How to grow tomatoes
Tomatoes are extremely versatile – pop them in a salad, a burger, or use them in your cooking – you can’t have enough tomatoes.
Timing
Wait for the cold weather to pass and the soil to warm up. Traditionally Labour Weekend is normal planting time – but this varies between islands. In parts of the North island tomatoes can be planted as early as September, but in the South island you’re best to wait until October.
Location
To make sure you get sweet, ripe tomatoes – look to plant them in a warm, sheltered, well drained area, with full sun for most of the day.
Plant Type
The easiest thing to do is to choose a grafted plant. This means that each variety has been joined, or grafted, onto a healthy set of roots. They’re more disease-resistant, and will give you a much bigger yield.
There’s many types of tomatoes you can grow, so decide what you want to be eating and choose your variety accordingly:
- Cocktail tomatoes
- Sweet 100 grow in long trusses and produce up to 100 of the most well known sweet cherry tomato.
- Sunshine 100 produce clusters of small yellow bite sized fruit that are low in acid.
- Medium size tomatoes
- Early Girl produces a heavy crop of tomatoes with excellent colour and flavour.
- Moneymaker one of the most popular for home gardeners produces a flavoursome tomato ideal for relishes and sauces.
- Russian Red tolerant to cooler temperatures produces a very hardy bright red round tomato.
- Big tomatoes
- Big Beef a high yielding plant, produces big and tasty tomatoes.
- Grosse Lisse is popular for home gardens producing fleshy smooth tomatoes.
- Beefsteak needs plenty of room to produce tasty tomatoes that are ideal for salads and sandwiches.
