How Easy Is It To Grow Tomatoes? Easy As Number 2!

Amanda Thomsen, contributor

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You start your tomato seedlings every spring with great care, coaxing them and coddling them. Well, as it turns out, you're planting tomatoes more often than you think- just not in your backyard.

And it all starts with a flush.

That gooey protective coating on tomato seeds really goes a long way. How long? It protects those seedlings through the whole cooking process, for all of the eating process and during the ENTIRE digestive process. In the end, they become a field full of tomato seedlings at a sewage treatment plant. These seedlings usually get sprayed with herbicide or die of natural causes and do not end producing tomatoes that end up at your local grocery store.

But wouldn't that explain a lot about the taste of grocery store tomatoes?

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Comments (2)

Ruth writes: Lassivius, you'll find lots and lots of tomato-growing info on FineGardening.com's sister site, VegetableGardener.com. Start here and follow the links: http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/8879/all-about-tomatoes Posted: 8:48 am on August 16th

Lassivius writes: I'm not sure that the notes on "Easy as number 2" adds anything to our understanding of growing tomatoes! Instead I offer my own experience.
And I had hoped that today's notes on pruning tomatoes would help also but sadly they do not.
My own experience with tomatoes took a big leap forward this year. I erected a simple frame - 4 posts and 2 cross bars at the top with strings hanging down that now support 12 plants that are doing exceptionally well. As advised elsewhere I did remove all leaves below or at the level of the first set of flowers, as well as all suckers, and as soon as the plant reached about 4 feet I started removing lots of leaves, especially any that shaded a set of fruit. That way I was forcing the plants to put their energy into flowers and fruit instead of more greenery. All 12 plants are now well over 7 feet tall, each with at least 5 sets of fruit, and so far the fruits are the biggest I have ever grown and there are plenty of them. Systematically removing leaves lets in a lot more light and air and I have had no blight or pest problems at all so far. I have never read anything anywhere about such drastic leaf removal but I now believe this is the way to go. Certainly my plants have not suffered and they are fruiting plentifully. Posted: 10:07 am on August 15th

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