Comments on: How to Grow Cherry Tomatoes

on 11/22/2005 If you're fed up with paying for expensive cherry tomatoes that grow just as quickly as weeds; read on!

Don't bother buying seeds. Buy 1 punnet of tomatoes and eat them all except 2 or 3. Carefully squish a couple and extract the seeds on a piece of kitchen paper, cleaning off the slimy coating. Use tweezers to lay the seeds out in rows on a second piece of kitchen paper. Place the paper on a plate and add some tap water so the seeds are kept moist. Place the plate in a cupboard to avoid the light. Check the water every 24 hours as the seeds must always remain moist! After a few days the seeds will sprout. Make sure the temperature is warm enough - around 20/25c. When the seed has a small white root of about 1 to 2 centimeters, place it in a small pot of ordinary black earth 1 centimeter deep and cover loosely. After the seedling has the first leaf, extract carefully (with as much root as possible) and place in a large pot. I use 10 liter plastic containers with holes drilled underneath for drainage. These I get from the catering as they thrown away by restaurants - they are free! You can grow 3 to 5 plants in one container. Make sure you place a stick in the middle of the container to support the plants!

After the plant has reached a height of about 12 inches, fertilize once a week with a liquid bio mixture. 5 milliliters per 10 liters water. Try and keep it in the sun and out of the wind! If too windy, place indoors on a windowsill. I have 26 plants growing in 6 containers, 3 feet in length and half are flowering.

Tomato plants are poisonous, so no worries about bugs! Don't germinate all at the same time unless you want to harvest in one go! I do not have a garden, just a balcony. I also grow raspberries, they are easy like tomatoes.

on 11/22/2005 On one of the cooking shows I watch, they showed how to grow tomatoes in a bail of hay. A hole was cut in the hay and the tomato plant was put in the hole. They covered the plant with soil, and watered the whole bail. They placed the bail of hay in an area that received full sun.