subject: Having Trouble Growing Your Tomatoes? Handy Tips For Avoiding Tomato Growing Problems [print this page] Having Trouble Growing Your Tomatoes? Handy Tips For Avoiding Tomato Growing Problems
The tomato is one of the most recognized plants on earth and many amateur growers have derived much pleasure from being able to cultivate quality tomatoes. Growing tomatoes has now ceased being a hobby and is recognized as a full fledged occupation with many benefits for connoisseurs.
For a new gardener, it is of the essence to understand the planting seasons. For older hands in tomato gardening, experience usually has taught them well. Spacing out the planting throughout the growing season ensures that a gardener has a continuous supply of tomatoes and also averts the common problem of a glut in the fruit.
A glut occurs where there harvest is so large that people now don't even know what to do with the excessive produce.
Tomatoes are known to have a high affinity for sunlight thus they are known as the sun vegetables. A good harvest is realized when the plants are exposed to the sun for up to 7 hours.
This sustains the plant as the sun helps it to manufacture its own food and also helps the fruit to ripen well. If you want to harvest safely before frost sets in it is imperative that by June you should have started planting and before December you have already harvested.
If the harvest period goes on until December then you might lose the whole harvest to the frost that occurs during the winter.
Tomatoes fare very poorly during frost like weather. In an all warm climate, it is possible to sustain a whole year round harvesting of tomatoes, because the plants are able to get the minimum average of sunlight everyday.
Problems that tomato growers face while trying to cultivate their tomatoes could be avoided if they took to planting seedlings and not seeds. Seeds usually have more work in planting them than seedlings; furthermore, your seeds may even end up not germinating.
Almost all types of soil can sustain the growth of the tomato plant, though ideally, the most potent soil should have a high organic matter and be slightly water retentive. In cold climates, tomato growers have adopted compact greenhouses that thwart the problem of perpetual frost. These greenhouses have succeeded in letting farmers expose their crop to the cold safely.
A potential tomato grower needs to make sure that the temperature of soil ranges from 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, while the day and night temperature should be fro a high of 75 degrees Fahrenheit to a low of 65 degrees.
This is often the most ideal scenario. Whether you plant tomatoes during the first week of March or any time in May, you will surely harvest by late July and by the start of August.
If all these factors are followed to the letter, problems that are usually associated with tomato growing will become a thing of the past and gardeners will be able to get the most out of their tomato growing experience.