How to grow Tomatoes

Tomato Stakes

• Generally, staking produces larger tomatoes but less quantity than caging.

• A common 2 metre (6 foot) tomato stake may be purchased from many garden centres.

• The stake should be driven in the soil about one ft deep, 7 to 12 cm (3 to 5 inches) from the plant.

• Be sure to avoid driving the stake on the root side of plants that have been trench planted.

• Trench planted tomatoes should be staked immediately after planting while the location of the buried stem is fresh in mind.

• Use a strip of cloth, nylon stocking, or heavy string to tie the plant to the stake.

Tomato Cages

• Tomato cages produce most fruit.

• Tomato cages may be made by using a 1.75 metres (5½ foot) length of concrete reinforcing wire or pasture wire.

• The wire will form a circle 50 cm (18 to 20 inches) in diameter.

• Fencing wire is not suitable, as the holes are too small to enter a hand and remove grown fruit.

• The bottom horizontal ring of the wire cage should be cut off so that the ends can be pushed into the ground.

• After setting the cage in place over the tomato plant, drive 2 or 3 stakes around the outside edge of the cage to give it extra support.

Tomato Pruning

• Unless you're growing a bush tomato, the aim is to create a single-stemmed plant.

  • To do this, snap out shoots that grow in leaf joints and when your plant has produced four good sets of flowering trusses, pinch out the growing tip.

  • This will ensure all its energy goes into producing fruit.

• Remove all leaves that are touching the ground because of the accessibility to bugs and disease, as well as moisture-related problems .

Tomato Watering

• Water plants daily and once flowers have started to appear, feed with tomato fertiliser every week to ensure the best fruit.

• When the soil around tomato plants is allowed to dry out, a serious problem results.

• Calcium, one of the handful of minerals needed by all plants to grow, is absorbed by the plant's roots along with water.

• If water is limited, so is calcium.

  • The result is blossom-end rot, a brown, dry, leathery spot found on the bottom of fruit.

  • Don't be fooled by magic remedies that promise to fix this.

  • Special fertilizers, egg shells or a Tums tablet placed next to the plant won't make a difference.

  • Only water will make the difference.

• So make sure your soils don't dry out and use mulch to help conserve moisture.

Tomato Feeding

• Feed the plants, but not too much

  • Tomatoes like a balanced fertilizer, with similar amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

  • Avoid using fertilizers that are intended for lawns. The high nitrogen will push the leaves at the expense of fruit.

  • Look for fertilizers designed for tomatoes and follow the label directions.

  • Or better yet, throw a shovel full of compost around the plants every other week.

How to grow Tomatoes - Baskets and Pots

• Line a 13in basket with a polythene-backed sisal and jute liner.

• Mix a water-retaining product (Chempak Supergel and Phostrogen Swellgel are current Which? Best Buys) and a slow-release fertiliser (Westland Feed-all Slow Release Plant Food and Phostrogen Slow Release Plant Food Granules are current Best Buys) into the compost before filling your basket. This will help reduce the need to water and feed the plants.

• Sit the basket on a bucket or flower pot to keep it stable and fill with compost. Avoid using John Innes compost as this will make the basket very heavy. Don't fill to the brim as you need to allow room for watering.

• Place a tomato plant in the centre of the basket (sow seed undercover in April or buy young plants in May or June), firm in and water in well.

• Keep your basket in a frost-free place until all risk has passed, then hang in a sunny, sheltered position.

• Keep your basket well watered to avoid split fruit. This may mean watering twice a day in hot weather.

How to grow Tomatoes - Harvesting

• If you find yourself with a glut of green tomatoes at the end of the growing season, try putting a few in a kitchen drawer with a banana to encourage them to ripen.

How to grow Tomatoes - Store & Preserve

• Fruit that is fully ripened on the vine has a much fuller flavour than fruits that are picked early and then allowed to ripen.

  • Many cherry tomatoes, however, have a tendency to crack if they stay on the plant, so they should be picked at the peak of redness, or even just before.

  • When daytime autumn temperatures are consistently below 16°C (60°F), fruit will no longer ripen on the vine, so it is time to bring all mature green fruits indoors, either on the vine or off.

• Storing ripe fruit.

  • Wash and dry your tomatoes before storing.

  • Unless you're planning to store your tomatoes for over a week, a windowsill, counter-top or bowl works fine.

  • If you know you won't use them in the next few days, then lower temperatures (a cool entryway, the refrigerator) will help preserve the fruit.

  • Contrary to common practice, storing in a refrigerator is not otherwise recommended, as the cooler temperatures can reduce flavour and cause mushiness.

  • Your fresh-picked tomatoes will last longer on the kitchen counter than store-bought ones, which are probably a few days past picking when you get them.

• If you end up with too many tomatoes to eat at one time, try these storage methods:

• 1. Canning, which will preserve your tomatoes for a year or more.

  2. Freezing, which can be used for up to eight months.

  3. Drying, which can keep tomatoes for more than a year.

• Ripening green fruit is a topic that causes controversy.

  • Most of us grew up placing unripe tomatoes on a sunny windowsill -- with the emphasis on sunny.

  • However, every expert source recommends placing them in a paper bag. Light, so essential to growth and to setting fruit, is not needed to ripen the fruit. Hence, the dark place.

  • While light is unnecessary, humidity and temperature control are critical during ripening. Tomatoes kept on a counter-top can become too dry, while those in a plastic bag can mould or ferment. Hence the paper bag.

  • Temperature is also important, and the paper bag acts as a miniature greenhouse, trapping some of the day's heat.

  • There's another advantage to the bag. Tomatoes, like most fruit, emit ethylene gas as they ripen. This gas is a by-product of ripening, and is also a stimulant for ripening.

  • When you store unripe tomatoes in a bag, the ethylene emitted by the riper ones will stimulate the others to ripen.

  • Since most fruits emit ethylene, you can use another, ripe fruit to hasten the ripening process. Bananas work especially well because they emit more ethylene than most fruits.

  • If the bag doesn't appeal to you, remember that one of the best sources of heat is still the sun and the sunny windowsill.

  • If you turn them daily, rotting is unlikely, the light may not be helpful, but it doesn't hurt, and the humidity control is not much of an issue with nearly-ripe fruit.

• If it's the end of the season, and you're dealing with quantities of green tomatoes still on the vine, the time-honoured method of ripening tomatoes indoors is to cut the vines and hang them intact, upside down, in a dark place.

  • Believe it or not, most of these tomatoes will indeed ripen.

  • Those picked when their outer color changes to a lighter, more translucent shade of green known as mature green will fare better than those that are still a dark green.

  • These very unripe fruit are candidates for other uses.

• You can find recipes for chutney, pickles, and even pie made from green tomatoes.