Growing Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes isn't too difficult, you can do it in a 5 gallon bucket if you're in a pinch. But there are some finer lines when it comes to growing them. Tomatoes are a warm season crop and they are very tender to light freezes. Plan an average of two plants per person. All parts of the plant but the fruit (yes, tomatoes are a fruit) are poisonous. You don't want to plant them near walnut trees because their sensitive to walnut root acid.

Start seedlings an average of 6 weeks from your last frost date. The young plants will need 12 to 14 hours of light per day. Once the seedlings have 4 leaves, you can transfer them to a deeper pot and then again when their 8 to 10 inches tall. Harden off for about 10 days. Stake downwind when you transplant. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizer. Fertilize 1 week before and on the day of planting. Medium an deep watering until harvest and even moisture helps prevent blossom-end rot.

There is a long list of pests, most of which will succumb to green pest control methods. Aphids, beet leafhopper, cabbage looper, Coloado potato beetle, corn borer, corn earworm, cucumber beetle, cutworm, flea bettle, fruit worm, garden centipede, gopher, Japanese beetle, lace bug, leaf-footed bug, mite, nematode, slug, snail, stinkbug, thrips, tobacco budworm, tomato hornworm, and whitefly.

Diseases: Alternaria, anthracnose, bacterial canker, bacterial spot, bacterial wilt, botrytis fruit rot, curly top, damping off, early blight, fusarium wilt, late blight, nematode, psyllid yellows, septoria leaf spot, soft rot, southern blight, spotted wilt, sunscald, tobacco mosaic, verticillium wilt.

Environmental disorders: Blossom-end rot, sunscald.

Do not plant around corn, dill, fennel, kohlrabi, potato and,of course,walnut.