Especially if you love unusual tomato varieties, you should try growing them yourself. While there are usually only a few varieties available for pre-grown plants, which are popular with many customers, you get a large selection of seeds that ensure a variety of flavors during the later harvest.
How do you properly prefer tomatoes?
Tomatoes should be sown from mid-March by placing seeds in pots filled with potting soil and covering them with a 0.5 cm thick layer of soil. In a bright location, a covered seed tray allows cotyledons to emerge before the plants are moved to larger pots.
The right time for sowing
Tomatoes are very light-requiring and will rot quickly if there is a lack of light. They then form long, fertile stems that quickly break off and cause the seedlings to die. Therefore, sow tomatoes from mid-March at the earliest and place the seed trays in front of a bright window.
If you like to grow plants, it's worth purchasing special LED plant lamps (€21.00 at Amazon). The seedlings grow stronger and more compact under artificial light. It can even be grown in dark apartments and basements. If you place the plants on a shelf and attach a plant lamp to each shelf, you can grow a lot of seedlings yourself despite the small footprint.
Sowing instructions
- First fill small growing pots with low-nutrient growing soil.
- Put a seed in each pot.
- Cover the seeds with a 0.5 centimeter thick layer of soil. Since tomatoes need the bright red spectral light to germinate, the layer of soil must not be thicker.
- Wet carefully with a sprayer.
- Cover the growing tray to create a warm, humid greenhouse climate.
Caring for tomato plants
- Open the hood every day to ventilate. This prevents the seeds from starting to mold or rot.
- The temperature should be constantly between 18 and 25 degrees.
- The cotyledons appear after about ten days.
- As soon as the second pair of leaves appear, transplant the small tomatoes into a pot with a diameter of nine centimeters.
- Now use conventional soil for vegetable plants, as the young plants need more nutrients.
Continue to care for the plants as usual until they are around thirty centimeters tall. From this point on you can slowly accustom the tomatoes to the outdoor climate.
- In warm weather, place the young plants in a sunny spot outdoors.
- After the ice saints, they are moved into a tomato house at a distance of 80 centimeters.
Tip
Get the seeds of rare tomato varieties as early as mid-February if possible, as unusual varieties are quickly sold out. Store the seeds in a dark, dry place until sowing.
