Tomato, sow your tomatoes the right way

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Raised from seed, tomatoes taste of far more than shop-bought fruit or plants bought ready-grown in nursery pots, and sowing your own reopens a whole range of varieties and their original flavours. Allow about four months: start under cover in late winter or early spring, and plant out in late spring.

Sowing your own tomatoes will let you grow different varieties and rediscover their original taste. And the process of sowing and growing is a great way to truly enjoy yourself !

Tomatoes have a lead time of about 4 months, so it helps to start preparing your seedlings in a nursery quite early. Late winter or early spring is perfect for transplanting to their growing beds in late spring.

Go for a as many varieties as you have space for: it is the best way to discover new flavors. Follow our advice on preparing tomato seedlings to get a nice harvest.

Nothing should keep you from also purchasing potted tomato seedlings and replanting them in your garden.

How to sow tomato

First, you should find an adequate container.
For example, a tray or nursery pots, which are increasingly used for this type of sowing.

Start your sowing indoors in Late winter or early spring, preferably in a greenhouse or on a windowsill, but avoid direct sun.

• Prepare a bed of gravel or clay pebbles to ensure proper drainage, 1 inch thick (2 to 3 cm).
  Although this step isn’t mandatory, it is strongly recommended to avoid root rot.

• Add seedling soil mix up to ⅔ the height of the container, and press it down a bit.

• Fill in to the top with more soil mix.

• Sow the seeds.
  Space the seeds about 1½ inches (4cm) on all sides if sowing in a tray.
  A couple seeds in the center are enough for pots.

• Water regularly.

• Seeds need a temperature higher than 70°F (20°C) for about a week to germinate.
  At this point the seedling most needs light.

• If sown in a tray, transplant the seedlings to a nursery pot as soon as the first leaves start budding.

• Keep watering regularly and eventually provide a little bit of organic fertilizer.

• Late spring, if it won’t freeze anymore, transplant your seedlings to their growing bed or in the vegetable patch.

• Make sure you amend the soil with a little soil mix, the same you used for sowing. This helps reduce transplant shock.

• Harvest around 4 to 6 months after sowing depending on the growing conditions.

• Next steps are detailed in our page on growing tomato.

From seed to harvest: the tomato timeline at a glance

Tomatoes need about four months from sowing to picking, so each stage has its own window and its own requirement. Use the table to check where your seedlings should be and what they need next.

Count back four months from the harvest you want and you will land on the right sowing date.

Video: how to grow tomato

Read also on tomato:

• Treating against downy mildew, the most common tomato disease
• Produce your own fermented stinging nettle tea to protect tomato plants

• Harden the seedlings off before they go out, standing them outdoors for a few hours a day and lengthening the spell over a week or two.
• Tomatoes form adventitious roots along a buried stem, so pinch off the lowest pair of leaves and set each seedling deep enough that the bare stem below them is covered.
• When staking a young tree or a tall vegetable such as a tomato, drive the stake into the planting hole before backfilling, since inserting it later risks severing roots that have spread.
• Water the soil at the base and keep the leaves dry, since damp foliage is how downy mildew gains a foothold.