Tomatoes

By Alip @alisonpikeGD

I had a packet of Tomato ‘Sweet Million’, it was about 7 years past it sow by date but you don’t know unless you try so I sowed the lot (~20).  Anyway over the past few months my kitchen has slowly been taken over by 20 very healthy tomato plants – one of the downsides to not having managed to put up my greenhouse yet!

The other downside to the rapidly reducing amount of space on my windowsill, kitchen table, side unit…. the list goes on, is that my tomatoes are a little spindly in their attempts to reach the light. They are due to be potted on so I’m taking the opportunity to plant them deep so they will be stockier plants.

You can see the before and after, I buried about 8-10cm of the stem but had I had deeper pots I would have buried them further.  It is not solely because the plants are lanky that I’m doing this. The buried section of stem will produce lots of roots and by doing this creates a better root system for water and nutrient uptake.  So when the greenhouse is finally up I will plant them directly into the soil in deep holes burying around ²/3 of the plant.

Look at that for a beautiful windowsill!!