My name is Terry Blackburn and I have published over 100 Articles on Gardening, Lawn Care, Growing Vegetables, Organic Cultivation etc.. You can find them for FREE at http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Terry_Blackburn
Many people have asked me for advice on growing tomatoes (a favourite topic I must add) and I have put together this Blog to help them answer all their questions.
Hopefully you will find all the information you require. It is the answer to any gardener’s prayers as it gives in depth coverage to the issue of “How to Grow Tomatoes!”
My love affair with growing tomatoes started on my Grandad’s Allotment when I was 6 years old. We lived in a mining village called Ashington in Northumberland and in those days the miner’s only Leisure activities in the short time they had off work were Whippet racing, the Working men’s Club (especially Bingo!) and the Annual Leek Show. The Allotment was thus my Grandad’s second home and naturally mine too.
See I lived with my grandparents because my Dad was away at sea in the Royal Navy fighting the dreaded Boche, and wasn’t de-mobbed until 1947. Naturally, while my Grandad was striving for the perfect Leeks, I tried my hand at something easier and found the very thing in growing tomatoes. I even won a prize when I was 7 years old and still have the plaque to this day. Naturally the prize money was soon spent on several tubes of Rowntree’s Fruit Gums.
So this love of growing tomatoes was almost inbred in me from early doors and tomatoes are still my favourite fruit. (don’t you dare call them vegetables!)
I hope you will find the Content on this Site to be useful. Some of it is amusing, but all the information, including that shown in the videos, is practical and down to earth stuff. Enjoy!
Determinate type tomatoes tend to set and ripen their fruit all at one time, making a large quantity available when you’re ready to make sauce. You can get indeterminate type tomatoes to set fruit earlier by pinching off the tips of the main stems in early summer.
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Water deeply and regularly while the plants are developing. Irregular watering, (missing a week and trying to make up for it), leads to blossom end rot and cracking. Once the fruit begins to ripen, lessening the water will coax the plant into concentrating its sugars. Don’t withhold water so much that the plants wilt and become stressed or they will drop their blossoms and possibly their fruit.
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Pinch and remove suckers that develop in the crotch joint of two branches. They won’t bear fruit and will take energy away from the rest of the plant. But go easy on pruning the rest of the plant. You can thin leaves to allow the sun to reach the ripening fruit, but it’s the leaves that are photosynthesizing and creating the sugars that give flavor to your tomatoes.
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Once the tomato plants are about 3’ tall, remove the leaves from the bottom 1’ of stem. These are usually the first leaves to develop fungus problems. They get the least amount of sun and soil born pathogens can be unintentionally splashed up onto them. Spraying weekly with compost tea also seems to be effective at warding off fungus diseases.
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