Just imagine sitting in your summer house, the sun is scourging the earth outside and you are refreshing yourself with juicy, meaty tomato from your own organic garden.

How to cultivate such tomatoes?

It is simple! A bit of love and caring, spiced with fertile soil, will give juicy and big tomatoes. 

Tomato is a vegetable that belongs to the nightshade family, originally from South America.

Firstly it was used as a spice, and it was also used as a remedy by herbalists. 

Only during the last 200 years tomato found its place in the cuisine.

Looking from botanical standpoint, tomato is a fruit, but is mostly treated as vegetable in cuisine. 

Tomato has many different varieties that differ in height (20 cm to 2 m), color (red, pink, white, black, green, yellow, orange etc.) and shape (round, oval, pear-like, elongated, wrinkled etc.)

They also differ in leaf appearance, flowers and fruit distribution. 

If you cultivate several different tomato varieties, you will notice that they differ in taste – some are sweeter, some are saltier, while others are more watery.

Tomato – food and remedy

Lycopene (an antioxidant that provides the red color to tomatoes) protects against heart attack, cardiovascular diseases, dementia and cancer and has beneficial effects on the prostate. 

Tomato enhances excretion of excess water from our organism and is recommended against rheum, gout, kidney stones, bladder stones and gallstones. 

Furthermore, it is proven that people that eat tomatoes or tomato preparations every day, have higher resistance to the harmful effects of sun rays. 

It is also scientifically proven that flavonoid content is 97% higher in organically cultivated tomatoes in comparison with conventionally cultivated tomatoes. 

Tomato pulp is good for greasy skin care; sliced fruits can be used as first aid in a form of wraps for treating burns. 

The tomato has low energetic value, only 2 kcal on 100 grams, which makes it a great food for weight loss.

Tomatoes are rich in potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, vitamins K, B1, B6, B3, niacin, folic acid, vitamin C and carotene (provitamin A).

How to cultivate tomatoes in a balcony pot

Many will say: “I do not have a garden, so I can not cultivate tomatoes”.

Do not despair! In order to be proud owners of tomatoes you do not need a garden.

The good news is that tomatoes can be cultivated on a balcony. The only prerequisite is that your balcony receives a lot of sunlight and you can have tomatoes all summer long!

Before you opt for cultivating tomatoes on your balcony, research which variety is the best for such form of cultivation.

For example, Minibel variety is great for cultivation in confined spaces – like balcony. That variety grows to 30 cm in height and it provides small, but tasty, fruits.

Pick a pot for tomato cultivation. The best pots are those made of plastic or fiberglass. Plastic pots are a good choice because of their low price and practicality. Clay pots are not good because they quickly absorb the water that is meant for tomatoes. 

Make sure that the pot is deep enough. Depth of 8 cm is an absolute minimum, while the best choice is pot that is 12 or even 16 cm deep. 

After you have picked the pot, you have to take of drainage. Tomatoes will soon rot if they are constantly in wet soil. Most commercial pots already have little holes at their bottom for liquid drainage. 

If your pot does not have holes, make a few holes yourself.

Fill the pot with quality fertilizer and soil and plant tomatoes inside. When the plant starts to grow, stick a wooden stick into the soil and tie tomato to it. That stick will help the plant to maintain stability and balance. 

Water the plant regularly. How will you know that it is time for watering? Place your finder in the soil and if the first two cm of soil are dry, then it is time for watering.

Occasional fertilization is required in order to get better yield. Every time you water the plants, you will wash away a part of nutrients. Fertilize tomatoes once a month.

By cultivating tomatoes in a pot you will avoid many diseases that struck tomatoes from the soil.

If you cultivate tomatoes in a pot, plant it at the end of February and keep it in a warm environment with the mandatory acclimatization period during which the plant will grow accustomed to the conditions outside.

Pots should be taken out on the balcony once or twice a day when the temperatures increase and be brought back inside during the night. That was a plant can slowly get accustomed to conditions on your balcony.

When frost danger has passed and night temperatures go over 10 degrees C, you can permanently move tomatoes to your balcony.

How to cultivate ecological tomatoes in the garden

Tomato is a self-pollinated plant that likes sun and moisture. 

It is cultivated from seeds or seedlings produced in the heated and protected environment. Good seedling is 25 cm high and is 1 cm thick at the base.

When purchasing seedling for your garden, use healthy green plants with thick stalks without fruits and, if possible, without flowers.

Tomatoes can be planted in garden in rows when there is no danger from frost. Usually that is in the second half of April. If you have a greenhouse, you can plant them even earlier.

The most important thing is that the plant is in a warm environment, that it receives enough sunlight and that you water it regularly. 

Plant tomatoes in the soil that has been fertilized using natural fertilizer. 

Tomato seedlings have big roots so plant them in pre-dug pits. The span between rows should be 60-80 cm and you should leave 30-50 cm between plants.

At temperatures less than 10 degrees C growth and flowering will stop. The tomato is very sensitive to frost and dies at -1 degree C.

The tomato plant is very demanding in terms of light. It needs at least 12 hours of light a day. Otherwise, the plant is poorly developed, ripening is late and yield is low.

If tomato seedlings become tall and weak, it means that they lack the light - probably they were not planted in a good place.

It is also demanding when it comes to humidity. When planting, you must plan the possibility of land irrigation, to ensure crops in case of possible drought. If the plant loses enough moisture, it will lose leaves, flower and fruit will not ripen.

Tomatoes are best watered with rainwater.

In order to get a lot of big tomatoes and healthy fruits it is not enough to plant tomatoes in quality soil with high-quality compost, you also have to fertilize it several times.

Fertilize tomatoes for the first time when they start developing fruits, and the second time when the first fruits begin to ripen. Use high quality organic compost.

Tomatoes are usually placed alongside wooden stakes, to which it connects to maintain stability and balance of plant.

At harvest, it is best to cut the stem with scissors. So we will not damage the adjacent unripe fruit.

The appropriate time for harvesting are early morning hours or evening hours. At that time, the fruits will not be dewy or warm.

The highest quality fruits are those that are dark red, and they can be pale around the stalk.

It is best to use harvested tomatoes immediately.

At the end of the harvesting season, even green fruit can be harvested, which are then stored in a cool place.

Diseases and pests

The most common disease that affects the tomato in our region is blight.

Blight is a fungal disease. It is spread when there is too much moisture, so plants are affected mostly after rain. Blight mainly affects tomatoes and potatoes.

In addition to blight, tomatoes can be attacked by spider. This often happens during severe droughts. Smaller or larger whitish spots appear on the face of the leaves, and their reverse contains visible grayish-white fine yarns containing spiders, their larvae and eggs.

Leafs start resembling marble, and later become whitish and dry up. From dried leaves, spider moves to the top of the young leaves of the plant. Fruits remain small and change shape.

If we act in time, in the initial stage of the disease, the plant can be saved. Once a plant is infected, it is necessary to immediately remove all the diseased portions of plants and burn them.

Even small columns for which the plant was linked should not be used next year, they should also be burned.

What you need to do is try to prevent infection. It can be done by nurturing the soil, because it is the basis for healthy growth.

If the plant is planted in healthy soil, it will be durable and less likely to become infected. Water tomatoes using liquid fertilizer made of nettles once a week and you will achieve good results.

Spray them regularly with horsetail tea. Horsetail contains a lot of silica and acts as a preemptive remedy against fungal diseases.

Tomatoes are often attacked by potato beetles. Due to the common pests and diseases, it is not recommended to plant tomatoes and potatoes near each other.

Potato beetles will still first attack potatoes, and at the end of summer they begin to attack tomatoes and eggplants.

The easiest way to remove these pests is mechanical. When they sense danger, they stiffen, fall from the plant to the ground and pretend to be dead. Then you have the chance to pick them up and take them to another place where they will not do harm.

Besides potato beetles, tomatoes are attacked by aphids and various types of insects and caterpillars.

Aphids can be removed from the plants with water. This procedure should be carried out in the morning so that plants can soon become dry in the sun. If that does not help, you can use some of the natural products for protection.

Against aphids, rust mites, caterpillars and ants, soak 300 g of fresh leaves and flowers of wormwood or 30 g of dried wormwood in 10 liters of water (preferably rainwater). Leave wormwood to soak in water for 2-3 days, then use this liquid for regularly spraying tomatoes.

Compatibility with other plants

Tomato gets along very well with some plants.

Tomatoes thrive close to basil, marigold, onion, parsley, carrots, and asparagus.

Tomatoes do not like the proximity of potatoes, cabbage, peas and fennel.

Collecting seeds

Choosing to save tomato seeds is the most important step in this process.  

If your tomato fruits are of poor quality, it makes no sense to collect these tomato seeds, as they will produce fruits of such low quality.

For collecting seeds, chose fruits on the healthiest plants. Take the seeds from fully ripe tomatoes, but again, not too mature. Seeds of overripe tomatoes could already be in the process of germination or rotting.

Wash tomato seeds with water, place them in a colander to drain, put them on paper and leave them to dry thoroughly.

 

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