Start your tomato plants indoors in early spring, or purchase starts (baby plants) from a local nursery after the danger of frost has passed. If you start the seeds inside (in lightly moist -- but not soaking wet -- soil, keeping a clear dome or plastic wrap on top until they germinate), you’ll transfer them to your garden after the last frost, just like if you’d bought ’em at the nursery.
Try to plant your tomatoes in slightly acidic soil that contains a bunch of organic matter (aka compost). Ideally, the pH will be around 6.0 to 6.5. (Buy a soil test kit at a local garden store.) Mix a dry organic fertilizer in with the soil, plus some aglime to add calcium. (You can find it at home and garden stores.) Bone meal can add extra calcium too.
After planting, mulch around your tomato plants with straw or good-quality wood mulch. Give them a good dousing with fungicide in the early morning once a week. Water them well, making sure to water straight on the roots. Timing for watering is pretty much common sense: Watch your plant and soil. When the soil looks dry, or the plant is wilting, water it. As the plants begin to grow, give them some support with a trellis netting or heavy-duty stakes.
When your tomatoes are pretty and red, snap ’em up and make a salad! If you have more tomatoes than you can eat, can them, freeze them, or take them to a comedy club. (Dare you.)
Now find out how to grow basil.
Nestperts: Mike Weeks and Joey Cagle are gardening gurus at Fifth Season Gardening Co., which operates six stores in North Carolina and Virginia focused on organic and hydroponic gardening and the ethos of doing it yourself.
-- Erin Walters
Oct 20, 2010