Hartley Magazine

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Clive Woods

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Down to Earth Gardening

I was born in 1950 in Welling, which is now part of London, but was then in Kent. I have been gardening for many years, although sometimes doing the minimum to keep everything tidy. As a child in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, I was given a very small patch of our garden where I built a minature rockery and bought plants for it. I also remember successfully growing nasturtiums, sweet corn and begonias. Later my father got an allotment and I grew some pumpkins. Unfortunately the biggest was stolen. I was very upset, although the next biggest still won a prize at the allotment show. I remember double digging the plot; also picking raspberries on hot summer days. After I went to University my Dad gave the allotment up - saying that Mum did not use enough of the crops we grew! For the next few years gardening disappeared from my interests, and it was only after buying a house and getting married that I started again - flowers in a very small garden in Leeds. We have lived in our present house for 30 years and gardening has always been important. A beech sapling and mountain ash 'sorbus: Joseph's Rock' are now large trees. When I retired we redesigned our garden with the help of our son so that we now have 2 ponds connected by a stream, as well as paths and lighting. We also bought a greenhouse in 2007 and that has been really useful for protecting half hardy and young plants and growing tomatoes and cucumbers. Four years ago we were also fortunate to get a small allotment (one-third of a plot) so now we can grow all sorts of vegetables - not always successfully! For us the best crops have been French Climbing Beans, Runner Beans, potatoes, lettuce, onions, as well as strawberries and raspberries.

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Growing Tomatoes [VIDEO]

How to Growing Tomatoes

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0u5UzV1MWI

If you have any questions please leave a comment below, or alternatively on our YouTube Channel 

Below is a Transcript of this video

Growing tomatoes is a very profitable thing to do and very easy. I recommend it if you haven’t grown many vegetables before.

It all starts off in February and March, that’s when you buy your seeds and you put them into a smallish pot that is half an inch deep. Don’t forget to put a label on it and then put it somewhere warm. [TIP] Use a propagator if you have got one! The warm window slot inside the house will do just as well.

Keep your eye on it. The young plants will grow very slowly at first, when they’re about an inch tall then they need to be separated and put into individual pots with the same size. And then they start to grow up – pretty quickly, but they can’t take the frost so they have got to stay inside your green house, conservatory, or your house. Any frost or low temperature may be the end of them and you would have to start all over again.

Now, one of the best tomato plants is called Gardener’s Delight. Those really small cherry tomatoes that it produces can often be ready by the end of June, which is much earlier than some others.

As they get bigger you will need to move them up pot sizes until they are in their final pot.  Once they get to this size, they’re incredible greedy plants. They need loads of watering and if you put them into a bigger pot then they’ll require less watering. Once they reach this size you’ll be watering them twice a day, if you don’t they’ll flop over. There are products on the market which eliminate the need for daily watering such as the tomato pots available from Greenhouse Sensation.

There are two types; the cordon type which go up and up, and you pinched out the side shoots so we can look at that later. Then there are the bush variety which have lots of shoots from the bottom. They are much better outside if you’ve got the climate. When the roots get pretty tight it needs moving on into a bigger pot using multi purpose compost, or if you got your own compost so much the better. They do need feeding quite rather a lot, so make sure you remember to feed them regularly. You can either use a standard fertilizer, or there are specific tomato ones to encourage the fruiting. [Tip] Or, when you put them in bigger pots you can use the slow release plant food. These should take a lot of the effort out of putting fertilizer on. So, that’s the introduction.