Organic Tomato Seeds

Tomato Gardener's Delight 12 Organic Tomato Seeds £0.75 123	Tomato Moneymaker 12 Organic Tomato Seeds £0.75 123

Sowing Instructions

Gardener’s Delight: popular variety with massive yields of scrumptious, cocktail-sized fruits.

Moneymaker: much-loved and reliable with heavy crops of delicious, medium-sized fruits.

Both are suitable for growing on outdoors in a sunny, sheltered spot or, if preferred, indoors in grow bags or containers.

Sow: Under glass, from March to April, in seed compost, in individual pots.  Covering the pot with a clear plastic bag can help to retain moisture and keep the temperature warm and as even as possible.  Seedlings should emerge after around 7-10 days.  After a further 4 weeks, if roots start to appear from the bottom of the pot, transplant seedlings to a larger container. 
Choose a sunny, sheltered site for your organic tomato plants (positioning plants against a wall or fence will provide protection and support) and dig plenty of well rotted organic matter into the soil.  Harden off seedlings prior to planting out, 2-3 weeks after all frosts are past in your area.  Plant around 30cm apart and a couple of centimetres deeper than the height of the pot they are being transplanted from.  Loosely tie the stems of the plant to the support system with garden twine.

Aftercare: Continue to water regularly, little and often, and to loosely tie the main stem to the support as it grows.  Pinch out the side shoots (they will appear immediately above the leaf stems) and then remove the growing tip when the plant reaches the top of the support.  This will encourage the plant to grow tall and divert energy into producing fruit rather than too much foliage.  Once flowers appear, treat to an organic tomato plant feed every couple of weeks until August.  Switch to a general, nitrogen rich fertiliser from September.  Remove any lower leaves which begin to yellow.

Pests and Diseases: Whitefly and tomato blight are the two most common pests and diseases affecting tomato plants.  Whitefly are small, white, moth-like insects.  When young, they can be found clinging to the underside of leaves.  Being vigilant and spraying with soapy water as soon as whitefly are detected should help.  Sticky fly-catching sheets may also help greenhouse grown tomato plants, as can a treatment of tiny (and harmless to humans!) parasitic wasps, which devour whitefly.  Tomato blight is caused by the same fungus as potato blight.  On affected plants, rapidly spreading brown marks will appear, initially on the leaves.  The fungus will then quickly spread to fruit, causing them to rot. There is no treatment for blight, but removing and burning any leaves or fruit which appear to be affected, and praying for a period of dry weather, should help to slow the infection!

Harvest: from July, when fruits are ripe.  Just before frosts are predicted, pick all fruit and ripen indoors on a window sill.