Tomatoes

Simple to grow and great for home cooking!

Tomatoes can be grown easily from seeds. Sow them in a small pot and cover with either a propagator or a plastic bag to ensure that the seedlings are kept warm.

Once the plants begin to flower, move to a 23cm pot. Note that if you’d like to keep the plant outside it will need to be hardened before doing so. Make sure you’re watering the plant regularly and that the soil is always moist. 

Tomatoes can be grown as a bush; there’s no need to trim or support them. Alternatively, they can be grown as cordon; tomatoes that simply need to be tied to a bamboo cane and the sideshoots need to be trimmed after reaching 2.5cm in size.

Top Tips 

– Feed every 14 days with fertiliser to encourage fruit growth before using a ‘high in potash’ fertiliser. 

– Watch out for blossom end rot, this can come about due to infrequent watering, to avoid this make sure you water the plants regularly!

– If you pick a tomato that is slightly unripe, set in a warm dark place to ripen. Alternatively you can place it near a banana to ripen quickly!

Key timings