Plum Tomato

Tomato Seedling

Tomato Flower

Tomatoes

Climate And Soil:

Tomatoes like a nice warm area and good sunshine. They need at least 8 hours of sunlight each day, or they get long and lean and produce little mature fruit.

They like soil that has a pH of 5.5 - 6.8, is fertile, deep, well-drained, and that is rich in organic matter. If the soil stays soggy where you want to plant, build a raised bed.

You want soil that will hold water as evenly as possible because uneven uptake of water can cause all kinds of problems with tomatoes including: flower drop, fruit splitting and blossom-end rot.

To help give your tomatoes the best-suited environment you can, till in a good amount of compost or organic matter. A general guide would be 3 inches (7.6 cm) of organic matter into the top 6 inches (15.2 cm) of soil.

You can also grow a cover crop to help build the soil. Plant a grain or legume crop, sometimes called green manure, for the purpose of chopping it down and adding it to the soil.

One way is to plant hairy vetch (Vicia villosa), a nitrogen-fixing legume, in your garden bed in the fall. In the spring, cut it down and till the residue into the soil. This provides both nitrogen and an instant mulch that preserves moisture.

Lastly, many tomato diseases reside in the soil and affect peppers, eggplants, potatoes, and other crops in the nightshade (Solanaceae) family. To break the disease cycle, and to help get rid of the disease-causing organisms, rotate tomatoes with unrelated crops, such as corn, beans or lettuce.

Tips:

• While watering the tomato sapling, always keep the water towards the base of the plant, and try to keep the leaves dry. Tomatoes can become easily infected when airborne spores land on wet plants. So avoid using an overhead sprinkler. But obviously if it rains you can't do anything about it, but try as much as you can to keep the leaves dry.

• Water regularly but allow the soil to dry a bit between watering cycles. Tomato plants need a regular available water source but without being soggy.

• In areas with extensive heat, you may need to provide a mulch (A protective covering of rotting vegetable matter like dry leaves, twigs etc spread to reduce evaporation and soil erosion) around the base of the plants to keep the roots from drying out, and help with moisture retention.

Nutritive facts:

• Tomatoes are a storehouse of vitamins and antioxidants, that help in preventing diseases and also in boosting the immunity system.
• A diet, which includes tomatoes, is considered to reduce the risk of prostate diseases and heart diseases.
• Tomatoes contain Vitamin C, which helps in the production of collagen, tendons, scar tissues and blood vessels.
• Tomatoes also help to prevent cell damage as the Vitamin C is also considered an antioxidant, which prevents cell damage by free radicals