It’s often said that the taste of home-grown tomatoes can’t be beaten and with good reason. Fruits picked from the plant have an intensity of flavour that shop-bought, shrink-wrapped tomatoes can rarely offer.
Your April subscriber edition comes with a free double-pack of seeds of basil ‘Lettuce Leaf’ and tomato variety ‘Red Cherry’. This will produce heavy crops of small, sweet tomatoes that work a treat in summer salads.
Follow our comprehensive tomato Grow Guide and discover more gorgeous varieties to try, in our collection of March extras. Plus, find out how to prevent problems such as tomato blight and tomato splitting.
Six Months of Seeds – April extras
Grow great tomatoes by following our step-by-step video guide, below.
Pour multi-purpose compost into a small pot. Gently tamp it level to about 1cm below the rim to leave room for watering.
Place the tomato seeds on the compost. Use a skewer to move them into position, about 2cm apart and cover with 0.5cm compost.
Water using a small watering can with a rose, so the seeds are not dislodged. Place in a warm spot and keep the compost just moist.
Gather your seedlings, some slightly larger pots, fresh multi-purpose compost and a dibber. Fill one new pot with compost.
Gently ease the seedling out of the pot, holding it gently by a leaf and avoiding touching the roots.
Transplant each seedling into its own pot, slightly deeper than before. It will grow more roots from the stem and be more sturdy.
Label the pot and water in gently, using a small watering can with a rose attachment. Don’t let the compost dry out, keeping it just moist. When the roots reach the edges of the pot, pot on.
Sowing cyclamen from seed is surprisingly easy, but it’s not a job for the impatient gardener – it can take a year or more before you’re rewarded with beautiful blooms. To produce indoor cyclamen plants you need to use seeds of tender large-flowered varieties, which are available in a wonderful range of colours. Learn how to sow tender cyclamen seeds, below.
The warmth of spring and summer allows you to sow vegetable seeds outdoors in the soil. Here they’ll quickly germinate to produce crops to enjoy this season. More on sowing seeds: How to sow seeds indoors Video: Sowing small seeds Video: Sowing large seeds How deep to sow seeds Try easy-to-grow salads such as radish, spring onion and salad bowl lettuce. You can also use this technique to grow flowering perennials and biennials as well as hardy annuals to brighten up you beds and borders. Sow i
This video shows four supports for tomato plants in your garden: Tall Titan Garden Stake, Tomato Ladder, Tomato Cage, and Tomato Tower. Here are some of the pros and cons for each type of support: Type of support Pros Cons Stake Good for tight spaces Perfect for square-foot gardens Affordable Easy to store Plants need frequent pruning Heavy pruning means less fruit per plant Must tie plant to stake Ladder Good for compact spaces Perfect for square-foot gardens Nest for
It is thought that there are over three thousand heirloom tomatoes in cultivation, from the very well known Black Krim to the rather more obscure Sibirskiy Skorospely (Early Siberian). With modern bred open pollinated and hybrid varieties, the number is more like fifteen thousand types. So, how to choose a tomato can seem daunting for the beginner gardener. It’s a subject that experienced tomato growers can grow highly passionate over. Everyone has their favourite types, and all for differ