eBook Review – “How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes”

Authors: Annette Welsford and Lucia Grimmer

Reviewer: Lyd Holland
Rating:

Recently there have been a proliferation of books about growing tomatoes that have come onto the market – particularly on the internet. Most are nothing more than collections of anecdotes, which I found out after buying them.

“How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes” is different. In fact avid tomato growers are raving about this Australian book: they’ve had dramatically improved growth rates and crop yields by following the cultivation advice.

“How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes” has been written for anyone who wants to grow great tomatoes. Whether you’re in a hot climate or cold, on a farm or in an apartment, this book gives you step by step instructions to get started and detailed technical advice to common problems.

This easy to read 88 page book was co-authored by a lady with a Masters Degree in Plant Disease who
is a professional nutrition and disease advisor to the horticultural industry. Despite being a technical resource, it is really easy for the average person to understand. It contains lots of photos and step by step instructions as well as useful tips on organic gardening, watering, fertilising, disease, pests, growing from seed, collecting seed etc. It covers everything. It also contains very useful conversions of weights and measures throughout so whether you use imperial or metric you understand immediately what to do.

Step-by-step advice and tips on how to grow tomatoes you can use to help you substantially increase your crop’s health and yield. Not only that – your tomatoes will have more flavour and be a lot sweeter than you’ve tasted from a store bought variety.

It carries a lot more detail than the other ebooks on offer with a good amount of information on tomato problems and avoiding these problems before they start. Includes a lot of pictures that are very helpful and comes with the reassurance that the writers of this ebook are very knowledgeable and know their stuff!

My Verdict: This is the most comprehensive ebook I’ve seen, and its suitable for all levels of tomato growing ability. It gets a big thumbs up from me – Five Stars

Click Here To Get “How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes”

There are a couple of ways for approaching tomato growing in a greenhouse, you can either dig and prepare the soil of the greenhouse ready to accept the tomato plants or you can grow the plants in a container such as a plant pot (12″ diameter) or growbag.

Realistically most growbags that are available which can be 35 or 40 litres in size are only enough to support two plants. There are ways in which you can push this out to 3 plants but for the cost of a growbag its probably as well just to stick to 2 plants, particularly if you take good care of them and produce lots of fruit.

If you go for pots then you should steralise them before use, to do this you can use a dilute solution of a suitable disinfectant, something like Jeyes fluid is perfect for this task.

While we are on this subject, you really should wipe down the inside of your greenhouse with disinfectant as well to ensure any residual contaminants that could also cause disease are removed from the glass.

One of the reasons I am suggesting using large pots or growbags for growing tomato plants is because the soil in the greenhouse is going to need to be dug out and replaced every 2 or 3 years anyway to ensure that you get rid of any build up of disease and also because the soil will be pretty much spent in terms of nutrients.

Space is limited in a greenhouse so the best option for plant varieties is to use the indeterminate variety of tomato plant i.e. a vine plant. You can prune the plant to the required size, leaving about 4 to 6 trusses on the main stem, which is about 6′ to 7′ in height, greenhouse size allowing. This will give you lots of fruit over an extended period.  You will have to pinch out the main stem when you have enough trusses to stop further growth.

As an aside, using the bush variety is less convenient for greenhouses because they, as the name suggests, form a determinant size of bush without pruning which is probably a little too large in diameter for the average greenhouse. The fruit also has a tendency to all come at once.

Irrespective of the growing method you choose, you should start to feed the tomatoes at the first sign of fruit and for the duration of the growing period, twice a week should be sufficient. Also as you are in a greenhouse regular and consistent watering is also very important and I recommend 2 to 3 times a day with water that has been allowed to warm in the greenhouse.

As the end of the season nears a way of helping the last remaining fruit ripen is to hang a couple of bananas in the apex of the greenhouse. If that fails to ripen the last bit of fruit you can always use the green tomatoes for making a delicious chutney.

Watering and Blossom End Rot.Watering can be a tricky business when it comes to tomatoes especially if they are grown in containers. However, correct watering can help avoid blossom end rot, which is caused by a lack of calcium when the fruits are swelling and leaves a dark leathery patch on the underside of the tomatoes. The first aim should be to keep the entire root area moist by giving them a thorough watering once a week (especially when the fruits are swelling) and water moderately in between. The reason is that roots are only able to feed and absorb nutrients (including calcium) from areas of soil that are moist. If half of the soil that your plant is growing in is dry, calcium uptake may also be reduced by half. Increase Aeration.One way to keep tomato plants healthy, especially when grown in a confined space such as a greenhouse or where they may be planted close together, is to increase aeration. This may be done by removing old, lower leaves below the first truss to improve air circulation. Deleafing.Opinion about deleafing varies considerably. Some gardeners will leave most leaves on their plants which helps shield tomatoes from direct sunlight. Too much direct sunlight and heat can cause sun scald, greenback and blotchy ripening. Some growers, especially those who grow in greenhouses, remove all leaves below the truss that is producing ripe fruit. This enables plants resourses to be directed into the fruit rather than having to support lots of leaves. Plants grown in greenhouses do not usually have their fruit in direct sunlight for long periods, so avoid the problems of sun scald etc.Watering and Disease.When watering, avoid splashing soil up onto the lowest leaves which may transfer soil infections into a plant through the leaves. Splashing water up onto growing fruit may also create ghost spot which is caused by grey mould soil spores and displays small transparent water-like rings. It’s also a good idea to pull off suckers, side shoots and leaf branches by hand rather than cut them because the blades of knives and scissors can spread disease from one plant to another.