

    The most crucial factor is that all danger of frosts has disappeared before you transplant your seeds into the garden plot (or your pots) because the frost will kill them.  Tomatoes are just like us, they have their temperature preferences which happen to lie in the ranges of about 15 degrees Celsius to about 30 degrees (60 – 85 degrees Fahrenheit).  Temperatures will vary according to your latitude and altitude.  So, I like to get a head start and have my seedlings ready to transplant as soon as the danger of frosts is over.  So how do we do that?

    The obvious answer is to grow them indoors.  You have to choose a warm sunny spot to get the seeds to germinate (grow from the seed to a seedling with leaves).  A window sill behind glass is ideal as long as it gets some warm sunshine.  Your seeds should germinate within 6 to 12 days depending on the amount of warm sunshine.  You need a good seed raising medium to grow your seeds in.  Your nurseryman will help you with this but a dedicated seed raising mix of peatmoss, perlite and vermiculite is an excellent medium to get your seeds started.

    What pots are you going to use?  You might have some old pots lying around in the back yard so you might want to re-use them given that there is so much emphasis on re-cycling these days.  That’s fine, as long as you clean them up first because they carry the threat of fungal disease from their previous use.

    Now that you have your pots, your seeds and your seed raising mix, the next task is to actually plant the seeds.  Wet your seed raising mix first, then plant your seeds about 1/8”  (3mm) deep and about an inch apart (2.5cm).  If you’re using conjoined pots which are designed to take a single plant in each small pot that’s all you need to plant, although I still plant 2 seeds per pot in case one doesn’t germinate.  If you get 2 to germinate then when it comes time to transplant into a bigger pot or into the garden pull out the weaker one and dispose of hygienically.

    As soon as germination has taken place and the stem begins to emerge, your seeds need to be moved into the sunlight as they will soon start to form cotyledons, the first leaves or seed leaves.

    Sunlight is necessary now for photosynthesis to take place.  This is the process of the plant using sunlight, nutrients and water to manufacture plant food.

    When the plants are about 2” (5cms) tall and have grown their first true leaves it is time to transplant them into a bigger pot.  Now, if you have planted your seeds directly into a large (6”) pot that will be large enough until the plants need to be transplanted into the garden or your final pot.

    The plants need about 6 hours of sunlight now to grow strongly and produce food.  You might need to move them around the house to get sufficient sunlight.

    When all danger of frost has gone, before you plant them out into their final resting place, it is a good idea to “harden them off”.  This simple means put them outside for a few days to get used to outside temperatures.

    As the seedlings grow you can keep growing tomatoes in pots or move them to a garden bed. Depending on where you are and the time of year growing tomatoes indoors is an option too.

    I hope that helps you.

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      Cherry Tomatoes Easy To Grow And Taste

      April 10, 2011

      Cherry tomatoes, as the name implies, are about the same size as a cherry.  They still have the delicious, tangy taste of all their bigger brothers and sisters but they come in a convenient size for lunch boxes and salads.  What more could you ask for! Added to that they are so easy to grow. [...]

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        Freezing Tomatoes To Deal With The Surplus

        April 10, 2011

        Tomatoes are such a wonderful crop.  Home grown they are deliciously tasty and brilliantly healthy and no matter how much we stagger the plantings to ensure delicious, tasty tomatoes all summer long, they still provide us with more than we can eat!  So what to do with the surplus?  To be sure, we will give [...]

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          Tomatoes Fertilizers That Nourish Healthy Tomatoes

          April 10, 2011

          If you’re going to the trouble of growing your own tomatoes at home it is obvious that you are interested in getting the best flavors from your endeavors, otherwise you would buy them from the greengrocer’s.  The best flavors come from the healthiest plants and the healthiest plants are those which are fed and watered [...]

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            Tomatoes Cages For A Better Crop

            April 10, 2011

            If you’re growing indeterminate tomatoes in a garden bed you have a choice of staking or caging your tomatoes. We cage or stake to support the tall growing indeterminate varieties to keep the foliage and fruit off the ground.  The nemesis of tomato growers is fungal infection and if we do all within our means [...]

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              When To Plant Tomatoes

              March 23, 2011

              Before even contemplating when to plant tomatoes you need to decide what you’re going to plant.  Do you like the small, cherry-type tomatoes or the larger varieties?  What are you going to do with your surplus?  How are you going to store them? Answering these questions will help to decide what varieties you are going [...]

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                Watering Tomatoes

                March 23, 2011

                Watering Tomatoes – for the novice the first question to ask about growing your tomatoes once you have planted them out into their final growing spot is, how much water and how often? The answer to that depends on where you have planted your seedlings out, i.e., in open garden or in a pot and [...]

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                  Planting Tomatoes

                  March 23, 2011

                  Planting tomatoes is such a big topic!  So many things to consider!  Why? Where? When? How? What? “Why”, of course is easy to answer!  Who doesn’t enjoy the delicious taste of freshly picked, ripe tomatoes off the vine over the tough, tasteless variety you get from the supermarket?  Enough said?  Not quite!  What about the [...]

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                    Tomatoes Plant Care

                    March 23, 2011

                    Tomatoes plant care revolves around the answers to many questions such as: how much to water, when to water, where to water; what to prune, when to prune; what to feed, when to feed. Dealing with the first set of questions first regarding watering.  Plants can’t grow without water, we all know that but too [...]

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