Couple of things I would note, don’t miss the use a metal handle tip and I would use a drill to take out the hole rather than using a Stanley knife as demonstrated, you could just loose a couple of fingers doing it that way. Other than that, this video says it all when it comes to making your own topsy turvy tomato planter.

Watering may become a bit of a pain, I always hated watering hanging baskets above my head so it might be worth investing in a micro water irrigation system. Especially if you decide to plant a few of these and remembering if they dry out then you will likely loose your entire crop of tomatoes.

Hope you enjoyed the video, but if you prefer to buy the equipment you can click on Upside Down Tomato Garden

Sometimes its just easier that way.

There are different ways of dealing with this problem, no one wants horrible rotten tomatoes when they can have a nice juicy crop by taking a few sensible precautions. Clearly the easiest way to avoid diseased soil is to use fresh compost each year which you can achieve by either using a growbag or some other sort of container. Tomatoes will thrive in a standard 12″ plant pot as long as they are watered regularly and fed with a dilute liquid feed once or twice a week, particularly when the fruit starts to develop. Potassium supplements in the form of a high potassium tomato feed can aid the health and development of your plants and will be available from a garden center.

If you leave a space between the compost surface and the top of the pot, you can add more fresh compost as the plant develops and the compost shrinks.

The reason for using 12″ pots is that if the pots are too small the soil and compost mix can see erratic changes in both temperature and moisture, neither are conditions that the tomato plant will enjoy and will almost certainly lead to crop failure. Watering regularly so that the compost remains moist but not saturated is essential and this constant moisture content state is more easily achieved with larger pots. Remember as well that if you are using a growbag of around 40L not to put too many tomato plants per bag, my recommendation is 2 plants per bag and at a stretch perhaps 3 but definitely no more than that if you want decent results and healthy tomatoes.

Also make sure the plants (vine plants) are properly supported with either string, stakes or, more recently, tomato cages. If you are using string or stakes train the plants around them in a clockwise direction. Remove any little side shoots that develop between the main stem and the leaves, this should be done on a daily basis if possible.

When they are flowering you can gently tap the plants to help them pollinate, another option for aiding pollination is to spray with a fine mist of water when conditions are warm and bright. There is a further option of spraying with a hormone setting preparation which you can also get from the garden center, but tomatoes do pollinate quite readily so you shouldn’t really need to do this unless you are having problems.

When the fruit is beginning to ripen try and avoid temperatures over 27C (81F) especially if in a greenhouse where the glass can increase temperatures inside significantly. Potassium supplements in the form of a high potassium tomato feed can aid the health and development of your plants and again will be available from a garden center.

With indeterminate tomato plants you will need to limit the number of trusses that you allow to develop to between 4 and 6 depending on the length of the growing season wherever you are, or whether you are growing tomatoes in the greenhouse or outside.

Always remember to keep temperature and moisture levels constant, erratic changes can cause, flower shedding, blossom end rot, immature fruit fall, split skins, sun scald or blotchy ripening.

*Top Tip* Growers Pride is a great starter tomato for beginners, it is an F1 Hybrid however so best to buy the plant rather than trying to grow yourself from seed.

As a final word on growing tomatoes in containers, especially relevant when you have restricted space, is to do what a lot of people have started to do and that is to create an upside down tomato garden, where your tomato vine plant is planted in a plastic container and then hung upside down so that the vine hangs down instead of growing up a support frame. A little bit gimmicky I think, but then I suppose everyone to their own. I will make sure my next post describes how to do this.

The tomato plant is one of the easiest plants to grow in the garden and is a great source of food for the family, they are both delicious to eat and promote good health. Learn how to care for tomato plants and you will be able to produce a lot of fruit throughout the growing season.

There are a few basics to get right concerning both the tomato plant care and feeding so that you can ensure lots of juicy fresh fruit straight from the garden.

The first bit of advice for tomato plant care is to ensure that before planting tomatoes make sure that the last frost of the year is over with, neither the plant or the fruit have any tolerance to freezing, so all your preparation could come to nothing if the plants are exposed to a frost.

Next, prepare the soil, it is a good idea to dig a trench about 18″ deep, fill the bottom with a mulch, many people use newspaper to line the bottom of the trench, then add in a mix of high in nitrogen compost and soil to fill the trench.

The compost will provide the basic feed for the plants but can be supplemented with a tomato feed once or twice a week once the fruit starts to appear, this is important for tomato care as the fruit needs a lot of nitrogen to flourish.

Another important aspect of a tomato plants care is to ensure that the trusses are properly supported, this can be done as simply as pushing a stake in the ground and then tying off each truss, as it develops, to the stake with a soft garden string. Prune the tomato plant to remove lower shoots to prevent contact with the ground and to control the number of trusses, a good number is 4 to 6 trusses.

You will also need a regular watering program, ideally 2 to 3 times a day to keep the soil moist but not saturated. Add to this occasional treatment with a pesticide on an as required basis and you will have dealt with all the basic needs for tomato plant care.

Tomatoes are best eaten fresh, so eat them as soon as they are ready picking from the early, lower trusses, this will also encourage further fruit to grow.

Visit Tomato Growing for more tips and advice on tomato growing, the best types of tomato plants and to get access to expert advice that could double or triple the size of your crop of tomatoes.

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Realistically most growbags that are available which can be 35 or 40 litres in size are only enough to support two plants. There are ways in which you can push this out to 3 plants but for the cost of a growbag its probably as well just to stick to 2 plants, particularly if you take good care of them and produce lots of fruit.

If you go for pots then you should steralise them before use, to do this you can use a dilute solution of a suitable disinfectant, something like Jeyes fluid is perfect for this task.

While we are on this subject, you really should wipe down the inside of your greenhouse with disinfectant as well to ensure any residual contaminants that could also cause disease are removed from the glass.

One of the reasons I am suggesting using large pots or growbags for growing tomato plants is because the soil in the greenhouse is going to need to be dug out and replaced every 2 or 3 years anyway to ensure that you get rid of any build up of disease and also because the soil will be pretty much spent in terms of nutrients.

Space is limited in a greenhouse so the best option for plant varieties is to use the indeterminate variety of tomato plant i.e. a vine plant. You can prune the plant to the required size, leaving about 4 to 6 trusses on the main stem, which is about 6′ to 7′ in height, greenhouse size allowing. This will give you lots of fruit over an extended period. You will have to pinch out the main stem when you have enough trusses to stop further growth.

As an aside, using the bush variety is less convenient for greenhouses because they, as the name suggests, form a determinant size of bush without pruning which is probably a little too large in diameter for the average greenhouse. The fruit also has a tendency to all come at once.

Irrespective of the growing method you choose, you should start to feed the tomatoes at the first sign of fruit and for the duration of the growing period, twice a week should be sufficient. Also as you are in a greenhouse regular and consistent watering is also very important and I recommend 2 to 3 times a day with water that has been allowed to warm in the greenhouse.

As the end of the season nears a way of helping the last remaining fruit ripen is to hang a couple of bananas in the apex of the greenhouse. If that fails to ripen the last bit of fruit you can always use the green tomatoes for making a delicious chutney.

Visit Good Tomato Growing for more tips and advice on tomato growing in a greenhouse and to get access to expert advice that could double or triple the size of your crop of tomatoes.

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fresh juicy tomatoes straight from the garden to the dining table

When you are just starting out with your own vegetable gardening, a wise choice is to include tomatoes in your choice of plants because they are one of the best plants for a beginner to try his or her hand with. Strictly speaking of course tomatoes are not vegetables they are actually a fruit, but most people categorize them as a vegetable and they are a classic ingredient for a lovely summer salad. There really isn’t anything nicer than having your own home grown tomatoes sitting freshly picked on your plate.

Tip Number 1 – correct spacing

Always leave enough space between your tomato plants when you plant them, a common mistake of a newbie gardener is to place the plants too close together. The plants then end up fighting for everything, nutrients from the soil, sunlight and water. Far better to leave enough space and let them prosper in adequate space even if that means having a few less plants.

Tip Number 2 – warm soil

Warm soil, anyone who has grown tomatoes in a hanging planter will probably have noticed slightly better yields from the plants than when they are planted in a normal garden, providing attention is paid to all the other aspects of growing tomatoes of course, and the reason for this is that the soil is warmed slightly by the sun in a way that normal ground in a standard garden isn’t. What you can do however is to create that same affect by placing black plastic sheeting over the ground and using the thermal heating effect that results to warm the soil.

Tip Number  3 – plenty of sunshine

Tomato plants need a minimum of 6 hours full sunlight a day and some people would recommend up to 10 hours of sunshine. Whichever camp you fall in, it is clear that a good location needs to be selected where the plants can get the required amount of sun.

Tip Number 4 – prepare the soil

You need to prepare the soil for where you are going to plant your tomatoes with a nitrogen rich fertilizer, compost and mulch. The mulch will help with water retention and the compost fertilizer mix will provide the much needed nutrients that are particularly required when the fruit starts to appear.

Tip Number 5 -proper watering of tomatoes

Watering, not too much and not too little. You should aim for a happy balance where the plants neither dry out or are absolutely drenched in water, a moist root ball is a happy root ball and this will allow the nutrients to be absorbed that are required to produce the tomato’s fruit.

Always remember that you are not growing tomatoes for the supermarkets, if they turn out a little less than perfect now and then, don’t beat yourself up over it, they will probably still taste great and there are other alternatives for the ones that don’t get served fresh, for example making tomato chutney is a brilliant way to preserve some of your tomatoes for outside of the normal growing season.