Learning to grow your own tomatoes in your own home is an easy way to be sure you don't waste another penny buying the much and tasteless store variety. Rather than eating tomatoes that have been transported cross country, you get to gather up your own fresh crops right from your own backyard.
The key to growing tomatoes successfully is making sure they get enough heat. This is easy. All you do is cover the soil surrounding your plants with a dark plastic sheet. You can use black trash bags as an inexpensive solution. The plastic will hold the heat from the sun in the soil and the plants will absorb it. Another benefit to this is that the plastic will also help keep the weeds under control. This saves you a lot of time spent pulling them out of the tomato beds. Be sure that each individual plant has plenty of space for growing. Allow no less than 20" between each plant. Tomatoes will grow the best whenever they're buried about 75% into your soil.
Plant Food
Once you're tomatoes are planted it's time to put around a gallon of water on them to help them make the transition. Now you ought to plan on giving them about 2" of water every week, either by regularly watering them or rain. Be sure you keep the watering schedule consistent. That way your plant won't get too dry. Tomatoes need lots of water in order to grow fat and full of juice. Sun and rain exposure depends on the climate so make sure to make adjustments accordingly.
Here is a little known tip for growing tomatoes - don't mulch your beds until about a week after planting. The much may cause a quick drop in your soil temperature. This can shock newly planted tomatoes. After heat is absorbed into your soil and your tomatoes grow a bit stronger, they're better fit to withstand any changes from mulching.
How To Grow Strong Healthy Plants
Within a couple of weeks of tomato planting the vines are going to need support. Your best choice for this is a 5' trellis. Gardening twine works just fine for tying the vines up loosely to your trellis. Be careful to use the plants natural shape as a guide. Whenever they reach about 3" tall, you can prune the bottom leaves. This will keep any fungus away. There might also be some suckers growing up around your vine. These need to be pruned off as well. If not, they'll pull the energy out of your plants. One way to increase your crop is to give your trellis a gentle shake once a week. This will help to spread the pollen around better.
Harvesting Your Tomatoes
You may not believe it but more is not necessarily better for fertilizing tomato plants. It causes them to grow too fast and keeps them from achieving maximum health. This also makes them a lot more susceptible to pest attacks as well as making them to spoil faster. That means you'll miss out on a lot of those delicious tomatoes you've grown. Think about growing your tomatoes organically and leave out the harsh chemicals. This is not just better for good health, but it takes a lot of the guesswork out of the whole process.
You can expect your first tomatoes within a couple of months. They'll turn from green into a beautiful brilliant red. Once ripe they have some give to them rather than being rock hard like unripe one. Let them ripen out on the vine. Then when it gets just right you can pluck it off the vine and eat it. It is really satisfying to know you can do something like this right in your own backyard.
For more information about growing tomatoes please visit our website Home Grown Tomatoes.
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