The tomato is one of the favorite vegetables (fruit actually) in the vegetable garden, both for its taste and for its culture. This is why people try to put all the chances on their side to have the best possible production.

The choice of varieties

These are the most widespread tomato varieties:

1. Red cherry and yellow cherry: For the aperitif for example.
2. Green Zebra: A green tomato always attracts reluctance, but its very mild taste makes everyone agree.
3. Heart: With a very compact pulpit, it lends itself very well to cooking or salads.
4. Pineapple: A variety of huge yellow/orange tomatoes later than the others to spread out the harvests and with a slightly sweet taste, ideal in salads.
5. Rose de Berne: Another very good tomato with a subtle flavor for salads which is also quite disease resistant.
6. Market wonder: An earlier variety with very few seeds well suited for cooking or sauces.

This selection was not made at random. In addition to mixing shapes and colors, it makes it possible to multiply the uses (salad, sauce, cooking) and to spread out the harvests (more or less early sorts) and finally to test the robustness of different varieties.

Should you buy your plants or sow your seeds? Having a lot of seeds from exchanges, most people usually opt for the second solution: sowing in a bottle.

Planting and maintenance

The very mild temperatures in May allow to plant more quickly than in the past. In order to ensure good ventilation of the plants, people make sure to space them well. For example in a vegetable garden in squares of 1m20 (or even 1m50) on a side, do not place more than 5 plants and leave a maximum of space between each. Click here to see more garden beds of square and rectangular shape.

Wanting to “make the most of” the space by filling it is not necessarily a calculation since ventilation will not be ensured and a single foot sick with mildew could contaminate all the rest of the crops. In order to protect the young plants from the spring rains, they must be sheltered under covers for a month. It is during this period that they must be monitored almost daily, remove suckers, water, possibly add nettle manure once a week and carry out a good mulch.

Watch out for mildew

Despite a particularly rainy and stormy summer, for the moment no trace of mildew (I touch the wood that surrounds my vegetable gardens in squares. Even if nature is not 100% tamable, especially when you want to take care of your garden without using chemistry, there are still techniques and strategies to optimize your chances of success.

More great garden products on Gartendek online store: faux rocks, greenhouses, sculptures and so on.