this is part one of a basic primer on how to grow tomatoes at home we're gonna cover growing them in the ground and growing them in pots raised beds are kind of a halfway point between those two options they're basically giant pots this video will cover preparing your
soil selecting your plants and getting them in the ground I would say tomatoes are the most worthwhile food to grow yourself nothing comes close to the taste of a vine ripened homegrown tomato I have a whole video explaining why that is the case it's linked in the description
if you're gonna grow tomatoes in the actual ground I think it's worth your time to test the soil first find out if you need to add any nutrients or anything tomatoes are what they call medium to heavy feeders they need a rich soil there's lots of soil testing
kit options that you can google but if you live in the United States like I do Google the name of your state plus the word soil test and extension every state in the Union has a public land-grant University with an Extension Office that is a department with the
mission of extending the university's mission out to the people particularly as it pertains to food and growing things this is a legacy from when land-grant schools were basically farmers colleges all the Extension offices offer soil testing here in Georgia the kit cost fifteen dollars you pays your money
and the kit comes in the mail it'll have very precise instructions just to whatever it says this one tells me to take at least eight samples from all around my garden take a trowel you dig a little hole and then you cut a slice of dirt from the
side of the hole you're trying to get a little cross-section of dirt going down a few inches it's important to combine samples from all over the garden because the dirt could really vary a lot from place to place the kit tells me to mix all my samples together
pull out any big rocks or leaves or sticks and then let the dirt dry overnight there it is nice and dry fill the bag up to the line and then in the mail this goes to the lab less than a week later they emailed me my results my
garden is phosphorus and some alkali don't worry if that means nothing to you the soil report will tell you exactly what to do about it just do what it says helping me prepare my garden is my University of Georgia County Extension agent Carol Kelly if you live in
the US there's a person like this for your area whose whole job is to help you grow things and your taxes have already paid for them they offer free classes and advice I think I think we are a lesser known resource in the community I think our older
some of our older clients probably know us a little bit better than some of the younger generations so we're always happy to introduce ourselves to whoever wants to get some good information from us the first thing to do is to get my soil pH a little higher if
I don't do this my fruits will be susceptible to blossom end rot which is exactly what it sounds like it happens when the tomato is physiologically cannot absorb enough calcium from the dirt here in Georgia our souls tend to be more acidic because of the soil type we
have and we usually have to put lime on to raise the pH up to the correct range so if your other viewers may have PHS that are way too high and they would use sulfur to lower the pH to get it in that right range so the plants
can absorb the fertilizer that you put on again just do whatever your soil report tells you mine says to add 40 pounds of garden lime per thousand square feet my garden is 10 by 10 so 100 square feet this bag has 40 pounds so we are simply eyeballing
1/10 of the bag you should probably actually weigh yours just scatter it on next fertilizer my report tells me to broadcast 30 pounds of 10 10 and 10 per thousand square feet so about 3 pounds of tintin 10 yeah no doubt you were wondering 10 what 10 watts
and 10 what nitrogen phosphorus and potassium that's the the three macronutrients that plants requires so this bag will have 10 percent nitrogen 10 percent phosphorous and 10 percent potassium so if you see fertilizer this 15 0 15 and it would not have the the phosphorus the soil test
dictates which kind of fertilizer you need and this is where the word broadcasting comes from it's a farmer term it means scattering things onto the ground relatively indiscriminately as opposed to say placing one seed at a time exactly where you want it oh-hey is fertilizer like this natural
for the for the organic people it would probably not be acceptable there are organic fertilizers like bone meal and fish emulsion and things like that that deliver lower nutrient quantities analysis but for the general gardener this is a very common product look I definitely think organic farming has
an important role to play in feeding the world sustainably but for my tiny little home garden I say screw it what we're doing here is not what is causing the great Gulf of Mexico dead zone or whatever from an environmental perspective be more worried about what you put
on your lawn that's a more significant scale now we're gonna till the garden just digging down into it a few inches and up ending the soil with a shovel or a pitchfork they're actually tillers that you can buy but for a small garden I think there's no point
just use a shovel this gets the fertilizer mixed in it loosens and aerates the soil for planting and it kills or damages those weeds though I'm not really worried about them they are winter weeds they're gonna die as soon as it gets hot in anticipation of the summer
weeds we're gonna put down a so called pre-emergent herbicide people that are not in favor of using chemicals in their gardens they would they would probably not not do the herbicide application it's a product labeled for the garden it's safe to use in the garden and so it
will provide a barrier to prevent lots more weeds coming up this summer it's best to wear garden gloves when handling fertilizers and herbicides let's not get the shot of me dumping or put on however much the instructions say and you can certainly skip this if you're uncomfortable with
it this is my first time trying it I'll use a rake to kind of work that into the soil and also smooth things out and get ready to make rows that's when you mound the soil up into some long Hills onto which you will plant your stuff in
a line not everybody does Rose I'm down with Rose they bring order to the garden it allows you to kind of figure out spacing for plants you don't want plants overcrowded because that causes more disease problems insect problems for tomatoes I think you want Rose pretty far apart
from each other about four feet or well over a meter you got to leave room for your body so you can work on each plant as it grows tying it pruning at harvesting etc the mounding is mostly just a visual guide for this purpose but also makes the
tomatoes easier to plant for reasons that you'll soon see the mount also drains some water down away from the plants which in my book is a good thing I can add water to my garden I can't take it away and it tends to get really wet in my
backyard if your garden tends to be really dry maybe just plant into the flat ground so drying out a little bit quicker and temperature fluctuations so if you get your Tomatoes in and we have a late freeze the mounds might be affected a little bit more than then
they would be if they were just planted straight in the ground but I think at this point I think the pros outweigh the cons with the with the mounds Thank You Carol she's going back to work and I'm finishing up here working in the garden all spring and
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on the new Cove commuter split using my link and code in the description Thank You Cove now what if you're growing your tomatoes in containers or in a raised bed that's way easier just by a potting soil mix something like this it'll already have fertilizer and everything in
it and crucially for tomatoes it'll have moisture regulators in it peat moss and other spongy substances Tomatoes really really need an even supply of water they can handle being a little wet they can handle being a little dry what they can't handle is wild variations between the two
that causes end rot it causes the skins to split all kinds of problems even moisture is really hard to guarantee in a pot so the potting mix is spongy to hold on to water and release it slowly to the plant for most tomato varieties you really want big
pots like at least 18 inches or half a meter in diameter that's about the size of this this black one I have is huge this magnolia tree that I bought came inside of it but it's black which is not ideal for the hot climate I live in it'll
absorb a lot of heat from the Sun I have to be extra careful about frequently watering whatever I put in here for a raised bed it's the same basic deal you just need to make sure that you tear out the sod of the grass on the ground before
you build your bed on top of it now when is it time to plant in the springtime when you're pretty sure the temperature is not going to drop below freezing again and the soil temperature it's about 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees C how do you know the
soil temperature you can buy a soil thermometer but again here in the US your local land-grant university probably has a website where you can see soil temperature reports from all over the state and close to real time when it's warm enough it's time to head to the store
and buy seedlings little baby tomato plants you can obviously grow your own from seeds but that is a whole other thing you have to start them inside or in a greenhouse and I do not think it's worth it if you're growing on a modest scale which varieties should
you buy well the chief distinction is between determinate and indeterminate varieties determinants grow more like bushes to a fixed size indeterminate varieties grow like vines basically as huge as you let them you can grow either kind in the ground but in pots determinate varieties generally do a lot
better I've got some of those from my pots from my garden I'm mostly doing indeterminate varieties which I don't think it's controversial to say generally tastes better I think you should just get a bunch of different things and see what grows well it's your place and see what
you like to eat I have found that I enjoy the Cherokee purple variety far more than anything else I cry when they're gotten which sucks because the plants aren't very productive so this year I'm planting a lot of them how do you plant well the first step is
getting them out of their plastic containers without hurting them and I find the best way is to gently squeeze the roots in dirt out of the container like squeezing out toothpastes there you go then you got to dig a little hole and here's the weird thing with tomatoes
you want to partially bury the plant itself which is easier to do if you've built up a little mound Tomatoes will actually grow more roots from their stems which means you can help them get established by burying them like a mobster buries a guy in the sand at
low tide how deep is a matter of debate some people say go up to the first leave some people say go deeper the producer of these particular seedlings recommends burying the plant 2/3 of the way up now let's talk about stakes tomato plants naturally grow up and then
flop over and grow across the ground their vines that makes a very inefficient use of your space and the fruit tend to rot on the ground so you've got to give them something to climb upwards tomato cages like these are very easy the vines will just grow up
and naturally flop over the sides if you're using a long straight stake you'll have to tie the plant to the stake as it grows up and keep it pruned the advantage however if you use stakes is that you can plant them closer together one and a half to
two feet are about half a meter if you use cages the plants are gonna spread wider so you need to go like three feet or a full meter apart I always plant my plants too close to each other because they're so small right now it feels so stupid
to waste the space but they're gonna grow I still probably planted my garden too tightly this time you'll see you want to do the staking phase right when you put your plants in because if you did it later you'd be more likely to damage their root systems which
are going to spread out underground oh and I definitely recommend plastic or metal stakes wood ones are natural and romantic but they start to rot and break after just a couple of seasons and get the tallest stakes you can at least four indeterminate varieties they'll basically climb up
forever with the pot same basic deal you want to leave the plants a lot of room to grow which probably means one plant per pot though with this giant pot that left God I'm gonna try to grow three of these celebrity varieties at once I've done two before
I'm gonna try three the celebrity does well in close quarters and if I'm diligent with staking and tying these it should work it'll also help to keep my pots pretty well spaced out from each other that way they can all get Sun and they'll be less likely to
pass disease to each other regardless your pots or your garden will need to be someplace where they can get at least 6 hours a day of full Sun tomatoes like lots of Sun you want to water them right after you get them in being transplanted is traumatic and
in general you want to water a couple times a week unless you're getting very frequent rain last thing to consider is mulch something to cover all the parts of the ground that don't have tomatoes on them this will conserve water and nutrients and discourage weeds a great material
for this is cardboard we have a bunch of old boxes lying around you can literally cover all of your exposed dirt with cardboard it's economical and effective but I'm not sure I want to look at this in my yard all season long so I'm probably gonna get some
straw – this is my friend Rebecca's garden dried leaves a work great as well mulching definitely helps but if I'm honest with you I haven't bothered with my tomatoes for many years and I've gotten great crops that said I'm gonna try the best practices this year and see
if I can't do even better in part two we'll cover maintaining your plants and then harvesting I'll have that video to you just as soon as I have something to harvest
