Seeing Tomatoes hanging in your garden plants, is a wonderful experience. Tomatoes are very heathy and rich is calcium. Tomatoes are easy to grow and from your kitchen. Tomatoes are part of almost every Indian curry, and healthy salad. Tomatoes are very good for skin as well.
Tomato plants take lots of space for full growth and produce lots of heathy tomatoes. These plants can be grown in Planters, But Planters size should be large enough to allow tomato plant to grow. For one plant of tomato at least planter should be at least 1 square foot, or 5-gallon bucket will be perfect side for planting. small seedling can be start in jiffy pods or small pots.
Tomatoes need full sun and well-drained soil to produce healthy fruit on it. If you are planning to grow tomatoes indoors in low sun light area, make sure use grow light to provide sufficient light, because tomato plants need light to grow.
People use many methods to grow from seed like my daughter learn from school putting seeds in wet cotton ball in cup filled with some Water and placed it in window but what I prefer is paper towel method it’s very easy to use and I always gets success so far. Learn more about seed germination
let’s starts planting tomatoes:
Let start with our seed’s germination.
Seed germination is the process of sprouting seeds so seed is ready for planting. Some people skip this part and directly plant seed in soil, but I prefer seed germination in paper towel to better check growth of seeds.
- Cut a fresh tomato whatever variety of plant you want to grow 🪴 take out the seeds. Soak seeds in water and let it stay for 5 minutes. Not put the seeds on paper towel or microfiber cloth and rub them individually to take out pulp from the seed.
- Wash them again, place them on paper towel moist the paper towel and seal it in zip local bag. Keep Ziplock bag in dark or hot area, I keep them in kitchen cabinets that I use occasionally (one thing, many people use heating mats to increase the growth of seeds, but I never used any heating mats till now. I didn’t find any difficulty without heat May. If you want you can use heating mat that may help to speed up germination process, but without heating mat it will germinate fine as well, no need to worry.
- Keep checking seeds every other day and if it’s too dry spray some water drops on seeds, don’t make paper towel soggy. It should be moist not soggy.
- Tomato seeds takes less time than other plant like lemon seeds takes longer and strawberry seeds take longer that lemon seeds as well. Within a week tomato seeds will show small seedling and within 10-15 days it’s will have 2 tiny leaves 🌱 , known as cotyledon, these are not actual leaves of plant means plant won’t look like these leaves.
- Now it’s time to plant it in container or pod. For this plant, I have used small container, container should have holes at the bottom for well drainage. Fill the container with plant soil and insert a pencil or finger in soil filled container to make space for seedling to place in soil. Cover the seedling around with soil and press gently. Keep tiny leave on out of soil don’t cover them with soil. These leaves will feed the plant to grow using photosynthesis process. Water the plant keeps it on the corner where you have full sun light or if it’s still cold outside, keep it near the window with full sun light. Water regularly and it will start to grow fast within 2-3 weeks plant will have many tiny leaves.
- When plant is of length 4-5 inch it’s time to transfer it to ground or large container. As I mentioned before tomato plant need lots of space to grow if plant in container choose big size planter.
- Dig a big hole in ground with well-drained soil, make sure soil is of good quality for planting clay soil or poor soil will harm the plant or it will not produce good fruits (tomatoes 🍅)
- Place the Tomato plant in the hole, deeper the plant will be planted plant will be stronger. As bottom leave can be left if hole keep 2-3 leaves on top for plant to grow. Cover the around of plant with soil and water it regularly. Feed tomato plant with plant food once a week to keep plant healthy and to produce healthy fruit.
I hope this may help some beginners to start planting tomatoes in garden this summer and enjoy summer.
learn more about seed gemination using paper towel method
Hello Friends,
After 3 months, i am back again to show updates on tomato seeds that we germinate and plant.
You wont believe what i am getting now lots of tomatoes , yeah image on this page is all images taken today from my tomato plants and those seeds became big plants, full of tomatoes.
These are cherry tomatoes that i came planted from plant grown from cherry tomatoes seeds , you can see some are green and it turning red every other day because it hot now here, in month of august and they need heat to get ripe. These tomatoes grow in bunches. These tomatoes bunch contains 10 tomatoes on each bunch.
I am so happy to get these sweet cherry tomatoes from my garden. I have used these in making pepper pizza top with cheese and these tiny cherry tomatoes.
Tomato in this image is Roma tomato, these tomatoes are tall in size and take longer time than cherry tomatoes to get ripe. These tomatoes look like brinjal when green, but these are very good for cooking, taste very nice but these need some patience to get tomato fully ripe. Tomato in above image will still take 2 days to get it pick from plant. these tomatoes grows in bunch as well but 3-4 tomatoes each bunch because of size.
I hope you all like my gardening experience with growing tomatoes.