This cold snap caught me by surprise.
My basil was growing in abundance until last week when the temperature got down to around 10 degrees at night. What was growing well with beautiful green healthy leaves, then turned black and inedible. So out it came out and in went spinach seeds!
What I should have done, is one of two things:
1: Collect it all and make pesto before the cold snap!
2: Cover the basil plants with plastic buckets while the cold snap hit and ensure the plants were surrounded by plenty of mulch to help keep the soil warm
However, the tomato plants growing nearby are doing very well.
You can still plant tomato seeds throughout our tropical winter. Tomatoes are hungry plants so make sure your soil is well fertilised before you get seeding, you can dig in compost, well broken-down manure or grab a bag or two of our vegetable soil improvers.
There are literally hundreds of different tomatoes you can chose from, so think about what you will use the most of. Small cherry tomatoes like Riensentraube, Kotlas and Black Cherry
that you can pick off the plant and eat or cut in half to add to salads or larger varieties like Daydream, Grosse Lisse, Costoluto Fiorentino, Break o day (to name a few) that can be used for salads, for preserving, for tomato sauce and pureed ready for many evening meals. We have all these seeds and more available now.
I tend to over seed and then pluck the weakest looking seedlings after they have grown their second set of leaves, leaving 30-40cm between each plant. If they are all looking healthy, remove them carefully and give them to friends.
Staking is important and I prepare this before seeding. My favourite staking technique is wrapping two intertwined lengths of cloth tie between stakes or sticks or whatever you have available to you, at different heights.
As the plant grows you can simply separate the two strands and weave the plant through them. As your tomatoes grow, prune off the laterals (little side growth between the larger branches) and once they have reached a manageable height, I like to keep them there by cutting off any new growth at the top of the plant.
When your tomatoes flower, make sure you feed them, they are about to give you an abundance of produce.
Did you know:
There are over 1,000 varieties of tomatoes, they all taste different, with various textures textures – why not try something you have not before.
The first tomatoes were not red, they were yellow, you can also grow black, white and pink tomatoes! The largest tomato ever picked was 3.5 kgs.
