Once you’ve eaten sun-ripened homegrown organic tomatoes, you won’t go back to store bought ones.
Likes: Warm soil; protection from wind.
Dislikes: Frost or cold soil.
When to plant/sow in zone:
How to start: Sow seed into premium seed raising mix. Grow seedlings in pots until soil is warm.
How to grow: Bury stem when planting seedlings to encourage more roots to form. Space plants 50cm apart. Install stakes or trellis to support vines. Water deeply and regularly.
When to harvest: Before fully ripened but with a good blush of colour; finish ripening in kitchen.
Linda Cockburn writes about different ways to preserve your summer harvests, such as tomatoes, so you can keep on enjoying the results of all your hard work in winter.
Cheryl McGaffin grows a wide range of heirloom tomatoes on her property on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. She shared her top growing tips with our horticultural expert, Penny Woodward.
There are many ways of growing tomatoes from seed, but here is one of the simplest and most common, using punnets or seedling trays, from our horticultural editor Penny Woodward.