Garden Vegetable - Tomatoes

Botanical Information

Starting

Notes:

Requires a rich well-drained soil in a warm sunny location. The tomato is widely grown throughout the world for its edible fruit. There are many named varieties and over the considerable period of cultivation by humans two distinct types have emerged. These are:

• L. esculentum cerasiforme This is the cherry tomato. Closer to the original species, it produces a large crop of small fruits with a delicious sweetness.
• L. esculentum esculentum. This is the more commonly grown tomato with much larger fruits. There are a very large number of cultivars with a wide variety of colors and fruit shapes and sizes.

Tomato plants are not frost-tolerant and generally need to be started off in a greenhouse in the spring if they are to succeed outdoors in northern climates. They also need a hot sunny summer if they are to fruit well. Some varieties have been developed that can be successfully grown outdoors during the summer in temperate climates, although good summers are still required in order to get reasonable yields. Varieties have been developed in Eastern Europe that can flower and set fruit at 45°F (this is compared with a temperature requirement of 52-55°F in earlier varieties).
Tomatoes grow well with asparagus, parsley, brassicas and stinging nettles. They are also a good companion for gooseberries, helping to keep them free of insect pests. They dislike growing near fennel, kohlrabi, potatoes and brassicas (this is not a typing error, merely a difference of opinion between different books).
This species hybridizes with L. pimpinellifolium (which is called L. esculentum pimpinellifolium by some botanists) but it does not hybridize with L. peruvianum.

Propagation: Seed - sow early spring in a warm greenhouse. Germination is usually quick and good. Pot up the seedlings into individual pots of fairly rich compost as soon as the first true leaf appears and plant them out after the last expected frosts.
Seed can also be sown in situ under a cloche at the end of April, though in a cool summer the results may be disappointing. The seed coat may carry tomato mosaic virus. However, by sowing the seed 15mm deep the seed coat will remain below the soil surface when the seed germinates and the disease will be inactivated.