Nothing better than a home-grown tomato picked straight from the vine

Spring usually arrives in late March and the more frequent sunny days provide the opportunity for an increasing range of gardening

tasks.

It’s time to get busy preparing seed beds, sowing seeds, cutting back winter shrubs and generally just giving the garden a good tidy up. As it reaches mid-March it’s the perfect time to start sowing vegetable seeds which is what I’m going to discuss with you today.

If you have never bitten into a fragrant, vine ripened sun warm tomato, harvested fresh from your back garden you haven’t tasted a real tomato.

Tomatoes you buy nowadays in supermarkets have probably been pumped with lots of different chemicals and pesticides and during that process I’ve found that the taste has gone with it which is why I try to grow as much of my own as possible.

Growing tomatoes is simple and just a few plants will reward you with a delicious harvest of fruits in the summer months. There are many varieties to choose from but I’ve found growing the varieties ‘Gardeners Delight’ and ‘Tumbling Tom’ work best for me.

After you’ve got your seeds all you need to do is fill a few plastic pots or you could recycle some empty food trays making sure you make a few holes at the bottom to allow good drainage and fill with some general multi-purpose compost and water lightly.

Sow your seeds evenly and thinly on top of the compost and cover with a thin layer of soil. Keep watered and place on a bright and sunny window ledge to germinate.

After a few weeks your seedlings should have emerged and will be ready to transplant into separate plastic pots.

If you’re worried that your plants are too tall which means they are leggy due to a lack of sunshine, then it’s a good idea to bury them deeper when re-potting into larger pots.

When the risk of frost has passed you can plant your tomatoes outside or in a greenhouse in a sunny location.

You can grow them in vegetable grow bags which are widely available in most garden centres or just fill a large pot with compost.

Keep watered and feed with a general tomato feed weekly and look forward to some great tasting tomatoes in the summer.