Planting tomatoes: The ultimate guide for garden & balcony
Fancy some juicy, home-grown tomatoes? With a few tips, the right tools and a dash of skill, you can easily plant tomatoes—even without a garden!
Brief information about tomatoes
✓ Sowing: late winter (the greenhouse or the flat)
✓ Planting: when temperatures are consistently above 15 degrees Celsius
✓ Harvest: Early autumn (perform a ripeness test)
✓ Best varieties for beginners: Moneymaker, Harzfeuer
✓ Best varieties for balcony and flat: Miniboy, Little Red Riding Hood, Bajaja
✓ Best varieties for the garden bed: Paoline F1, Golden Queen
Planting tomatoes: This is what you need
• Seedling tray
• Seedling soil mix
• Pots
• Coasters
• Digging stick/digging fork
• Hand shovel
• Gloves
• Watering can / Garden hose
• Compost
• Trellis
Planting tomatoes from the garden to the flat: What matters?
Tomato plants thrive not only in the garden beds, but also easily in tubs and pots. Therefore, you can start your tomato cultivation just as well in the garden as on the balcony, on the terrace or even in the flat. No matter what you decide—the following things are important:
- You should always start growing tomato seedlings indoors or in a greenhouse.
- Your tomato plants need plenty of space in the pot or garden bed. Waterlogging must be avoided.
- Choose a bucket with drainage or a drainage hole.
- Always choose a sunny location—the more, the better.
- Make sure the soil is particularly nutrient-rich. The special soil for tomatoes is ideal.
- Protect the plants from too much rain or wind. Perhaps you should build them a shelter.
If you want to grow the larger tomato plants in pots, give each plant at least 20 litres of volume. Small varieties suitable for indoor growing can manage with around 10 litres of volume per plant. In the garden or raised bed, leave plenty of space between the individual plants—up to 80 cm (depending on the variety and growth).
Growing tomatoes in a greenhouse is particularly easy and productive. Here the plants are safe from the wind and weather; it's always very warm and light here. Therefore, you can not only pre-cultivate the plants here, but also plant them out at the beginning of spring. However, pay attention to these features:
• Translucent roof
• Heating
• Sun protection
Extra tip: In a raised bed, you can plant the tomatoes two to three weeks earlier than in a normal garden bed. The ground temperature is higher here. When setting up the raised bed, pay attention to the height of the tomato variety: The taller the plant, the lower the bed. Otherwise, the care and harvesting will be difficult.
Tomato growing for beginners: Here’s how it works
Tomato cultivation from seeds isn't the easiest gardening challenge, but with a few tips you can still manage it. If you make mistakes when starting tomatoes from seed or are not quite so precise with watering and fertilising, in many cases your plants can still be saved. If not, just try again next season!
Step 1: Sowing
Sow the seeds in the seed trays or individual pots with 4 to 5 cm of the potting soil. Each seed gets its own 1 cm deep hole, which you then cover with soil. The seeds need plenty of light, water several times a day from a spray bottle, and a room temperature of around 20°C. The windowsill is an excellent place for sowing seeds.
Step 2: Pricking out
Approximately three weeks after sowing, the seedlings have developed their first leaves. Then you can prick them out. You separate the individual plants from each other and plant them in separate pots or containers. Use a peg for pricking to loosen the delicate roots. If there is no other way, a shish kebab skewer will do.
Step 3: Planting
Three to four weeks after pricking out, you can plant the tomatoes in the garden bed. Add plenty of compost into the soil and dig planting holes with a shovel or trowel. Carefully remove the tomato plant from the pot and place it in the hole. Press the soil down firmly and water the plant. Finally, you install a trellis.
Step 4: Caring for tomatoes
To ensure the tomatoes receive the nutrients they need, you must fertilise them every 14 days. Suitable fertilisers include the tomato fertiliser, compost or fermented nettle infusion.
For the first two weeks after planting, you should water the tomatoes daily with at least half a litre of water. They need water when the plant's leaves droop in the morning. It is important not to water from above. This is how you avoid fungal diseases.
Regularly removing the side shoots ensures that the tomato plant focuses its energy on fruiting. When removing the shoots, you remove the needless sprouts in the leaf axils—that is, directly at the point where a new leaf stalk branches off from the main stem. You can simply brake them off.
