Feed your tomatoes well

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Now, with the tomatoes growing – in most places bar my garden, it would seem – ensure you don't forget to feed your tomatoes well. We demand a lot from them and they need to thus be kept well fed too.

It also pays to remember potatoes are in the same family as tomatoes so you can always give your main crop a boost with a dose of tomato feed.

While this is a little late to mention, I know, but ideally you should not grow potatoes and tomatoes in too close a proximity, and that is despite and because they are related.

Both are prone to blight but it is, in my experience, tomatoes that catch it much easier that do potatoes but, once your tomatoes have got it and they are close enough to the potatoes they will pass it on to the latter and destroy the crop.

Another thing to remember with regards to potatoes and tomatoes is that the green “fruit” of potatoes are poisonous and are not (green) tomatoes.

Both are in the deadly nightshade family and the green fruit on the potatoes are actually the poisonous fruit of that plant. Tomatoes too, at times, has a green deadly nightshade fruit. It is for that reason that I do not recommend taking green tomatoes off a vine too early. A poisonous “apple” might creep in otherwise.

Talking of tomatoes, per se, considering the problems I am having this year with them, and the problems I have had in the last two years, I might consider giving up on them, unless a real good one comes along, and concentrate on other veg.

© 2011