Tomatoes are a Jersey garden staple, but can be tricky to grow, especially for first-time gardeners (shoutout to blight). Check out these tips from SJ Mag resident gardening expert Toni Farmer to get those delicious tomatoes just right.
Beware of blight
Blight – a gardener’s worst nightmare. The soil-borne disease can be a death sentence for your tomatoes if it’s left alone. While you can’t fully get rid of it, you can manage it. One way to keep your tomatoes healthy is by cutting off the infected leaves. But, make sure you clean your scissors with disinfectant between each cut or you could risk spreading the blight to the rest of the plant.
Save your banana peels
Here’s a secret: tomatoes love calcium, and need a lot of it to grow. A good way to naturally give your plants calcium is with an old banana peel. No, we’re not joking. As the banana peel decomposes, it will release calcium to your plants and help them stay healthy through the season.
Loosen your soil
Before you place your seeds, take some time to turn over your soil. Plants are just like us – they like their space. Loosening the soil and making sure it isn’t compact will give your tomatoes’ roots the space to grow.
You’re not watering enough
We’ve all done it – you grab your hose and water your soil for about a minute then call it a day, but that’s not going to be good enough for your tomatoes. When you don’t water enough, that encourages tomato roots to grow in the shallow part of the soil (the only part that’s wet), but we want them growing deep. So, every now and then, grab a spade and turn up your soil to check that the water is reaching further down.
Save your pizza boxes
Did you know that pizza boxes aren’t recyclable? At least, not in the traditional sense, but you can reuse them to keep blight away from your tomatoes. Place an unfolded pizza box (or other cardboard) on top of your soil where you plan to plant your tomatoes. It will keep any blight-affected soil from being blown onto the tomato leaves and transferring the disease. Then, soak the box and cut a hole in the middle for your seeds.
