Gardening with Wally Richards: Time to Start Tomatoes

The first tomato plants in Mitre 10 and garden centres are now available for the new season and the sooner you get started the sooner you will have those wonderful fruits to eat in salads and sandwiches.

Then you will not need to buy those tasteless tomatoes from the supermarket.

If you have a glasshouse or conservatory to grow a few tomato plants in containers or in the soil of a glasshouse then thats great, if not as we say… ‘where there is a will there is a way’.

Tomato plants are quite hardy if you do not over water and have them in an open situation exposed to the elements.

If you have not grown some plants from seed then you can buy two or more plants from a plant shop.

If they are in individual containers then they are already to grow on before potting up into a larger container. If in a cell pack repot into small individual containers.

You simply place the potted plant onto a plastic meat tray from the Supermarket and place a pinch (Quarter a tea spoon) of Wallys Secret Tomato Food onto the mix.

Place the tray and the plant on a sunny north facing window sill and give it about 10-15mils of water every morning.

At night when you close the blinds bring the plant off the window sill and place on a table over night.

Next morning put the plant and tray back on the sill give a little drink and turn the pot 180 degrees so that the other side of the plant gets the direct light for a day.

This is important because the light is not over head; it’s sideways and the plant will grow unbalanced to the light. Removing it from the windowsill at night will mean it is not sitting next to a cold window and less chance of knocking off the sill when you open and close blinds.

Also you can put a mark like {1} on one side of the pot then on odd days that side will be facing the window and on even days it will be facing into the room. (Every thing has an easy solution)

When your plant has doubled in size it is ready to be repotted into a larger container and I would suggest a 20cm pot. Now this is when we start planting the tomato deeper than it was in the smaller pot. In fact you plant it deep up to and including the bottom leaves.

The plant will develop roots up the trunk and make for a better plant with a bigger root system.

If it is a grafted tomato you can’t do this deep planting as it is not needed and also if you do it will likely rot and die at the graft.

Apply more Wallys Secret Tomato Food to the top of the medium and this time about a level teaspoon full.

There will likely be laterals or side shoots appearing out of where the leaves emerge from the trunk.

The normal thing is to remove these by pinching out while they are small.

On bush type tomato plants such as Russian Red you don’t need to pinch out the laterals.

Only pinch out laterals on a sunny day when humidity is very low as disease can enter the plant otherwise though the wound.

You can also spray the wound with Wallys Liquid Copper to be sure or dust Wally Sulphur Powder over the wound.

It is though wounds that the disease ‘Collar Rot’ enters which causes a rot some where on the trunk of the plant which as the rot develops it progressively cuts the roots off from the canopy and the plant dies.

In the larger pot it will grow to about a metre tall and will be too big for the window sill nursery.

Instead it’s going to have to go outside into a sunny protective place but the day before doing so spray the foliage all over with Wallys Vaporgard. This will give it protection from frost if there is one and more so against wind burn. It will also now need support of a suitable size bamboo stake which you can push into the growing medium and with a nylon tie fix the plant to the stake.

The first flowers will appear about this time and with the plant in full sunshine you tap the stake to make the plant vibrate. That is what sets the fruit. Only done on a sunny day in full sun light.

It will not be long before you either go into a large container about 50 to 100 litres or a large grow bag.

If you have a sunny place in the garden that is nicely sheltered or under the eaves on the northern side of the house to plant it into the garden.

Apply more Wallys Secret Tomato food and start spraying the plant weekly with Wallys Magic Botanic Liquid (MBL).

Problems that can happen are ‘Blossom End Rot’ this is common on potted tomato plants as the mix dries out on a sunny day and there is insufficient moisture to move the calcium at fruit set so the tomato grows with a black patch on the bottom of the fruit.

Hence it is important to keep the plant’s growing medium moist.

On a tall plant on a hot sunny day even if the medium has sufficient moisture the top trusses lack sufficient moisture as fruit set as the plant cannot move enough water up to the fruit set.

Spraying the plant all over with Wallys Vaporgard will reduce the plants moisture requirements of up to 30% and thus help reduce the problem of blossom end rot. A good idea for tomato plants in containers in a glasshouse when they are mature.

So when it is going to be a nice hot sunny day in the morning or before lunchtime go out and gently shake the plant so it vibrates and thus the flowers that are ready to set will set while there is moisture available. Later in the day in the hot sun the flowers that were going to set for that day have done so and you have fixed another problem.

No good shaking the plant too early or too late as flowers only produce pollen when it is nice and sunny. Mid morning is ideal time.

Once a month give the plant a sprinkling of Wally Secret Tomato food with Neem Granules.

The Neem Granules are not only a natural food but they smell and that smell helps to disguise the smell of the tomato plants. If the white fly adult pests cant smell the tomato plant then they don’t know its there to lay their eggs.

I have taken this a step further in my glasshouse where I hang small gauze bags of naphthalene (Wallys Cat Repellent) from the roof of the glasshouse. This is an even stronger smell than the Neem Granules and by doing this for two seasons now and I have had no white fly in my glasshouse.

As an added precaution I also hang a few Wallys Yellow sticky White Fly strips in the glasshouse.

I catch lots of flying insects but never a white fly. Another nasty problem solved.

The gauze bags you can buy from a $2 shop and place the naphthalene crystals inside the bags hanging where they are not going to get wet and they will last most of the season working for you.

If you are concerned about blight then once a month spray the tomato plants with the new Wallys Copper Nutrient.

Do the above and with a few of your favourite types of tomato plants you will have the best crops ever and more than enough to give away and made sauce etc.

Image credit: Anda Ambrosini

Products mentioned are from Wallys Range of products and can be found in some garden shops or by Mail Order on www.0800466464.co.nz

Problems ring me at: Phone 0800 466464
Garden Pages and News at www.gardenews.co.nz
Shar Pei pages at www.sharpei.co.nz
Mail Order products at www.0800466464.co.nz