Tomatoes – Plant of the Month

Who likes nothing better than to pick and taste their home-grown tomatoes? Full of flavour and so many varieties to choose from. From cherry tomatoes to beef steak; from Yellow Pear, Green Zebra to Black Krim. Keep an eye out in "the Little Market" at Portstone Garden Centre as we will soon be selling some of these heirloom varieties.

Patience is the name of the game. Seedlings start to arrive at garden centres as early as September, unless you have a greenhouse, it’s far too early to be planting them outside. Even then, night temperature need to be above 10°C before planting them in the greenhouse, for the plants to do well.

Tomatoes need plenty of sunlight planted into well-drained soil, rich in organic matter with the addition of a full spectrum mineral fertiliser.

Tomatoes belong to the solanaceae family along with potatoes, chillies and aubergines, so it’s important to rotate your crops making sure you do not plant your tomatoes in the space where potatoes chillies or aubergine grew the year before.

A few problems:

• The fruit is splitting before it is ripe – due to heavy watering or rain after soil has been dry
• The blossoms are falling off, but no fruit is setting – due to low temperature in spring or very high temperature in Summer
• Sunken brown patches are forming at the blossom end of the fruit – due to lack calcium together with watering

Companion plants:
French marigolds as they have strong smelling leaves to confuse insects and basil can also be used to deter insects and it’s also known to improve the taste of your tomatoes.