Tomato Preferences

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Some one hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago, tomatoes were exotic. Today, almost everyone who loves to treat household members with vegetables from their own beds grows them. But not everyone is happy with the harvest. Let's try to remember the preferences of this delicious vegetable

Alien from Mexico

Having arrived in Europe in the 16th century, tomatoes have trodden their way to the human stomach for more than three centuries. Their fruits were considered poisonous and very harmful, capable of driving a person crazy. In Russia they were called “mad berries”. By the way, from a botanical point of view, tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did they firmly take positions among the vegetables used for food.

Favorable temperature

The tomato is very sensitive to air temperature. Comfortable for him at a temperature of 20 to 25 degrees. If the temperature drops below plus 15 degrees, the tomato stops blooming, and at plus 10 degrees, it arranges a sleep mode for itself, stopping growth. He also does not like the heat, which slows down photosynthesis in the leaves and inhibits the germination of pollen grains.

Illumination

The flower brush is laid the sooner, the more light gets to the plant. Therefore, the better the lighting, the earlier the harvest.

Humidity

With a lack of moisture in the soil, the leaves of tomatoes do not turn red with indignation, but become dark green. The hairs on the leaves stand on end, signaling the grower about the problem. If you do not understand the signal given by the tomato and leave it without watering, then the plant begins to shed buds, blossoming flowers, and even ovaries, or it can get sick with apical rot and dramatically reduce the amount of harvest. The optimum soil moisture for tomatoes is 70 (plus or minus 10) percent of the PPV (limiting field moisture capacity).

If the soil under the tomatoes is dry and crusty, it's time to water. Those who are not on friendly terms with mulching have to water every day. With high-quality mulch, watering is reduced to once a week, plus there is no need to loosen the soil.

But you should not overdo it with watering, especially during the fruiting period. Excess moisture causes the tomato to crack. When grown in open ground, to reduce the absorption of moisture by the plant in the rainy period of August, they resort to a little trick: cut the lateral roots on one side of the bush.

For the harvest, air humidity is also important, which only in greenhouses is subject to man. With a moisture content of more than 60 percent, pollen is not able to separate from the stamens so that fruits can set.

The soil

Tomatoes grow best on loamy or sandy loam soils. They are much more tolerant of soil acidity than other vegetable crops, growing at a pH of 5.5 to 7.

Vegetation period

Depending on the variety, the growing season lasts from 90 to 120 days, and therefore, in our climatic conditions, tomatoes are grown through seedlings.

Stepping

Timeliness of pinching is the key to a decent harvest. The haste to remove stepchildren, when they are still small, leads to the awakening of still dormant buds, which will immediately release new ones to replace the distant shoots. The belated removal of the stepchildren takes away the nutrients from the plant for their growth, while impairing the pouring fruits.

In order for pinching to become an effective assistant for harvesting, the procedure should be carried out at least once a week, removing shoots that have managed to grow to 7-8 centimeters. Moreover, this should be done in the first half of summer, and when July has passed half of its journey, it is better to leave the bushes alone, trusting their natural instinct. After all, excessive exposure of the bush will deprive the fruits of their natural protection from the scorching sunlight, which will greatly harm them.