Welcome to my update on growing cherry tomatoes! This is my third update of Gardening series that I have been posting for a while. Previously, I shared my gardening videos and pics on Instagram.
Most of you know that this season I started growing my own vegetables and herbs – amaranthus, thyme, oregano, basil, oregano, mint, cilantro, fenugreek leaves, cucumber, okra, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beans, peas, bell peppers.
I started harvesting peas, cilantro, amaranthus and herbs multiple times.
Few tips for growing tomatoes:
- Tomatoes need a deep pot or growing bag. The root system of tomatoes is huge and shallow pots are a NO NO
- Tomatoes need 6-8 hours of direct continuous sunlight
- They need LOTS n LOTS of water to flourish.
- The pots need good drainage. As they need lots of water, they should also have a good drainage to make sure the soil is not tight n clogged
- They need to be fed once every 2 weeks with a good organic fertilizer
- Use a good healthy soil preferably with a mix of compost and fertilizer when you first put the seeds
- Once flowers start forming, they need to be hand pollinated to get a good yield.
What is hand pollination?
Pollination is essential for every vegetable plant. Once flowers form, the female needs to be pollinated by the male in order to bear vegetable.
Some seeds available in the market these days are open pollinated, meaning, the same plant has both male and female flowers in order to make pollination easier. So wind or watering them helps them pollinate!
Irrespective of this, hand pollination means tapping the flowers slightly once they open for the pollen to fall on the female flowers. This helps get a bigger yield and vegetable. I strongly recommend this for tomatoes along with good fertilizer once they start bearing fruit. Both these measures ensure a high tomato crop!
This season, I am growing 3 kinds of cherry tomatoes – store bought seeds, seeds from the cut tomatoes, store bought plant. I must say all 3 kinds are doing very well. Below I show you the pic of all my tomato plants. What started as seeds is now becoming a forest! 😀
Below is the latest harvest. I roughly get 2-3 cherry tomatoes per day now!
Growing cherry tomatoes from cut vegetables at home
This is very easy way of growing tomatoes. If you like a particular tomato that you bought from the store, you can easily plant it to get the fruit.
- Cut the tomato into thin slices making sure each slice has some seeds in it
- Plant each slice in a flower pot with good healthy soil
- Plant them at a depth of 1 cm making sure they are not too deep
- Water them slightly so that the soil is moist
- Place indoors near a window so that it gets direct sunlight for about 6-8 hours a day.
- The ideal temperature at this time would be between 65-75F.
- Once they start germinating and saplings with 2 sets of leaves are formed, you can move them outdoors.
- Moving them out too early will risk them to die out, so make sure atleast 2 pairs of leaves have formed before moving them out.
- Once out, let them establish and grow to about 3 inches before you transplant them
- Transplant such that you separate each plant and place each one in separate pots with good space for their roots
If you have any more questions or need help with growing them, you can write to me @poojitakrishna@gmail.com. I can be contacted @Instagram and on my Facebook page.
Hope you all are having good cropping season. Will be back with my next update.
Regards,
PK!
