What You Should Know About Tomatoes

What You Should Know About Tomatoes

There are some facts about tomatoes that you should know before growing one of them. It could be depend on their varieties or their descents.

1.      Determinate vs. Indeterminate

 

Determinate tomatoes are varieties that grow to a fixed mature size and ripen all their fruit in a short period, usually about 2 weeks. Once this first flush of fruit has ripened, the plant will begin to diminish in vigor and will set little to no new fruit. It’s also called as “bush” tomato. If you’d like to make tomato sauce, you’d probably choose this kind of tomato because it produces large amount of fruit.

Indeterminate varieties tend to grow longer vines and will require more support in terms of staking or caging over the course of a season. Determinate varieties often (but not always) tend to be more compact and manageable. Indeterminate tomatoes need pruning action to make the growth better.

What variety would you choose for your garden?

If you have a large garden, and would like to have heavy crops of tomatoes, you might want to plant some varieties of indeterminate tomatoes. If you want to grow it in pots or containers, you'll probably want to stick with a few different determinate varieties. They are more well-behaved and better suited to container culture. You can certainly grow indeterminate tomatoes in containers, but be prepared to be vigilant about staking or caging, as well as pruning the suckers to maintain compact growth.

Growing Tomatoes from Cuttings

Growing Tomatoes from Cuttings

My tomato from cutting

Gardeners may be not familiar with started veggies from cuttings. The tomato plant, in particular, lends itself easily to cutting propagation because even the cells in its stems can become roots.

Starting tomato plants from cutting is not difficult. First time I did it because I was late to prune my tomato suckers and feel sad to dispose it. Then I started thinking about, how if grow another tomato plants from cuttings?

One of the advantages of propagating tomato plants by stem cuttings is that it can take tomato seedlings (started from seed) 6 to 8 weeks before they reach transplanting size. If you keep tomato cuttings warm, the transplanting time frame is cut down to a mere 10 – 14 days.

Even if you’ve never tried propagating plants with cuttings before, you’re practically guaranteed success. Tomato cuttings are such incredibly easy rooters, they will even root in a cup of water. That being said, the plants are stronger if they are rooted in soil.

What you’ll need:

-         Tomato cuttings about 6 inch long

-         New pots and soil with good drainage

-         A pencil

How to do it:

Growing Zucchini from Seeds

Zucchini 

Zucchini is a member of the squash and pumpkin (or cucurbita) family of vegetables. It’s also called as courgette. It is perhaps the best known, and most joked about of the many varieties of squash. Zucchini is indeed a prolific producer.

Like all summer squash, zucchini can trace their ancestry back to the American continent, however the varieties of squash typically known as ‘zucchini’ were actually developed in Italy - many generations after their introduction from their country of origin. The first records of courgettes in the United States date back to the early 1920s - almost certainly brought over by Italian immigrants.

First time I got the zucchini seed from a friend in an Internet forum . I planted it because it's not a kind of the other squash who needs a lot of space to grow and spread. This is not a hard vegetable to grow. It's easy. Too easy, perhaps. I just need 4 days before it was sprout. I planted the seed in seedling cup, it's mostly like a drinking cup. 

My Zucchini's Sprout

 A week after, i repotted the baby zucchini to a larger pot, because i don't have large soil to plant it. It need full sun and more watering.

Another Kitty in Town : Lulu

My Kitty: Lulu

I found her in front of my office in the morning, hunger and noisy. Many people throw away their kitten because adult cat could give birth some new baby in a year. It’s complicated, actually, when you had more kitten in your home than you expected, then you have to give them away to the other people or throw them away. But the wisest way to do it is when the kitten doesn’t need their mommy anymore, so they could find their own food for living.

I brought the kitten home, while, I had 4 adult cats in my house. But I couldn’t just let the kitten roam the streets. I gave her name Lulu, and treated her in my room, gave her foods, prepared litter box, and warm place to sleep. I love to play with her, and she’s sleeping with me lately. Sometimes I talk to her like a friend. It’s a pleasure, we could share to a cat even though maybe she couldn’t understand and giving solutions like human, but it could reduce the level of stress for us.

My Gardening Tools

My Gardening Tools

I don’t need many tools to manage my garden, because of the size of my garden is small. Below, I give u some tools I used to maintain my garden.

1. Hoe – it’s a versatile gardening tool used to move small amounts of soil, piling soil around, to chop weeds, roots and to dig the soil before planting.
2. Hand shovel – I used it to dig and move bulk materials, such as soil, coal, and gravel.
3. Rake – used to collect leaves and grass and leveling the ground.
4. Pruning tools – I used scissors and knife to prune the plants such as tomato suckers, pick the lettuce, mustard and cutting dead leaves.
5. A pair of boots -  you will need it if you don’t want to soiling your feet.
6. A pair of gloves – to protect your hand from the soil, but I don’t use it, I just let my hands dirty then clean it after finished my job.
7. Watering can – this is needed for the water requirement of your garden. The longer the nozzle the more control you have with its flow rate. 
8. Spray bottle - used to watering my seeds, because it needs small surface of watering

Welcome :)

Some of the advantages of growing plants in tropical area are that we can grow any plants anytime without knowing the seasons. We just know two seasons, rainy season or dry season which allows us to plant everything. But, the unstable weather lately, could affect our plant by some pest, and insects. Some plants love rainy seasons to grow such as some vegetables like lettuces, radishes, cauliflowers and others. But the most horrible plants at the rainy seasons are like tomatoes and chili peppers, which most affected by fungi, pest and insect. That’s why here, the above items are very expensive at the rainy seasons exceed from normal price at the market.

I decided to grow my own kitchen needs months ago just to fill in my spare time. But lately, after harvest some foods, I’m very lucky to grow it. I don’t have to spend much time and much money to buy some of them in the market, ha-ha :P

In this blog, I would like to post some tips, some of my little back yard collection and want to take same advices from you all, how to plants better in the next time. So, have a take a look at my backyard, enjoy your time and I would like to take some experiences from you too! :D