Tips for Harvesting Healthy Tomatoes in your Garden

Articles on Gardening | Topics: gardening, gardens, garden

by Nara Franco

Tips for Harvesting Healthy Tomatoes in your Garden

Tomatoes are one of the most important vegetables in any garden. They are colorful, versatile, delicious and a fun way to share your garden with you friends and neighbors. Tomatoes are easy to grow, both in a container and in your very own garden. There are many types of tomatoes such as Roma, Beefsteak, and the typical red round ones. But there are more than 4,000 types of tomatoes. In the following you will find some fun facts, instructions, and information on different varieties and a few special recipes.

Growing Tomatoes: Getting Started

If you are a first time tomato planter, it is important to know that they are put into two different types, depending on how they grow. The first type is determinates. They can grow from vines that reach a certain point and will stop growing. They are usually smaller plants. Determinates give fruit earlier in the year. Indeterminates have vines that grow continuously throughout the year. But, they need support to grow. Determinates work well in containers and a smaller garden space, while indeterminates grow best in cages or on a trellis.

The tomato is a tender, long maturing, warm-season crop. But, because starter plants are so very easy to find in nurseries, the best thing is for you to buy them already as plants and not as seeds. Some starter plants appear with certain codes to tell you what diseases they are resistant to when you by them from a garden store, here are the codes:

N – resistance to Nematodes

A – resistance to Altermaria leaf spot

V – resistance to Verticilium wilt

FF – resistance to Race 1 and Race 2 Fusarium

T – resistance to Tobacco mosaic virus

F – resistance to Fusarium wilt

L – resistance to Septoria leaf spot

Make sure to buy a plant that has green leaves with no yellow speckling. If you buy starter plants from a nursery, make sure to get healthy plants. The best plants for transferring are plants that are five to seven weeks old. Make sure to look at the bottom of the container when you first purchase the tomato plants. If the roots are sticking out of the drainage holes, they have been in the container for too long. That means that the plant will most likely grow fewer tomatoes or won't grow at all.

Growing Tomatoes from Seeds

If you want to grow your tomatoes from seeds, be sure to sow your seeds indoors for six to eight weeks before the last cold weather. The seeds are very sensitive and planting them straight into the soil will probably give you bad results. The best temperature is 85 F. It may take five to seven weeks before the seedlings are ready to be planted outside. March is usually the best month to plant tomatoes, depending on your zone. You can start your seeds in large pots or large flats.

Make sure to use a good potting soil. Use one-third good potting soil, one-third sand, and one-third compost for your seeds. Keep the soil moist and in a place that has a lot of sun. When the weather turns warm, put the plants outdoors and bring them in at nighttime.

Bit of History

The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences. Serpents, bears, hyenas, tigers rapidly vanish as civilization advances, but the most populous and civilized city cannot scare a shark far from its wharves.

—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

A book that has great instructions for growing tomatoes is called "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible," it is written by Edward C. Smith.

Soil Basics for Growing Tomatoes

The categories in which soil are divided into are sand, silt, clay, and loam.

Healthy soil is filled with fungi, bacteria, earthworms, and other beneficial soil organisms. In a forest, leaves and branches and other organic materials are composted by some of these soil organisms. Humic acids are very complex organic molecules that help roots to absorb minerals and other nutrients.

A good quality soil has some soil organisms that work to create acids while others help the soils in many other ways. Unlike forests, un-sowed gardens' soils don't provide the necessary conditions to grow healthy plants. For this reason, gardeners rely on artificial pesticides and fertilizers to grow their tomatoes.

Composting for Terrific Tomatoes

When you compost at home, it is one of the best ways to simulate the natural composting action found in nature. Start composting your garden waste and kitchen wastes, if you haven't already done so. Composting is an ecologically friendly and easy way to get rid of all that green waste. For the most effective compost, get yourself a compost bin. Also, get yourself a compost pail. Things such as grass clippings, egg shells, leaves, coffee grinds, and vegetable and fruit peels make great composting material. But dairy products, animal bones, and meats are not recommended.

If you don't have a compost supply already at your house, you can purchase some from a nursery in your area. But be aware that commercially compost may not have any or may have very little Humic acid. If you think you need to add more Humic acid, add liquid Humic acid or Humic tea. You can get the Humic tea and the liquid Humic acid online.

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Please note: All personal opinions expressed in the "Tips for Harvesting Healthy Tomatoes in your Garden" article belong to the contributing author and are not necessarily shared by FlowersPlantsGardening.com.

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