While musing on your grand plans for the summer, thoughts cross your mind about establishing a veggie garden. Its been on the agenda for years but you’re caught as to where to build it or what to grow, or you have flashbacks to when you tried growing some seeds years ago, none of them grew and so you gave up. I would give up to, all that excitement and exprectation of going to the nursery and buying all the right equipment those feelings of pride that you are going to grow, care and nurture something – only to be dashed as nothing happens. (Never set out to grow your own veggies through buying seeds, always buy established seedlings for a nursery, this way all the hard work has been done for you!).

You decide to give the produce growing another shot – but where to start? Tomatoes are a great place. Summer is not the same without the taste of tomatoes, the sweet meaty flesh or the sensation of the tomoto popping in your teeth as you bite into it.

Tomatoes are easy to grow, hardy and tolerant of most conditions. They like a good compost and require little feeding. The thing tomatoes require most is sunshine – about 6 hours sun a day.

In cool temerate regions, spring and early summer are the best times to sow tomato seed or plant out seedlings, while in warm temperate regions, spring is the perfect time.

If you decide to grow from seed here’s a little guide:

1. Fill punnets, trays with seed raising mix
2. Sprinkle the seeds sparsely over the surface, about 10mm apart.

3. Scatter a thin layer of the mix over the seeds, barely enough to cover the seeds.
4. Water with a fine mist
5. Totatoes love warmth, placing then on a piece of cardboard ontop of the water heater, or under a piece of glass will really help your seeds germinate quickly.
6. As the shoots appear move the punnets out into the light and water sparsley.

One of the main reasons why tomatoes fail to survive is due to overwatering. Over watering attracts diseases and then you end up with weak plants and poor fruit.

If you are put off growing your own produce because everything else that you have ever tried to grow has died, tomatoes will love you! They love to be treated mean – forgetting to water them for a couple of days is fine, this will help the plants to send out new roots looking for moisture, this minimising extra foliage, but create the flowers that will turn into tomatoes. Brutal treatment ensures outstanding yeild!!

If you want to feed your tomato plants then a small handful of potassium around each of the plants stems will reduce rampant foilage growth, but also improves the flavour of your tomatoes. Repeat this once a month.

One final tip. As mentioned earlier I said that tomatoes love warmth. A great way of protecting your newly planted seedlings is to either place a large plastic soft-drink bottle over the plant(simply just cut the base of the bottle off), or you can create a triangular stakeout around the seedling and wrap some plastic around the base of the stakes as this will attract heat, thus causing your tomotoes to thrive.

So, as you think about your plans for the summer months, get in early and start by growing something that is easy and which will give you pleasure once all that delicious fruit has ripened!