Monday 11 August 2008

How to Grow the Perfect Tomatoes

Of all of the different vegetables that are typically grown in the garden, the tomato is by far the favorite. As a matter of fact, people have bragging rights in accordance with the size of the tomatoes that they grow in some areas. That is why it is important to make sure that you are growing the perfect tomato in every season. Even though a lot of people think that is has to do with the variety of tomato that you grow, it actually has a lot more to do with how you grow them.

Of course, you need to start with strong, healthy plants and then you need to add them to the garden properly. Many people will leave a lot of the plant sticking out of the ground in order to get a head start on the growing season but if you do, you may be hurting the plant more than helping it. A tomato plant has an amazing ability to produce roots from any part of the plant that is put underground. Whenever I first plant my tomatoes, I only leave a little bit sticking out of the ground and the rest I allow to go to root. This gives it the opportunity to pull as many nutrients out of the soil as possible.

Something else that you should start doing as soon as the tomato plant starts to grow is to pull the suckers off of the plant. These are the odd stems that seem to appear between the main stalk and any branches that are growing. Even though these will produce tomatoes on their own, they tend to draw a lot of the energy out of the plant and hurt its overall production. If you pull these as soon as they appear, you will be able to keep the plant healthy and producing large tomatoes throughout the growing season.

Finally, you need to make sure that you are treating your tomato plants organically. The last thing that you would want to do is to grow the perfect looking tomato but have it be poison on the inside because you were adding chemicals to the garden. Yes, it does take a little bit more work in order to have an organic garden but the fresh, clean vegetables that it will produce are a much better addition to your table than those with pesticides on the inside.

If you want to make your thumb greener, visit http://www.gardeningabcs.blogspot.com for more gardening tips and information.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool, Tomatoes are my favourite fruit or is that vegetable? Just one thing that I have learned from growing toms is that its better to drip irrigate under the plant

Anonymous said...

Glad I found this info - time for me to break out my green thumb!