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Camila Shares The Key Tips She Learned For Growing Tomatoes!

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This one is for all of you who have a green thumb like Camila does.

Growing your own fruits and vegetables can be very tricky! Depending on what part of the country you live in, it can be very challenging to get your fruits and vegetables to grow.

Camila recently visited Johnson’s Backyard Garden farm in Texas where she finally got one of her long-awaited gardening questions answered: How do you get a tomato plant to grow?! When she lived in California, it wasn’t very hard because of all the sunshine. But in Texas, it has been a different story.

Johnson’s Backyard Garden came to the rescue and gave her and her Mother-in-Law a quick tutorial on how to get this fruit to grow and thrive at home. Check out the video below and keep reading for all the tips you need to know.

FIRST THINGS, FIRST. THE SOIL BED:

You want a raised bed garden with a quarter-inch of compost on top. Your soil bed should be a total of 6” off the ground.

Fun Fact: tomato plants have roots that actually come up the stem of the plant. So when you are planting, you can actually rotate the plant on its side vs straight up.

TOMATOES NEED A LIFT!

Don’t let your fruit touch the wet soil because it can rot! They key is to use a cage so that the plant can actually grow up it! The other option is to use a solid hardwood stake and tie your tomato plant right to it so that the fruit can literally grow right up the stake.

HOW OFTEN DO YOU WATER?

This depends, during different stages of growth, the plant has different watering requirements. A good rule of thumb is to water deeply once per week. At the beginning (first week or two), you want to water daily until your plant develops roots (ten seconds of water). Once the roots spread out, you can water once per week. You never want your soil sopping wet! You want to water, let the soil go through a drying cycle and then water it again. You can feel the soil and do a finger test to see if the soil is dry. Saturate the soil, but don’t flood it.

Remember, tomato plant roots can grow pretty wide and take up quite a bit of space! So these plants do need a good amount of water.

 

Happy planting! Have more great garden tips for us? We want to hear them! Email us here.

by Camila Alves McConaughey