Gardening during a pandemic – growing tomatoes
If you’re taking up gardening during the current restrictions, now is the time to start thinking about your tomato plants.
Many garden centres are offering home delivery services at the moment, so if you’re placing an order, think about everything you’ll need for growing juicy tomatoes.
What you’ll need
You’ll need your tomato plants of course, compost, support stakes/canes, pots or a growbag and garden twine/yarn/string.
You can fit around three tomato plants into one growbag and the variety of plant you choose will depend on personal taste. When purchasing your plants, select short, stocky specimens or go for grafted ones.
Get planting
Get your growbag or pot ready. You will need to cur holes in the growbag as per the instructions on the bag to allow you to plant your tomatoes. Once you have your plants, dig a sizeable hole in the soil, bigger than the pot your tomato is currently in. Ease your plant gently out of the pot by squeezing the outside gently to loosen it and pop it in the hole you have created.
The level of the compost in the original pot should be either level with the growbag compost or just slightly lower so that it is barely covered.
Plants should be well watered, and you can keep them in a sunny position.
You can secure the plants with stakes or canes when they reach around 23cm in height. You should continue to tie at 15cm intervals using a gentle garden twine.
Side shoots will start to appear where the leaf stems join the main stem. These should be removed, as they will take nutrients away from the fruit, leading them to become small and weakened.
You should use a good tomato feed such as Gro-sure Tomato Food once the first flower trusses have grown. Not long after you’ll be ready to enjoy juice, ripe tomatoes.
We’re encouraging people in Wales to take up gardening during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Read more here.
Check back next week for more top tips. Please share your garden pictures with us on social media using the hashtag #keepcalmandgetreadytogarden.
