May 3 Column: How to Grow Tomatoes

grow tomatoes

grow tomatoesIf you love growing tomatoes or are preparing to grow them for the first time ever, you’ll be happy to see that my column is about how to grow tomatoes. I mean, we all love the taste of a sun-ripened tomato, right? Here’s a link to it in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: The best-tasting tomatoes are grown at home.

This spring, waiting for the weather to be warm enough to plant my tomatoes and other warm-season crops has been excruciating. Are you having the same problem? It just seems like the time will never come! I have started hardening-off my seedlings, though, so that’s a start.

I’ve mentioned this in the past but wanted to share again that I don’t start my tomato plants from seed until April 1st. My garden is in USDA hardiness zone 5b and our average last frost date is May 15. Many years ago, I used to get excited about planting them indoors so would start them in February. The problem was, they would get horribly leggy by the time I could finally plant them outdoors. That’s not a very nice way to start them off, is it? So I experimented: Feb. 15? No, too early. Mar. 1? Still too early. Mar. 15? Nope, I still got leggy plants.

But when I started them on April 1st, I discovered that was the perfect date. Remember that you don’t need to have massive tomato plants by transplanting time. That’s because smaller plants that have been in their pots for less time will be way less stressed and will be very healthy. So if you are unhappy with the state of your tomato seedlings this year, remember this for next year! And I should add that it doesn’t matter where you live: if your seedlings are leggy and not looking so great this year, run your own experiment. But to save you time, I can tell you that starting tomatoes 6 weeks before you can plant them in the garden is THE WAY TO GO! So there.

This week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video is about planting seed potatoes in grow bags (or containers) and planting onions sets (those small bulbs you can buy in garden centers). I chose those two topics after getting some questions about each of them. I hope you will enjoy it: