Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment, we're going to talk about how to grow great tomatoes. Now tomatoes are one of my favorite fruits, or as some people still call a vegetable, but it's a beautiful plant that's easy to grow, and the trick is full hot sun. You can not get them hot enough. They need a lot of heat. And when you start them, start 'em by seeds indoors. There's many different types of tomatoes and the key to growing them is to have good seeds and I like the smaller varieties, like the Roma's or the Sweetie tomatoes, the small tomeel, tomato that's great with salad. And so when you're planting the seeds, the trick is to start 'em indoors in spring after the last frost, and you don't want to put your tomatoes outside until it's seventy and above every day for a week. That's my key, so you can buy the tomatoes already growing in a container or you can start 'em from seed, but don't put 'em outside until the weather's at least seventy and above for a week because if it gets too cold, they will not grow very well and you'll lose 'em and at the same time, if it's really, really hot, sometimes they'll grow so quickly, which is good, but it's better to start 'em right at that time. And when you're starting the seeds, the easiest way is to put 'em in these little seed trays and so you just fill it with nice seed starter mix, whether it's compost or potting soil, this particular variety has a lot of vermiculite, it's very airy. So you want to put the seeds into the starter mix in the container, about one-eighth of an inch deep, so barely covered up and put about two or three seeds at least in each container and then once they're growing and you've got two or three leaves on 'em, you'll find that they'll be a dominant plant, so you want to thin 'em out, so thin out the least dominate plant and just save that one dominant plant. And then turn around, and either put it right into a flower bed in the full hot sun, or up against the house, you can always put plastic, black plastic around it to get some more heat, but the key is heat. They need a lot of heat. And it's great to grow tomatoes in hanging baskets too, especially the smaller varieties. You can stick the plugs right into a hanging basket, whether you cut a hole in the bottom of it, or you just stick it in the very top of it and it'll hang out and that way, you'll have great tomatoes in your hanging basket. So even if you don't have a garden area, all you need is a container, or even a garbage can and you can grow great tomatoes.
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