Re: Popular Tomato Gardening Questions & Answers

Hello folks and tomato gardening friends!

In today?s post, I?ll answer some questions I?ve recieved recently about growing tomatoes via email from a fellow reader. Here are the questions:

"Hi Kacper,

I purchased your tomato guide yesterday and found some very useful
information that I had never read anywhere before. I have a few questions
which I was wondering whether you could answer.

1. You talk about buying a certain compost/fertiliser. Is it fine for me to
make my own in my compost bin using cow manure and pea straw?

2. I also feed my tomatoes with a combination of blood and bone and
sulphate of potash. Do you recommend this as a fertiliser and how often
should I use it?

3. Unfortunately I don?t have a greenhouse. Do you recommend I grow my
tomatoes outside on stakes or cages?

I looking forward to your response on the above queries.

Thanks"

ANSWERS:

Hi there,

Let me answer your questions to the best of my tomato ability :)

1. Making your own fertilizer:

Hmm - I have never made my own fertilizer, and I know my grandfather
never did either. This is tricky business, because, it?s really not as easy,
it is quite a sience that a lot of fertilizer companies perfect and keep to
themselves, it also takes a long time, often more than 3 months.

So, I cannot give you any specific advice here, except to be careful to not
have acidity in the fertilizer once it?s ready. Cow manuer has a lot of good
nutrients and micro-life essential for the plants to grow well, however, by itself, it is extremely Acidic.

Thats why the straw is there, you have to mix the straw with the manuer and
leave it mixed for a LONG enough time under the RIGHT conditions(temperature and humidity) for the chemical reactions to take place :)

This is a lot of variables already, not counting the fact that a lot of fertilizers
have even other stuff added to it.

However ? Somewhere, somehow, someone had to be the first to come up with this brilliant idea of fertilizer for tomatoes and make it themselves from scratch?

So I see no harm in doing it :) As long as it is not acidic in the end.

The other thing I would add is to make sure the animals were fed with real food :) ?not something terrible? like their own feces(quite common practice in todays? live-stock mass production farms)

I dont have any organic cows to give you, unfortunetely :( Just my book.

2. Anything you feed your tomatoes is pretty good, sulphate is definitely good.

I would recommend you feed this to your tomatoes once or twice per week, with the watering. In hot temperatures, you can definitely feed them more.

Fertilizers do wonders for tomatoes, however, they often do not have enough vitamins to keep the tomatoes well fed the entire time they are growing, therefore it is wise to water them every week with ?suppliment? foods like you are doing.

Don?t be afraid to feed them too much, more often than not, people don?t feed them enough.

3. Greenhouse question.

I highly recomend you DO get a greenhouse. Or make one yourself, Foil Tunnel green-houses are extremely easy to make.

If you do grow them outdoors, it should be ?okay? if you live in a warmer climate, if you live in a colder climate, you may experience difficulties with growing them.

I recommend non-wooden stakes, as wood does absorb moisture, is less sterile, and can sometimes catapult an invasion of disease from this moisture.

Your Commrade in Growing Tomatoes,

Kacper

Kacper Postawski is that author of ?Organic Tomato Magic? (http://aseafood.kacperp.hop.clickbank.net/) an eBook that Reveals The Most Over-Looked Secret That Grows Mouth-Watering Organic Tomatoes In Half The Time, With Less Effort, And Doubles Your Harvest...

Other Tomato Gardening Articles:

Tomato Gardening Quesitions and Answers

Growing Tomatoes In Hot Weather

Growing Tomatoes In Colder Climates

The BEST Tomato Soupe Recipe On the Planet!

When Black Fungus Disease Attacks Your Tomato Plants