Growing Tomatoes

Which vegetable, although technically a fruit, gets us in such a spin every spring? The tomato of course! Right now your garden centres and hardware stores are bursting at the seams with a huge selection. So, where do you start?

Well I reckon variety is the spice of life so I’m having a go with a couple of old favourites, a bit of heritage and a few new ones to try.

Before even thinking of planting your tomatoes out, make sure your soil is in tip top condition. Get the ground right and the rest is, well, relatively easy.

Work in plenty of well-aged organic matter. Yates Dynamic Lifter is a ready source of organic matter with chicken manure, blood and bone, seaweed and fish meal. All good. This is a wonderful soil improver and organic fertiliser that keeps pulsing out a slow and steady stream of valuable nutrients to feed soil microbes, earthworms as well as your plants too. The top thing about Yates Dynamic Lifter is its safe on all plants including natives and seedlings alike. You can smell the goodness!

Tomatoes, along with other veggie seedlings, are annuals which mean they don’t have a lot of time to sit around. They need to get growing quickly. That means they absolutely love a good feed. Different plants need different nutrient combinations to do their best so it’s important to get the correct one for excellent plant growth.

A perfect partnership when it comes to fertilizing is to apply a balance of ‘slow and steady’ nutrients for the soil with ‘get growing quick’ fertilizer for the plant. You’ll certainly get the slow and steady by sprinkling out organic Yates Dynamic Lifter and then applying regular doses of new Yates Thrive Natural Tomato and Veggie.

Yates Thrive Natural Tomato and Veggie with its 50% organic base and 50% fast acting nutrients has been specifically formulated to give tomatoes and fruiting vegetables like zucchinis and pumpkin the optimal balance of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to get both large, quick growth and encourage more tomatoes.

And a little tip: this fertilizer has added calcium, which helps prevent the dreaded blossom end rot that can ruin a crop after all the work is done!

What your tomatoes need now is at least 6 hours of sun per day, regular watering, a tomato dusting now and again to keep the nasties away and weekly feeds of a get growing quick fertilizer. Then just pull up a chair and wait for your tommies to grow and fruit. Fascinating!

For more information on Yates products to help your veggies grow, visit their website.