Crop rotation vital
Plant the right veges to let soil replenish and help reduce pests
In cool and temperate regions, delicious tomatoes are sadly coming to the end of their growing season. Hopefully they have given you a bumper crop. Here’s what to do with your tomato patch:
Remove the remaining fruit and ripen any green tomatoes on a warm windowsill.
Pull the plants out of the soil, roots and all if possible. This will help to reduce the level of tomato pests and diseases that could linger.
Mix some blood and bone with seaweed. After a busy few months of growing tomatoes, the soil will have become depleted of nutrients and organic matter levels will have declined. Blood and bone is a rich source of concentrated organic matter, boosted with seaweed, and will help improve soil health and structure.
Refresh the mulch layer on the soil. Lucerne or pea straw is ideal as they help protect the soil from the elements and as they break down add valuable organic matter to the soil.
Choose your next crop. It’s important to practise crop rotation and not plant any vegetables in the same patch that are related to tomatoes, which includes plants like
potatoes, capsicum, eggplant and chillies. Crop rotation helps to minimise the build-up of pests and diseases, that can infest plants in the same family. Leafy greens like spinach and silverbeet or brassica crops like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are fantastic for growing after tomatoes.
After planting your new seedlings, water them in well with Seaweed tonic.
Once the seedlings are established, start feeding with Yates Thrive Fish Blood & Bone plant food concentrate, which is a complete plant food containing organic nutrients from fish boosted with added fast-acting nutrients to promote healthy plant growth and a great vegie harvest.
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