by Wally Richards

TOMATO TIME

On a visit to our local Mitre10 in Marton I saw that the first of the new seasons tomato plants are available. Two varieties were on display, Early Girl and Sweet 100.

The Early Girl is a good early tomato which I purchased one of as they were more established than the varieties I have germinated from my seed collection.

The Sweet 100 you either love or hate; certainly they produce very small tomatoes ideal for salads either whole or cut in half, but as many have found they are a pain to grow and often become like a weed if not picked when ripe.

While I was walking out to the counter with my tomato plant, a lady customer said to me ‘You’re game aren’t you?’ I replied I have a glasshouse and besides I have Spray on Frost Protection if I was to plant outside.

She replied, ‘Yes I have your Spray on Frost Protection.’

I suggested she buy one and pot it up to a larger container. Place it outside in a sunny, sheltered, frost-free situation such as under trees, shrubs or on the north side of the house under eaves.

Keep it a little on the dry side with only small drinks as plant needs. Tomatoes are fairly hardy. Spray with the Liquid Sunshine and MBL every day or two along with Wallys Secret Tomato Food with Neem Granules of which a little should be in the container’s planting hole when replanting and also a small amount on the top of the growing medium.

Later on when conditions are suitable for planting outside you likely have a plant that is heading towards a metre tall, flowered and maybe set fruit.

If you do not have a glasshouse you can still have an early start so that you have a good chance of eating your own ripe tomatoes well before Christmas.

There are a few tips to grow successful tomatoes that have great flavour, far better than what you currently have in the supermarket.

Firstly, tomato plants can root up the trunk well above the root zone. You often see this when the lower trunk produces bumps which are the beginning of aerial roots and if you were to mound up around the base with soil or growing medium then these bumps would become new roots and make for a better and stronger tomato plant.

So every time we repot or plant out we plant deep, covering the lower trunk up to or beyond the first true leaves.

Do not do this to grafted tomato plants as it will cause rotting to the graft and loss of the plant.

What I do nowadays is put some of my Secret Tomato Food with Neem Granules into the base of the planting hole along with some of Wallys Real Blood & Bone. Sprinkle a little of soil or growing medium over that and plant the tomato seedling up to the bottom leaves. Then sprinkle Wallys Secret Tomato Food with Neem Granules over the top of the soil or growing medium.

You now have ample food in the root zone and more washing down with watering or rain.

This process is repeated if repotted again into a larger container or from container to open ground.

The key to success is that Wallys Tomato food has more than ample potassium which is what helps with better flowering, fruiting and flavour.

Many of you may recall that the special, secret food was developed over 40 years ago when a chap by the name of Alan Ford asked me one day in my Garden Centre; “out of the several tomato foods on display which one is the best or what would be better to feed his tomatoes with?”

I said, “let me do some research and get back to you.”

Thus I consulted a couple of people who knew a lot about plant nutrition and we came up with a recipe which was later called, ‘Wallys Secret Tomato Food.’

I gave Alan a packet of the food and asked him to report back to me on the results.

Alan, who has since passed away, was a connoisseur on tomatoes and flavour and he could apparently taste the difference from a tomato plant that had been watered with town supply chlorinated water as opposed to rain or filtered water.

Well later in the season one Sunday, Alan called into my Garden Centre and handed me a ripe tomato he had grown, he said taste that.

I did and all I could say was “wow that’s delicious.”

Alan said “Yes, best I have ever grown thanks to your tomato food!”

As my late Mum used to say, ‘The proof is in the Pudding” and over the years since then I have had many gardeners praise the results they have achieved by using the secret Tomato Food.

By the way the same food can be used to great advantage on other flowering and fruiting plants such as capsicums, chili, passion fruit, strawberries etc.

In fact the Wallys Secret Strawberry food is the same as the Secret Tomato Food with Neem Granules, labelled differently and with different instructions to use for strawberries.

The reason that we relabelled with different instructions is because a few years ago a lady gardener told me that she not only used Mycorrcin on her strawberries, but also gave each plant a little of the Secret Tomato Food and the results was strawberries up to the size of apricots!

If your tomato plants are in a glasshouse or in a very sheltered area they may flower and not set fruit.

Tomatoes are self pollinating but require a bit of movement on a sunny day to move the pollen.

Thus it pays during the day when it is nice and sunny to go out and tap the plant or the stake that is supporting it to move the pollen to the flower set.

Another aspect is there must be sufficient moisture in the plant trusses to move calcium across the fruit set. If there is insufficient moisture then you end up with ‘blossom-end rot’ which is the dark patch at the base of the fruit.

This is particularly bad in container-grown plants that dry out quickly on hot days.

In open ground it is a lessor problem. So watering in containers in the morning and ideally when the plants are mature again in the early afternoon with a saucer under them or even having the container sitting in a larger bucket that can be filled with water to last all through the day.

The problem unfortunately does not end there because in a glasshouse when the temperatures are high the plant cannot take up enough water and move it to the top of a mature plant fast enough to offset the transpiration out of the foliage.

Thus the top trusses can end up with blossom-end rot even when there is lots of water in the root zone.

To help overcome this lower older leaves on the plant can be removed progressively as the plant ages. Which in doing so can create another problem called ‘collar rot’. That can happen especially in glasshouses when you remove laterals and leaves when the atmosphere is humid.

The disease enters the wound and later a rot sets up somewhere on the trunk and the rot cuts off the root system from the canopy.

Have some Wallys Liquid Copper made up in a trigger bottle and spray the wounds as soon as you create them and only remove on a day when the air is dry.

To overcome the evaporation loss, spray the tomato plant over and under the foliage with Wallys Vaporgard. This can reduce the moisture requirements by over 30%.

Also one final tip, laterals removed are baby plants if they are about 6 cm or more long. Strike them in moist sharp sand or compost for free plants.

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