Learning how to plant tomatoes is a great skill if you love to cook. Nothing tastes quite like a homegrown tomato, and knowing the best way to vegetable garden tomatoes will ensure that your every salad, burger, sandwich, or pasta dish has an extra special, garden fresh taste.
How to Plant Tomatoes
If you have not eaten a garden fresh tomato, then you have not truly eaten a tomato.
The limp, pinkish slices you get at the fast food chains or even at the grocery store are pale imitations of fresh tomatoes.
The truth is that tomatoes need to be eaten as soon as they’re ripe because they go bad so quickly. In order for growers and farmers to provide consumers with these fruits, they have to be picked when they are still under ripened and green. This way they are red by the time they get to you (after the long haul truck ride).
But a tomato gets most of its flavor infused when it is just about ripe on the vine.
So, in other words, you are severely missing out when you buy grocery store or restaurant versions.
If you can learn how to plant tomatoes in your own back yard, you will open up the door to a whole new world of fresh taste.
Below, we’ll go over a few things you will need to get started as you learn how to plant tomato seeds and then we’ll take a peek at a few hints and tips that will help ensure that your crop is the absolute best that it can possibly be.
How to Plant Tomatoes: What You Will Need
Tomato plants are terribly easy to grow, but there are a few things you definitely need to keep in mind before and during your planting, cultivating, and harvesting.
Let’s go over a few of those right now:
- The Right Tomato – Tomatoes are available in over 25,000 varieties, so it is important that you have the kind of seeds you want.
- The Right Time – If you are growing them from seed, plant your tomatoes six to eight weeks before the last frost of the season. If you are transplanting them, put your tomatoes in the ground right after the last frost.
- The Right Place – You need to find a spot in your garden where the soil has a pH from between 6 and 7 and where your plants are going to get plenty of nice, direct sunshine.
- The Right Soil – Tomatoes like dirt that has a lot of organic matter mixed in with it, so make sure to use some good fertilizer or compost.
- The Right Hydration – Tomatoes, like most other vegetables, need at least a couple of inches of water each week.
Vegetable Garden Tomatoes: Hints and Tips
Here are a few of really great tips to follow as you begin learning how to plant tomatoes:
- How Deep to Plant Tomatoes – The hole for your tomato plant should be approximately the size of a soccer ball.
- How to Keep Cutworms Away – Try adding a paper collar to the base of your tomato plant. This will help to deter cutworms and other pests.
- How to Make Sure the Plant Doesn’t Fall Over – Because your tomatoes want to grow big, but aren’t necessarily built to withstand their own weight, it’s definitely recommended that you secure them to a trellis or stake.
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