It is never late to discuss tomato planting basics when it comes to planting of tomatoes. These basics will help you become successful, especially if you are a first timer in tomato planting, and more importantly ensure you enjoy juicy and high breed tomatoes. The first and undoubtedly the most important thing to always keep in mind is that tomatoes do very well in well lit areas, especially those that receive sufficient amounts of natural sunlight. As such, your first step should be to look for that area in your garden that gets at least 7 hours of sunlight a day.
Before you even think of planting your tomatoes, soil preparation is very important. First and foremost you should work a good amount of organic matter into the soil you plan to grow your tomatoes in. In the process of working the soil, you can add fertilizer, and in this case you can use time-release or general purpose vegetable fertilizer, only ensure you follow manufacturer’s instructions in regards to the amount of fertilizer to add to the soil.
The next step after working all components of the soil is to water the soil thoroughly and give it room to settle and penetrate deep down for at least two days so you can start to plant your tomatoes. The best time to start planting your tomatoes is in the late afternoon when the sun is going down. The coolness will help the plants recover well if you are using young tomato plants that you have just transplanted. The other important tomato planting basics is to ensure that when you are transplanting the young plants from the containers in which you bought them in, it is advisable you have the same, or even better more soil than that found in the container.
Basically, your plants should be buried at least 2-3 inches deep so you can always remove the leaves found on the lower part of the stalk in order to facilitate deep burying. The best thing is that within no time, the whole part that is buried goes ahead to create its own rooting system in an effort to fortify and give the much needed support to the growing plant; remember that when the plant grows, the weight increases significantly. It is always advisable to stake your tomato plants so you can avoid breakage of the stem and create more space between plants to facilitate maximum growth. The best time to stake your plants is immediately after transplanting.
When transplanting and a few days after planting when the roots are still weak, gentle watering using a sprinkler head is highly advisable. During the first 5 days of transplanting you should water your tomato plants once a day and once they are well established, you can then be comfortable watering the plants once a week. Note however that if there is too much heat, you might need to water them more frequently and once they start to produce the fruits, you are advised to feed the plants with a liquid fertilizer at least once a month.
