Growing tomatoes

One of the plant that I really want to grow is tomato. Why? Cos Jayden eat tomato for fun and also cos when it's ripe, it turns red and it's so pretty ^_^

Anyway, I started growing tomato by just throwing some seeds from locally bought store into the soil. And all of them grew. And it was accidental cos the tomatoes rot and i just threw them to the soil for compost.

Taken on 31st October 2012.

Then I selected a few and grow them in pots and the rest i just throw them into my compost soil.

To my surprise, 3 plants grow so well in the compost soil and the one I planted in pots was stunted cos I kept moving them in and out of the rain and sun.

But I just let them grow and grow and it became so tall.

Then I noticed that i have 2 kinda of tomatoes in my harden. The one above is the fat tomato. And the one on my raised beds are cherry tomato. All came from the same box of "cherry tomato".

Is it hard to plant a tomato plant?

Need alot of time?

Alot of space?

That's people's FAQ to me about tomatoes.

I will answer, depends on whether you have the passion or not.

And also I don't spend much time in my garden cos I need to tend to my kids.

But one tip is , you gotto watch out for "suckers"

Suckers grow in between the main branch and the stem. You can just simply pluck it off when its tender or you can leave it grow bigger and then cut it off and just poke into the soil to get another tomato plant. Cool right?

I started to hand pollinate the tomato flowers using brush. I only manage to get ONE tomato.

Then a fellow Green Nook member said that she used electric toothbrush to vibrate her tomato flowers and her whole plant was filled with tomatoes. So I did the same to mine.

We're not crazy okay. The reason why people use electric toothbrush is because the vibration mimics the movement of bee's wings. And so that when its vibrated the pollen from the male will drop to the female's flower and voila! It's pollinated.

Surprisingly after the vibration session, more and more fruits appear on my tree.

And the ones on my raised bed grew even taller, than me!

Oh i got so excited I started to water my tomato kau kau and this was what happened.

KABOOM!

Too much watering in a day can cause yr tomato to get too much water and explode.

And I harvested this too late. *sigh*

And then these are the cherry tomatoes. I think JD is enjoying his cherry tomatoes in school recess now.

With more to come! Here's a video of cherry tomato plant.

If you want to start planting something, tomatoes might be the right plant for you.

Cos its easy and anyone can do it.

Remember, it's all about whether you have the passion or not ;)