h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Are one of the easiest crops to grow. Varieties such as 'Gardeners Delight', 'Sweet 100' and 'Alicante' are fairly common. Yellow varieties are also available, and just as tasty!

Whether growing indoors (perhaps in a greenhouse) or out, the method is virtually the same - it's just the timings that are different. Indoor plants can be planted any time between January and April. Outdoor plants need to be started off early - probably no later than mid-February.

Sowing
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Fill a seed tray/large flower pot with good quality potting compost. The seed sshould be plated in rows, no less than an inch apart. Cover them with another shallow layer of compost, and firm down. To keep moisture in, you should cover the seeds - if a small enough plant pot is used, you can cut a large plastic drinks bottle in half, and get two covers. Seed trays often come with suitable coverings. Or you could make your own cloche.
The planted seeds should be placed in a warm place - on a sunny window sill, or in an airing cupboard (but make sure you don't spill any compost on anything else in the cupboard!)
It takes up to two weeks for the seeds to start growing - as soon as leaves appear, place the seeds somewhere sunny, and remove the cover. This will allow the plants to breathe, and begin to photosynthesise.

Replanting
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When a couple of pairs of leaves can be seen on a plant, it is ready to be replanted in its own pot. As before, fill a (small) pot with potting compost, and make a small hole for the plant to go into. Use a spoon, or a small flat piece of wood (or anything similar) to uproot the seedling, and hold it by the leaves to transport it to its new pot. Place into the hole, and firm down the compost. The plants need to be in sunny conditions, and also kept watered. As the plants grow, they will need replanting in bigger pots.

Or, you could get someone else to do all this work for you. Tomato plants are readily available at places like church May Fayres - all you have to do is plant them out!

Greenhouse plants
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Plants to be grown in the greenhouse can be put in there as soon as the roots are well developed. It is common to plant them in growbags, 3 or 4 plants to a bag. They could also be planted in large pots.

Outdoor plants
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Plants to be grown outdoors will need to be acclimatised (hardened off). This should be done around the end of May, when the weather should (hopefully!) be improving. To do this, put the plants in a asheltered spot outside during the day, and bring them bck inside overnight. After about a week, you should be able to leave them outside all day without damaging them. Keep them in a sheltered position for between a week and a fortnight.
When the plants are ready, you should put them where you want them in the garden. This should be somewhere sunny - when the fruits appear, the sunlight will help the plants to produce more sugars, making the fruits sweeter.

When a plant gets too tall, the stem may break. To prevent this, the plants should be supported by canes, and tied at regular intervals. This is especially true as the fruits begin to form. The plants will also need watering regularly. The soil should never be allowed to dry out. A good feed will become necessary once the fruits start to form - liquid food mixed with the water is best.

Harvesting
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You should get a decent crop by July/August. When picking the tomatoes, dont just pull them off! It is (apparently) best for the tomatoes if you snap the stem which attatches them to the plant - there is a small 'elbow' just above each fruit, which breaks easily if bent backwards. Or, if many tomatoes ripen at the same time, you could cut off the whole stem, and keep them on the vine until you use them.

What a brilliant posting! Many thanks for that, sir.

Quite alright! It's been a few years since I've grown them myself, what with being at uni and all...

Is it true that growing marigolds beside them helps deter insects?
I know it makes the veggie bed look nicer..

Marigolds attract hoverflies, which mean they breed there. And the little hoverfly larva eat aphids. So yes, grow lots of marigolds! They can also be used for many other things... the petals are edible and tasty in salads, and can be used as a dye, and the plant can be used for many things herbal, although I can't remember exactly what atm, as I'm not at home.

That's neat! Thanks!

'French' Marigolds and 'African' marigolds all come from Mexico, where they still play a central role in the Day of the Dead... something worth remembering if Mexican guests fall prey to your salmon mouse.

JTG

... er, 'mousse'.

What the heck! Salmon mouse... it's a new recipe.

JTG

Is that a salmon flavoured mouse, or a mouse flavoured salmon?

Either sounds like cat heaven!

Calendula (that's Marigolds by another name) are just great plants generally. dead them throughout the summer, and then leave them to do their thing for the last few weeks of flowering. Don't cut the heads off until they are really well and truly dead and they will self-seed beautifully, and look even better still the next year.

That's 'deadhead them throughout the summer' - don't kill them!

Ah, now there's marigolds and then there's marigolds. Mexican's decorate graves and so on (presumably they grow them for less macabre reasons, too) with Marigolds of the genus Tagetes (they're the rather smelly ones that are often used as companion plants in the veggie garden), while the other sort - of the genus Calendula - is what I would call 'Pot Marigold'. Pot Marigold has that nice, buttery fragrance. The flowers are edible, too.

JTG

Indeedy - Tagetes types seem to be very out of fashion - in the UK at least at the moment. Perhaps it's those 70's camp names 'Shaggy Maggy' and 'Naughty Marietta' Maybe its the smell Maybe it's the memories of tight little suburban bedings displays (Lobelia, Alyssum, Marigolds), over and over again.

Give me Calendula any day. Mixed with Cosmos and poppies and growing wild at the end of my garden. Give me a day that doesn't involve painting the baby's room or getting the car repaired, and I'll post a piccy somewhere *dreams of summer*

John - do you *like* tagetes? does anybody out there?

Oh yes - and both types do the hoverfly thing. Morning glories do too, grown in the conservatory, they help to keep down those nasty indoor infestations which are so hard to clear.

Thanks for the tip about Morning Glory! I've got some seeds for that, I'll make sure to sow them away from the marigolds so I get cover all over the garden.

Calendula and Heliotrope is one of my favourite combinations.

I work on the shore of Lake Ontario and I can't grow Tagetes because of the blasted Canada geese. The first season I planted 16,000 annuals in fairly conventional bedding schemes. The geese destroyed them, especially the Tagetes, for some reason. I planted lots of it deliberately, because I thought the smell would put them off... no such luck.

Years ago I planted a big bed (actually a combination of three beds of 55 feet each) with tall marigolds (Gold Coin?), which I sheared as a topiary, allowing it to produce flowers along the top. It was supposed to look like a vine, with dense groups of other things planted where the 'flowers' would be.

My recipe for goose-proof gardening now is densely planted beds of Cosmos Sensation mix (an old fahioned tall variety), Rocket Snapdragons, Nicotiana, tall salvias, and basically anything else that strikes my fancy which I can mix in with that lot.

John that sounds gorgeous!

I guess either tyou don't have the same problem with slugs and salvias that I have, or else you have a magic formula - please tell!

Aren't Cosmos lovely? I wouldn't be without them: easy to grow, nice foliage, lovely flowers, hard wearing, good height, long-lasting. MMMmmm.....

... and they reseed themselves fairly reliably when I forget to plant new ones. The butterflies love them, too. Another plant I like to include in the mix is a tall variety of Helichrysum, Straw Flower... 'Swiss Giant', I think it is. Ooh, almost forgot Verbena bonariensis; the butterflies really go for those as well.

I've not really had a slug problem with salvia. That's not because of anything special I'm doing to prevent it... I've just been lucky, I guess. What varieties do you grow?

Knock knock....not growing any salvias I feel I should apologise for barging in here. I had a huge slug problem with Tagetes a few years ago - destroyed (within a day) 2 trayfuls of carefully nurtured plantlets when I dared planting them out.
But what I really came here to say was about tomatoes. It's worth a mention that there are varieties that grow very well in hanging baskets if space is limited or you only have a balcony. I think the variety I tried was called Tumbler and worked well except I didn't really have enough sun to ripen them all that Summer. Needs lots and lots of watering though.
(I now return you to your conversation....)

MC, you're not interrupting at all - come on in!

It is called Tumbler, btw, and they're lovely, aren't they, if you remember to water them!

John, Slavias of every type I've tried, annual perennial, farinaceous, whatever, have been targetted by the you-know-whats - is it just me?

And how do you grow your Verbena bonariensis, btw? sow indoors, sow outdoors, buying seedlings?