My first tomato has new home
After a month, my tomato seedlings are growing nicely. One of them is bigger from others and today it was the lucky day for my baby plant. I transplant it in a new large container.
How are you growing tomatoes? Nice question but I don’t know. It’s my first time because I ‘m city girl. So I search and read a lot for tomatoes. And I always found that tomatoes needs egg shells because of calcium. Tomatoes loves Calcium and I love eggs. I collect my eggshells the last month and I use them in my container. We are both happy now.
I use newspaper first, then I add some soil and the egg sells before I add the other soil and transplant my precious tomato seedling.
I don’t know if my red tomatoes in plot growing or die without water (I can go there only once a month for 4-5 days), but my unknown “Yellow Pear” and “Cream Sausage” tomatoes have a lot of water and love every day here.
Your little plant should grow quickly now that the weather is warm. It will need quite a lot of watering, especially since it’s in a pot. And you need to pinch out the side shoots that grow in the corners between leaves and stem so that only the main stem grows upwards. Be careful not to pinch off the flower shoots, though, because they’ll be your tomatoes! (You don’t need to do this with the cherry tomatoes) You need to tie the main stem to a stake, too, to support it. I hope this makes sense. Good luck. I’m looking forward to seeing pictures of your plant as it grows! There’s nothing like the taste of your own homegrown tomatoes.
I would personally suggest not pinching the side shoots, but this is a point of debate between some tomato gardeners and there are arguments for and against doing it.
One thing for sure your tomato plant will get taller if you do pinch the side shoots. Heirloom tomatoes can often grow to 2 meters anyway, so don’t do it unless you want really tall plants.
When I grow my tomatoes in pots I usually use a 30L pot. You probably don’t need something quite so large, but 20 liters is probably the minimum you should use for most heirloom tomatoes. Many commercial varieties don’t grow so large, and you can sometimes get away with a smaller pot for cherry tomatoes. The larger the pot the better.
With a smaller pot you will have a much harder time keeping it well watered, because the pot will become full of roots and the water will just go through and come out the bottom. You might be able to put a tray under the pot to hold a little water, and this may help, but mostly tomatoes don’t like to sit in a puddle of water either.
Keeping tomatoes grown in a pot well watered can be one of the hardest parts of growing them. If you give them too much water, or you water them irregularly, they will crack while they are growing. This is not fatal, and you can usually still eat the tomatoes, but it’s very irritating. If you don’t give them enough water you can get ‘blossom end rot’, where the tomatoes will just rot as they grow and you won’t be able to eat them.
Tomatoes need a wet/dry cycle, and the ideal situation is usually to be watered in the morning and then dry out by the following morning and be ready to be watered again.
When I grow tomatoes in pots, I usually use a drip water system with a programmable timer to water the plants. Of course if you don’t have this, you just need to do the best you can and see what happens!
The yellow pear will probably be a lot less sensitive to the right amount of water, and easier to grow, than the cream sausage.
Tomatoes are also very sensitive to being over fertilized, so if you use fertilizer at all be careful not to give them too much. If you use too much the plants will get big and green and not have many tomatoes. I normally start out with soil that has a lot of compost mixed in with it and so is very rich, then don’t use any fertilizer. If your soil is less rich you may need some fertilizer. If you use fertilizer, I suggest using it only once, about a month after the first tomatoes begin to get ripe.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
Your plant is looking really good. It should do well in the larger container. I mix eggshells in my dirt also. Used coffee grounds also make a good fertilizer. But be careful, because if you just pile it up on top it will mold. I has to be mixed in.
I don’t know how hot it gets there, but here I have a problem with my tomato containers getting too hot. Sometimes I have to shade the container itself (but not the plant) and water twice a day.
Good luck
@chaiselongue I will tie my plants, I knew that hopefully. I don’t know if I pinch out the side shoots, maybe I will try it in one plant and see the results beside the others. Watering is something that try to understand this moment because I have soil for flowers in my containers and remains wet for many hours (or 2 days) in hot weather.
Thank you for your wishes! I will post photos again
@Patrick I will make experiments in the future to see what works better for my tomatoes. Here in the city I don’t want so high plants but in my plot I don’t have problem.
My big pots are 20 liters I think. (They don’t sell the pots with informations about the soil capacity, but I buy the soil in 20 liters bags.) These pots are the biggest I can find in local shops in my neighborhood.
This moment I try to understand when I must watering my pots because this soil remains to wet for many hours. (I have plants with older soil where I must watering them twice a day).
I don’t have a watering system and I don’t use fertilizer. I want to grow my plants organic and I don’t know many things about fertilizers. But I use something in some plants which is something like dust (it was gift from the producer some years before and I never used it until now). Hmmmm I must write about Zeolite one day.
@John I don’t have coffee grounds here we drink frappe coffee in summer
About the weather…
In summer we have 34°C – 40°C and some days 42°C (this is something like 93°F – 106°F)
Today we have some clouds (yesterday we had storm and rain hopefully) and 28°C – 34 °C in shade.
The problem you have with hot containers I have it with my seedlings in small pots.
Good luck with your tomatoes. I have seen them grown many different ways. I do like to pinch the side shoots out of mine and usually use three stakes spaced equally around them, rather than driving stakes down into the roots. Then I lace twine or plastic tie line or similar around the stakes. I can also cross between the stakes so that the line supports the stalk, without being tight enough to constrict it as it goes, or keep from being too rigid in strong winds.
I use coffee grounds as fertilizer. I have heard of egg shells being used, but don’t use them here, as we don’t consume too many of them, and also, even buried, they can attract skunks or other animals who might dig up my plant.
Also, since it is often cool in the spring for planting them outdoors, they will sometimes get leggy (too tall, spindly) in pots in the windows. So, when I AM ready to plant, I pinch off the lower branches, and bury much of the plant’s long stem below the ground. The stem will put out roots where it is buried, which gives my plants a much stronger support system and allows them to drink more efficiently.
Try different things and see what sort of results you get…that’s the best way to learn!