Growing Your Own Tomatoes With Monty Don | Gardeners' World

Now start with a container of some kind. I like to use seed trays. Put some compost into it. This is peat free. Now I've chosen a variety called Gardener's Delight. So the best thing to do is to put the seeds into your hand rather than trying to sprinkle them direct because you want to space these out as well as you can and I find if you just gently press down like that on the surface it pushes the seeds into the compost. You get really good contact and that definitely helps germination. And then lightly sprinkle a little bit of compost over the top. Just put them either in a sink or a tray of some kind with an inch or two of water and just sit them in like that and leave it for about 10 or 15 minutes and it'll act like a sponge and absorb the moisture. When it's fully soaked put it somewhere warm. You should see the seedlings emerge in something between seven and ten days and you can see that they've germinated and have developed what's called the true leaf which is the leaf that looks like the parent and as soon as they develop a true leaf they're ready for pricking out or potting on. So if yours look anything like this, this is what you should do. So a small pot and I'm just using a normal peat free potting compost. Hold it by the leaf always and just cut around it to lift it out and there you have a root ball. You drop it into the pot like that hold it steady and it doesn't matter if I slightly bury the stem because new roots will develop from it and these are destined for the garden not the greenhouse. So I won't even think of planting them out for another three four weeks. I'm going to space these out about 18 inches to two foot apart and tomatoes should be planted good and deep. Make a hole and pop that in like that and go right up to that first leaf and there are two reasons for this. One is to make sure that it's really securely anchored in the soil because these become quite big and heavy and the other is because if the stem is in contact with the soil and underground it will grow more roots. I'm putting the support in a couple of inches away from the plant. I don't want to damage the roots but it doesn't want to be so far away that you have to bend the tomato back to reach it and if you've got any doubts we'll put your supports in first and then plant up against them. It is important to water them in well and then give them a good soak once a week. At the same time feed them. Now you can buy a proprietary tomato feed and they work extremely well. You can make your own comfrey feed and I use a lot of seaweed feed. The thing that will do these more good than anything else at all is a nice blazing summer so fingers crossed for that.