Growing Your Own Tomatoes

Pro: Most homegrown tomatoes, with effort and some luck, will taste much better than supermarket ones.
Con: They will take a lot of effort and time.

Homegrown tomatoes, eaten straight from the vine are still warm and still processing the sugars they have formed in the sun. Chilling tomatoes as is often done in the logistics chain for a supermarket destroys some of those sugars and other flavoursome compounds making tomatoes much less tasty than before.

However, tomatoes grown at home are not something for someone with little or no time. Expect to invest time in choosing soil mixes, sorting out seeds, finding places to plant them, ensuring they are tended with sun, water, food and pruning so they produce tomatoes and not just leaves or stem.

Pro: Specialist tomatoes may be far cheaper to grow at home than to try and find in a farmers market.
Con: Bog standard tomatoes may turn out more expensive than buying them in a supermarket.

If you get some really great seeds, and you do a lot of things right with soil mixing, and use compost sourced from your own kitchen, then you may be able to grow tasty and cheap tomatoes, even more exotic purple skinned ones.

However, if you buy seeds and fertilizer, buy pots, canes to hold up tomatoes, trellises for then to grown on, other gardening tools, as well as methods to deal with pest problems, then tomatoes can soon become more expensive than any supermarket variety. Without getting it right, your labour could result in only 3 or 4 tomatoes a week in the peak season - which would be disappointing. Experience will improve that though.

Pro: Homegrown tomatoes contain more nutritional content than bought ones.
Con: They can attract unwanted pests into your home.

Supermarket tomatoes have generally been away from a connected vine for some time before reaching you from the supermarkets. Many vitamins would have degraded in that time, and those fresh from a living plant will contain vastly more nutritional richness, if you eat them quickly and without cooking them.

However, tomato plants, as with all plants, attract other creatures seeking their nutritional value too. If you grow them indoors - a pest problem can be devastating as natural predators like beetles, ladybirds, lacewings and birds are not present. Creatures like Fungus Gnats may hover annoyingly around the home while their larvae munch on the routes of your poor plants. They are unnhygienic and start ending up in drinks if the problem gets out of control. Spider mites tend to stay on the plants but may occasionally move in groups to other plants. Scale also generally stay on the plant - but cause problems in its growth.

Hopefully these few tips will give you an idea about the reality of growing your own tomatoes.

Seeds for tomatoes can be found either by searching garden centres and the internet to buy them, or you can go and buy tomatoes from farmers markets and supermarkets and use the seeds from those. By looking at farmers markets, or specialist seed stockists, you can start growing many varieties not commonly seen in the supermarket. Not every variety turns out red, and they do vary in taste quite extensively. By growing from seeds in bought fruit, you could go and find some rather more unusual varieties (I recommend borough Market in London for this), and if you like the taste of them, then keep some seeds. Even Tesco now sell a gardeners delight mix of unusually colour tomatoes with slightly different flavours under the "pic'n'mix tomatoes" label.

While the common red supermarket variety is popular, there are some very tasty yellow, green, dappled and even purple tomato varieties. By growing your own, you can cultivate those other varieties, as well as looking at different sizes and tastes. In a smaller space, cherry tomatoes are more suitable. In a larger space, perhaps normal supermarket varieties are good, but maybe the huge beefstake tomato varieties are suitable.

The variety of seeds found in run-of-the-mill DIY store or garden centre will have some tomato seeds, but not the variety found in a farmers market or specialist stockists. It is good enough to get started, but if you want convenience, then squirting the seeds from supermarket tomatoes is just as good.

The method is simple. First buy yourself a tomato or two, and eat them. Squirt some of the seeds (about 10 or so) into a small dish. I tend to use a plant drip tray, but anything will do.

Gently wash away the pulp from them - as leaving it on may encourage mould growth.

For best results, get them planted immediately, otherwise store in a cool dry place. The longer you leave them, the lower your likelihood of successful germination will be. Look below for advice on planting them and getting them started.

Once you have a propagator, it is time to plant the tomato seeds in it. Plant them seeds roughly 3 cm (about 1 inch) apart. Right now you can germinate many, and later pick the strongest.

Following the tips on the seed propagator lens, the tomatoes will start to sprout in a few weeks. Make sure you do not over water them, do not let them dry out, keep them warm enough for their to be no chance of frost, deal with any fungi quickly and give them a few hours of good sunlight every day.

Once there is a good growth on the sprouts - I generally say about 3/4 cm (1 Inch), then they can be planted out in a larger pot. I recommend giving them something to climb as tomatoes tend to need something. I use a barbecue skewers when they are very small and then bamboo cane as they get larger.

The title photo is a few of my own tomatoes growing in a window sill together. They were tasty!