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Thursday, February 13, 2025

Tips on how to develop tomatoes — Seattle City Farm Firm


Tips on how to plant: It’s essential to begin with massive, wholesome transplants. Search for vegetation with darkish inexperienced vegetation in 4 in. or bigger pots. Area vegetation 18 in. aside. If planting with a single pole trellis, drive the publish in place first. Subsequent, snip the bottom facet branches and the underside set of leaves off of your transplants, and dig a gap deep sufficient for every plant to be buried as much as the following lowest set of leaves. (Tomatoes set new roots out of the buried stem, so planting them this manner offers them the chance to develop a big root construction in a short time.) Add 1⁄4 cup of balanced fertilizer to the opening and blend with a trowel. Set the plant within the gap and fill it again in with soil. If you happen to’re utilizing a cir- cular cage, place it over the plant (take care to not puncture your drip irrigation system!).

When to plant: Tomatoes are greatest planted in late spring, mid- to late Could in most areas.

How a lot to plant: Tomato yield is variable, however you’ll probably harvest 4–8 lb. per plant (as much as 20 lb. in splendid situations). We suggest beginning with 1–6 vegetation on your first 12 months.

When to fertilize: Earlier than planting, and at 3 and 6 weeks after planting. Use 1⁄4 cup balanced fertilizer per plant, or liquid fertilizer.

Basic care: Prune and practice your tomatoes to their trellis. After the vegetation have began ripening their first fruits, you may cease watering them. It will scale back the dimensions of the tomatoes and the general yield of the vegetation, however will encourage ripening and enhance taste.

Pests: Tomato hornworms, aphids, slugs, nematodes.

Illnesses: Early and late blight, anthracnose, Verticillium and Fusarium wilt.

Container suitability: Good. Use 5 gal. pots or bigger, or something at the least 12 in. in. deep.

When and the best way to harvest: Tomatoes style greatest when ripened on the plant. They’re prepared when totally purple (or yellow, orange, or purple) and barely delicate to the contact. Harvest by slicing the stem simply above the tomato, or by breaking it off along with your hand. Tomatoes additionally ripen nicely off the vine if held at room temperature. That is helpful for giant tomatoes that don’t totally ripen on the vine, and within the fall when temperatures aren’t excessive sufficient to ripen the fruit open air.

Storage and preservation:

Counter: Tomatoes ought to be saved at 60°–70°F. A basket on the counter is ideal. Keep away from the fridge except you want mealy, tasteless tomatoes!

Freezer: You’ll be able to puree contemporary tomatoes, drain the surplus liquid, and freeze them instantly, or you may cook dinner the puree to the specified thickness after which freeze.

Dried: Solar-dried tomatoes.

Canned: Tomato sauce, salsa, entire or sliced tomatoes, paste.

What Tomatoes Can Train You: Tips on how to Prune

Why you do it: Pruning helps guarantee excessive yields of fruit and larger ripening success, particularly with indeterminate sorts. It can restrict the general variety of tomatoes, so the plant can produce and ripen higher-quality fruits. It will increase air circulation by way of the plant (which helps hold illness down) and improves daylight penetration (which helps with ripening). Late-season pruning reduces the manufacturing of late-season tomatoes, in order that the plant has a greater likelihood of ripening present fruit. Typically talking, determinate tomatoes want significantly much less pruning than indeterminate sorts.

The way you do it: The perfect tomato plant has two to 3 major stems, with single lateral branches radiating from every stem. We suggest pruning tomatoes a couple of occasions over the course of the season to maintain them beneath management. Prune by breaking extra branches off along with your fingers, or use pruning shears if branches are too massive to interrupt.

A. At transplanting time, test the crotch of every department. Break off any new department rising from the crotch. Additionally, break off any forming flower buds.

B. Proceed to test department crotches every week and break off new branches. Additionally, break off any flower buds that seem for two–3 weeks after transplanting.

C. If utilizing a single pole-type trellis, tie the primary stem of the plant to it. If the plant develops different massive stems that compete with the primary stem, hold just one or two of them and make slings with twine to assist them. Reduce off any further major stems that develop.

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