Posts Tagged ‘Tomato Garden’

Upside Down Tomato Plants: DIY

December 6th, 2009

Farmers discovered years ago that tomatoes can grow really well if you plant them upside down. Today, there are plenty of good upside down planters on the market. The only problem is that they can be expensive. But, you can easily make an upside down tomato planter yourself.

First, you need a good sturdy bucket for each plant. You will need to grow your plant to at least four inches tall before you begin. We’ve used everything from one gallon ice cream buckets to five gallon paint buckets. The main thing your bucket needs is a good handle.

A lid is also preferable, but not really necessary. Cut a hole in the bottom of the bucket. Make it only an inch or two across, you don’t want your plant to fall out. Put some potting soil in the bucket, catching what falls out for future use. Gently position your tomato plant in the hole so that the roots are inside the bucket and the stems are sticking out of the bottom.

You may enlist some help for this step unless you already have somewhere to hang your bucket where you can still reach inside. Gently fill dirt little by little around the roots. Do not pack it tight. Wrap a strip of newspaper around the stem so that it is half-way in the dirt and half-way out. This keeps bugs that may climb around the bucket from climbing down the tomato plant. This trick also works for tomatoes planted in the ground.

Finish filling the bucket with dirt because upside down tomato plants can grow a lot of roots. Because gravity is pulling down on the plant, it will grow thick sturdy stalks that may curve up into the air. They will sprout more stems per stalk than a normal tomato plant and support a lot more weight. Hang your bucket somewhere that gets a lot of sun.

If you use a lid, cut a hole in it big enough for rain to enter. Your upside down tomato plant will not need as much water as one planted in the ground because it’s soil will not drain much. Tomatoes never touch the ground and can get sun all the way around. This helps them to ripen sooner and more evenly than traditional plants. The gravity and additional circulation also helps the tomato plant produce more tomatoes and bigger tomatoes.

You want to let the soil in your tomato plant become almost dry before you water it again. Tomatoes prefer an arid climate and too much water will produce flavorless, light-colored, grainy-fleshed tomatoes like you find in many super markets. Bark-like scars on your tomatoes are a sign that you haven’t over-watered and your tomatoes can hold up to five times the nutrients of over-watered tomatoes.

Use a hose reel to keep your hose stored for the long times between watering. With your tomatoes away from bugs and pests, you could have the harvest of a lifetime this summer!

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Posted in Planting Tomatoes

Tags: Growing Tomatoes Hose Reel Tomato Garden Tomato Planter tomato tips Upside Down Tomato Plant Vegetable Garden

Tomato Growing Tips – 4 Basic Tips for your Tomato Growing Garden

December 6th, 2009

Even people who don’t claim to have green thumbs can usually grow tomatoes. They may not be edible, but they can still grow them. All kidding aside, tomato growing is not all that hard and with a little TLC, you too can grow your own tomatoes. If you’re thinking about growing your own tomatoes, you should and with some of the following tips, you’ll be picking your own tomatoes very soon and you will tell the difference between store bought and home grown. Once you start tomato growing, you will never buy another tomato from the grocery store ever again.

1. To find good tomato plants, your closest garden center is as far as you need to go to find healthy tomato plants. Ask the gardener working there to help you if you need it, but common sense can be used when choosing healthy plants for tomato growing. Most people can tell the difference between a healthy plant and a limp and wilted plant. Make sure its green with no yellowing or spotted leaves. No matter where you’re going to plant your tomatoes, either outside or in a big pot, bury your plant up to the bottom stems. This will allow the plant to sprout new roots and strengthen the tomato growing process. You can completely bury the bottom stems and then just cut them at dirt level.

2. Don’t over-feed your tomato plant. Too much nitrogen will give you a beautiful bushy plant, but not a lot of fruit. It’s a good idea to prepare the soil before you plant your tomato plant. These plants love rich humus or loamy soil and it’s a good idea to add a little potassium for strong stems and just a touch of nitrogen.

3. Water your plants thoroughly and make sure you have good drainage where ever your plants may be. If you live in hot climates and your plants are outside, make sure they will get at least a half of day of shade. Too much heat and the flowers will fall off, falling flowers means no tomatoes and this defeats the tomato growing process entirely. Cover outdoor tomato plants with some kind of mulch, either bark, pine needles or hay. Studies have proven that plants covered in black plastic mulch in early spring produces lots of tomatoes all spring and summer long, especially in cool or cold climates. Infra-red plastic mulch is even better. The person at your garden center should be able to tell you what is best for where you live.

4. Picking off the first batch of flowers will also ensure a healthier plant. Doing this will strengthen the root system and give your plants the chance to mature and fill out before bearing fruit. Stake or cadge your tomato plants so they have support and strength they need to grow big ripe tomatoes. With a little care and a little attention, you will be growing beautiful tomatoes in no time. Cherry or grape tomatoes are great for first time tomato growers. They grow great on a patio or porch and they grow by the bunch. Growing your own tomatoes will save you money and bragging rights about your successful tomato garden.

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Tags: Growing Tomatoes Tomato Garden tomato growing tips

Higher Yields from Your Tomato Garden

December 5th, 2009

The tomato garden is often a source of great pride for home gardeners. There is generally a friendly competition among the neighborhood gardeners to see who can produce the first ripe tomato, or the biggest or the most flavorful. In fact, the number one home garden project in our country is invariably growing a tomato garden. Tomatoe gardeners are constantly on the lookout for new ways to improve their production in their quest for neighborhood bragging rights. Growing the best tomato garden isn’t always a matter of using the latest and greatest magic potions from the local garden center. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of common sense and good gardening practices to produce the best possible tomato garden.

Here are a few simple tips to help you increase your tomato garden’s productivity.

Keep the fruit and foliage up off the ground:

Tomato plants can contract a number of fungal infections and diseases from contact with soil. This can happen when the tomato plant is allowed to sprawl on the ground or even when the infected soil is splashed up on the foliage during a heavy rain. Plants allowed to make contact with the ground are also prime targets for slugs and other insects as well as just plain rot. We can prevent these problems easily by trellising or tying up our tomato garden.

The trellis can be something as simple as a stake driven into the ground to which the plants are tied as they grow. Or, a cage may be used to confine the plant and hold it in an upright position. Cages can be made at home or purchased ready-made, in a variety of styles and shapes. Personally, I like the square style cages because they can be folded flat for storage in the winter and thus take up very little space. These are generally made from 4 panels of woven or welded wire with spacing between the wires large enough for your hand to fit through to pick your tomatoes.

To avoid damage to your tomato garden, it’s best to place your stakes, cages or other trellis around the plants while they are still quite small. As the plants grow, you may have to help them by arranging their branches in the right position for your trellising sytem and possibly, even tying them in place. If you tie the plants, be sure to use a soft material and don’t tie too tightly. Use a soft, bulky twine, or if you have access to them, old nylon hosiery or pantyhose make excellent tomato ties.

Give your plants plenty of room in the tomato garden. Remember that crowding reduces the flow of air through the plants and holds in humidity, both of which lead to a number of diseases which will reduce your harvest.

Remove the early suckers from the plants:

If you’ve ever looked closely at a tomato plant, you’ve probably noticed that there is a new shoot or branch coming out of every leaf node. The leaf node is the point where the tomato leaf stem comes out of the main stalk. These new shoots or branches are called suckers and they make your little tomato plant into a very full, dense bush. Each of these suckers is capable of growing, blooming and producing more tomatoes… which sounds like a very good thing when you want a nice productive tomato garden. However, remember what we said earlier about giving your plants plenty of room to make sure there is good air flow. If the suckers are allowed to grow at will, you will soon have a lovely, bushy plant…. until the high humidity days of summer. At that point, problems will begin to develop because of the lack of air flow. We want the extra production of those new branches but we don’t want to make our plant susceptible to disease. Let’s consider pruning the particularly troublesome shoots.

Start at the bottom of the plant, near the ground. The first suckers to appear will be very low and practically impossible to keep olff the ground. That means any fruit produced on those branches is going to be more likely to suffer slug damage or rot from contact with the ground. The best procedure is to pinch these off with your fingers before they get more than an inch or so long. If they’ve grown longer before you get to them, you can still remove them either by snapping them off by hand or by using your garden shears. Be sure to disinfect your shears before moving on to the next plant, though. You don’t want to risk spreading problems from one plant to another by using infected shears.

Removing these first suckers from the plant will encourage it to put out even more suckers or branches. This is good… up to a point. You will want to keep most of them because of the tomatoes they will produce but you don’t want your plant to become so full that you can no longer see through it. If it begins to reach that point, clip out a few of the suckers so that air is once again able to circulate freely. Remember that lots of branches will produce lots of smaller tomatoes. If you want BIG tomatoes, remove some of the branches. That way, the tomato plant puts all its energy into developing fewer fruits, thereby making them larger.

Toward the end of your growing season, if all has gone well, your plants will still be blooming and setting new fruit. However, late in the season we have to worry about frost killing the plants. If the fruit doesn’t have time to mature and ripen before that first frost, you will lose it. Or, if you’re so inclined, you’ll be eating lots of fried green tomatoes! A better option is to remove all the suckers that form late in the season. This will let the plant expend its energy in developing and ripening the remaining fruits, rather than in producing more foliage and blossoms that don’t stand a chance of maturing.

Mulch your tomato garden:

Always apply a layer of mulch to your tomato garden in early summer, after the soil has warmed up. This will accomplish several things. Mulch will help control weeds and will conserve moisture. It will also discourage slugs and will prevent soil from splashing up on your plants when it rains. And when you till your garden next spring, the mulch will add organic matter to your soil.

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Tags: Garden Gardener Gardening Tomato Tomato Garden

Planning Your Summer Tomato Garden

November 26th, 2009

Preparation for a bountiful harvest of tomatoes begins while snow still covers the ground. Before you can plant a beautiful row of seedlings, you must take several planning steps. Consulting a comprehensive cultivation guide on growing tomatoes will aid your planning process and help ensure you end up with a bountiful disease free crop.
Choose Your Tomato Varieties
Hundreds of choice tomato varieties abound – enough to confuse gardeners. Tomatoes come in every shape, size and color. Huge tomatoes that take two hands to carry are related to tiny grape tomatoes no larger than the top of a thumb. Purple, yellow, orange and red tomatoes all spring from the same gene pool. Perfect round tomatoes, oblong tomatoes, little marble-sized tomatoes, and huge scrunchy looking tomatoes grow around the world. Tomatoes that grow as a never-ending vine share space with tomato plants that grow in a compact, shrub form. For your summer tomato garden, choose several tomato varieties, as each variety is best suited for its own culinary responsibility, and each takes specific care and tending.
For summer-long harvesting, choose tomato plants that are “indeterminate,” or keep growing and growing and growing. These tomatoes will continue to set new fruit throughout the entire summer. These varieties are best for small cherry or grape sized tomatoes, as getting large fruit from these types of plants requires more work.
For shorter harvesting periods and larger tomatoes, choose “determinate” varieties, which grow to a certain size and stop. These plants put more energy into producing each fruit, resulting in larger, juicier fruit.
Pre-Order Seedlings or Sow Seeds
Tomatoes are fragile in the beginning. Growing a tomato from a seed and harvesting fruit in the same growing season takes advance preparation. If you prefer not to gamble with starting your own seeds, many companies offer mail-order seedlings of endless varieties. Plan for your seedlings to arrive for planting once the danger of frost is completely past. Tomato plants are tropical in origin and have little tolerance for cold.
For adventurous gardeners, harvesting a tomato grown from seed to fruit is a rewarding experience. Start seeds at least eight weeks before you wish to plant. Sow seeds thinly on a bed of light potting mix inside. Keep the seeds moist, but not overly wet. Misting daily does the trick. Once the seedlings have their second set of leaves, “prick out” the seedlings (gently remove seedlings one at a time, while holding the leaves) and plant into small pots of their own. Once frost danger has passed, “harden off” your plants by putting them outside during the day, and bringing them in at night. After a week or two of “hardening off,” you may plant outside.
Prepare the Garden Soil
While your tomato seeds are germinating on their warm and comfy windowsill, use the time to prep the garden soil. Tomatoes need an organically rich, yet well-draining soil. If you have extremely wet and heavy soil, avoid walking on it during the winter, as excessive walking with compact the soil. Add organic matter on top of the soil to help prevent winter erosion. Once the soil warms enough to be workable, double-dig the soil (Dig all of the soil out, mix in some organic matter, and put soil back in) to break up hardened areas and allow for good root penetration.
Plant the Garden
Once the soil is prepared, seedlings are hardened-off, and temperatures are warm (or warming), plant your tomato garden, and prepare for a summer of delicious harvests.
If you want more detailed tomato garden advice and tips from a world horticultural expert, visit www.bestjuicytomatoes.com

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Tags: Growing Tomatoes Tomato Diseases Tomato Garden Tomato Growing Tomato Varieties Tomatoes

Growing Great Tomatoes

November 18th, 2009

Growing tomatoes isn’t always as easy as it first may seem. If you have given tomatoes a shot, you have either had great success or miserable failure. If you are one of those people who didn’t have much luck – here are a few tricks and solutions.1. Choose the Right Variety For Your Area – Tomatoes are susceptible to quite an assortment of diseases that include bacterial spot, botrytis fruit rot, bacterial canker, bacterial wilt, fusarium wilt, mosaic, septoria leaf spot, curly top, tobacco mosaic, and early and late blights. Choosing disease-resistant plants as well as plants that are best for your climate zone is vital. In areas that are hot and humidity is high, certain diseases are more prominent. 2.) Give Tomato Plants Enough Breathing Room – Tomato plants need at least 1 1/2 feet between plants, preferably 2 feet, and that’s for plants that are grown upright on stakes or cages. Plants spaced too closely will produce few fruit and have more disease problems as the foliage stays wet. Supporting your plants with tomato cages will give them a little more room to grow. 3.) Give Tomatoes Plenty of Sun- Tomato plants need at least seven hours of direct sun. If you have less, you will have fantastic foliage but very few fruit. This brings up the topic of tomato wilt. People who have tomato plants that begin to wilt automatically assume they are getting too much sun. There are many reasons tomato plants wilt. The lack of or too much water is one. Tomato plants that stand in water for very long wilt. If soils stay saturated plants will die. This is why one should plant their tomatoes in well-drained soil or in raised beds.A third and prominent cause is a disease known as Bacterial wilt. Many gardeners describe plants with this disease as looking like they had hot water poured on them. They are fine one day and the next are permanently wilted. Bacteria actually clog the plumbing system of the plant resulting in a virtually drought. There isn’t much that can be done for bacterial wilt except to remove and destroy affected plants. Future plantings should be made in a different location. Tomatoes may be grown in containers, but if roots grow from the bottom of the container into infected soil they may contract the disease. Do not reuse stakes or ties.Other common causes of tomato wilt include Southern Blight, Fusarium Wilt and Root Knot Nematodes. Nematodes and Fusarium may be avoided by planting tomato varieties that are resistant to both of these pests. Southern Blight, however, is another one of those “overnight” killers like Bacterial Wilt. It can be recognized by white fungal growth at the soil line or by beige “seed pearl” sized balls of white, beige or brown.4.) Feed Your Tomatoes Appropriately – 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.6. Identify your pest problems – Remember, it’s normal to see insects on your plants and chances are, most of them are not doing any harm. And every year, diseases will cause some yellowing and browning. But you should get more than enough fruit to satisfy your needs even with some pest damage. At the very least, learn to identify common tomato pests so that you can take appropriate action. Use chemicals as a last resort.7. Purchase Quality Plants – If you are buying tomato seedlings, be sure to purchase only those that look healthy and green with thick stems and no tomatoes or flowers.8. Thin Plants – As plants approach 3-feet tall, remove many of the leaves from the bottom 1-foot of the stem. These leaves receive very little sunlight and are often the first to develop fungal problems.By practicing these simple eight steps, you could be well on your way in becoming a successful tomato gardener. Growing tomatoes doesn’t have to be hard, it just takes knowledge and patience.