Growing Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes at home is easy and rewarding! If you’ve never grown tomatoes at home before, the following information should help you get started!

Cultivation- Tomatoes demand full sun. Even though they are members of the nightshade family, you cannot grow tomatoes in a dark, shady corner and have good results…sun is a must! Tomatoes love rich, deep soil and typically do best when planted in the ground. If you don’t have any garden space available, be sure to choose one of the container-tolerant varieties such as Patio. Tomatoes drink significant quantities of water and will benefit from being fed regularly with a high-calcium feed. Always plant your tomatoes a little deeper than you would other edibles or ornamentals, as tomatoes are one of the rare plants that will grow roots right up their stems; the more roots you can establish, the more shoots that will grow, and the more fruit that will be produced!
Tomatoes will benefit from some shelter from the wind, and they are sensitive to frost so you’ll need to protect them with sheets or blankets if we get a late cold snap. As well, many tomatoes will need some support so that they don’t break under their own weight. Tomato cages are support structures built just for this purpose! If you’re looking at a tomato tag and it says “indeterminate” it means it will likely need some support., “determinate” means it should be just fine left to its own devices ( FYI: “Indeterminate” varieties flower and fruit sporadically all season long. “determinate” varieties flower and fruit heavily at a single time during the year, usually July).
Before purchasing tomato plants, decide what purpose you largely want to use the fruits for…different varieties suit different purposes. Here are the basic types of tomatoes to help make your choice easier.

Cherry tomatoes- These are the very small, cherry sized tomatoes that are produced in clusters. ‘Tiny Tim’ is the best known variety but is far inferior to the newer hybrids, such as ‘Sweet 100′.

Plum or Sauce Tomatoes- These are medium sized, plum shaped tomatoes that are very densely fleshed but with little seeds or juice. They are ideal for making salsas and tomato sauces. ‘Roma’ is popular and has been around for years, but there are newer varieties (such as ‘Mamma Mia’) which are better.

Beefsteak Tomatoes- The most popular of all, these tomatoes produce large, solid fruits that are ideal for fresh eating, salads, and sandwiches. There are huge numbers of varieties available, ranging from the size of a golf ball to the size of a grapefruit! The main difference between varieties usually comes down to levels of disease resistance, days to maturity, and relative productivity. And these big beauties are available in rainbows of color; new gardeners are often surprised to discover that tomatoes are not always red. Tomatoes can also be orange, yellow, purple, or even pink or white! There is a mistaken belief that yellow tomatoes are less acidic then the red, but clinical studies and blind taste tests have proven this to be untrue.

If you have some sun and an empty pot or blank spot in your garden, try a tomato plant or two. Producing delicious and extremely health-packed fruit is simple and quick when you begin with a quality tomato plant seedling. Choose plants that are sturdy, dark green in color, slightly hairy on the stem, and also slightly red-tinged at the stem base. In a month or less, you can harvest enough tomatoes off of a single plant to adorn your whole family’s salad and hamburgers during Stampede week!