Speaker 1: Welcome to Gardening with Ben, your go to podcast for
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roll up your sleeves, and let's get started on this
year's gardening journey. Hey everybody, and welcome to Gardening with
Ben for your Wednesday episode of the week. So today's episode,
we're going to talk about looking after those tomato plants
and trying to keep them alive until September two time,
as there's obviously ways and means of encouraging them to
keep growing and stay alive and keep fruiting as much
as possible, because that's what you want, you don't. You
want to get your money's worth from them plants, because yeah,
they're not cheap to set up. Obviously, all the compost
and the feed. They're quite expensive to run. Obviously, you
get your money's worth if you get a decent crop
off them, which is what you want. And obviously homegrown
tomatoes tastes as a load better than shop ball ond And obviously,
as you know, I've been looking after my tomatoes quite
a bit at the moment. I tend to give them
a look after every single week. Every single week, I
spend about ten to fifteen minutes on the plants, just
sorting them out, tidying them up and making sure they're
looking the best possible as themselves. And if you do
this on a weekly basis, you will keep on top
of it and it's easy to look after. And I
mean when you're looking after them, I mean tips like
I give them food once a week. I take off
any shoots what are growing in between the leaves called suckers.
I also take off any lower leaves towards a bottom
of the planet. I still keep some higher up, as
obviously they do need some leaves on them, but I
always take the lower leaf ones off that are growing,
and any odd part of the tomato plants that are growing.
Sometimes they can grow a bit out everywhere and from
the base, so take off any extra plants that are
growing from it. And yeah, I pick off any ripe tomatoes,
but I always leave a couple of red ones around
because obviously having the red ones there will help ripen
the other ones because when they start to go red,
that's when all the others start to go red as well.
So keeping some red ones on the plant helps produce
the scent what it sends out and ripens the other
ones off. Now, tips to help encourage the plants to
stay fruiting all the way up to September possibly October
is through the soil health and the nutrition. And this
is through maintain steady feeding with a balanced fertilizer and
then switch to a high potassium tomato booster from late summer,
a bit like tomato feed. And I always give mind
some chicken pellets or some fish blood and bone, and
that will help feed them because a lot of times
during the big growth of the plant, it will have
lost a lot of the food from the compost, so
you have to fill in that food and keep the
plants well fed. Some people often feed them about twice
a week to once a week, so doing that really
does help keep the plant hung less hungry than it
actually is, so that's one little tip for you. Also
top dress with well rotted compost or seaweed extract every
three to four weeks. Seaweed has been proven to be
a fantastic thing for feeding plants with. I've never tried
it myself, but if obviously you've got a beach nearby
and can get some seaweed, why not give it a
try and let me know how well you actually get
on using seaweed. I know it can produce really good plants,
so I can obviously say you can obviously buy the
liquid form of seaweed extract, which you can obviously add
as a food as well, and feed them that way.
So if you've got any seaweed lying around, have a
try and let me know how you get on. Watering
and mulching. Watering and mulching. Tips for tomatoes, water deep plate,
but infrequently to courage strong roots, aim too, about one
to five inches per week. So yeah, I tend to
watch mine every single day at the moment because they
are heavy drinkers and the compost does dry out pretty
fast in my polytomal. It obviously depends where you're actually
growing your tomatoes, whether you're growing them outside or inside.
And obviously if you're growing them indoors, water them on
a regular basis, pruning and training, remove the lower leaves
and yellow in foliage to improve air circulation. Now, that's
one thing I always keep an eyut for. I always
keep out an eye out for the yellow leaves. If
the yellow leaves set in, take them off and remove
them straight away. Again, pinch off any suckers that pop
off in the side of the planet. And when you
say the suckers, they look like a little tomato plant
what's growing from the side of the smart plant itself.
So just pinch them off and either try growing. You
can actually root them by putting them in some water
and they'll get some roots on them and plant them,
or you can just chuck them away. But yeah, it's
probably a bit too late to start mortmat plants off now,
so any suckers that arrive, I've just chuck them away.
To be honest. Pests and diseases. Keep an eye out
for pests and early signs of blight if it's or homeworms,
but keep an eye out and try and eradicate it
as soon as you see it. If obviously the sea
blight growing on them touch wood. I never seem to
have issues with blight on my martyrs. If it's starting
to get cooler, when it's starting to get to like
September October time, and you want to encourage them to
keep warm, look after them by draping light horticultural fleece
over the plants, and that will look after them and
keep them warmer at night. So yeah, and harvest on
a regular basis. Obviously, if there's a lot of red
ones on them, take them all off, take them home
and eat them. Obviously, when they're green and it's getting
towards the end of the season, it's a struggle to
get them to go ripen. Sometimes obviously you can use
banana skins which will help ripen them, or there's other
methods which I believe you can put them in brown
paper bags, but I've never seen if that actually works
or that. People will have to let me know if
that does work. But yeah, that is the ways of
keeping your smart plants going for the rest of the year.
And if you look after them, they will certainly look
after you because they are good providers and you can
get fantastic crops from them, and if they're struggling to
produce tomatoes, if you've got lots of flowers on them
and no smates of appearing, pollinate them yourself or make
sure that your greenhouse doors open so that the bees
can come in and pollinate them. And when I say
pollinate to yourself is getting like a child's paintbrush what
they use for a paint set, and just touch each
of the flowers to pollinate them themselves and hopefully get
lots more to martes growing. So that is our tips
and advice on keeping your smart plants going and producing
as many tomatoes on the planet as possible. I hope
that you found that useful. If you're new to this
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remember keep smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with Bet. Everyone.
Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of Gardening with Ben.
I hope you've enjoyed our chat and picked up some
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