Planting, care and how to fertilize tomatoes

Tomatoes are a popular, healthy and tasty vegetable. It can often be seen on a personal plot, even where the owners prefer to grow a lawn and flowers; tomatoes will definitely be planted in a small garden.

Growing tomatoes is not difficult, but you need to know a few things: when and how to plant them, how to fertilize tomatoes, how to care for them so that the harvest is large and the tomatoes are tasty.

Planting, care, watering

At the site where the tomato is planted, the soil needs to be prepared in the fall: add garden compost, ash, and eggshells. It is better to grow tomatoes through seedlings, that is, plant the seeds at home in early spring, and then plant the grown seedlings in the ground. Before planting tomatoes, you need to warm up the beds; you should plant them when there is already an established positive temperature, and install supports.

Tomatoes need to be pinched (that is, side shoots should be plucked off), if the variety and environment (middle and verified latitudes) require it, then the lower leaves should be removed to the ovary, but if the tomatoes grow in a hot climate, then there is no need to remove the leaves in this way. You should monitor the soil so that it does not dry out or be too wet, and remove weeds. When watering tomatoes, try not to get water on the leaves, fruits and trunk, as this can cause fungal diseases; the best watering is drip watering.

Diseases, pests, what to do and how to fertilize tomatoes

Tomatoes are susceptible to various diseases and can be attacked by various pests.The most common diseases: fungal infections, late blight, blossom end rot, brown spot, tobacco mosaic.

Therefore you should:

- use seeds that are resistant to diseases;

- change the place where you plant tomatoes every year;

- destroy affected tomatoes;

- do not plant tomatoes next to potatoes;

- weed the beds;

- you can work (pruning, pinching, shaping) only with dry plants;

- if it is possible to use greenhouses.

The main pests of tomatoes: snails, slugs, caterpillars, Colorado potato beetle, mites, thrips, woodlice. Each pest and each disease has its own way to combat it; there are a variety of means to protect tomatoes on the market.

For a good tasty harvest, tomatoes need to be fertilized. From the beginning of picking seedlings until flowering, feed the tomatoes with mineral fertilizers, and when fruits appear, feed them with potassium fertilizers. It would be correct to use long-acting granular fertilizers, which need to be mixed with the soil before planting seedlings, and after the berries set, use special fertilizers for tomatoes, for example: seaweed extract.