What kind of soil do I need to grow tomatoes?
Monday, February 15th, 2010 at
2:25 am
I’m starting a big garden with alot of diferent kind of vegetables does the soil have to be different for of each them.I have a constant supply of fresh steer and chicken manure.
Filed under: Gardening Supplies
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Tomatoes need a rich sweet soil with good drainage. If you want a really strong tomatoe plant trim off all the bottom leaves before you plant and plant up to including the stalk, the leaves that you left on.
First of all, don’t use fresh manure of any kind. It must be composted first or it will "burn" the plants. Do incorporate lots of seasoned compost into your soil since there really aren’t any veges that don’t want to be fertilized. If you soil has a lot of clay, try adding some sand to help with drainage. Other than that, you should be good to go! A suggestion…don’t start off too big the first year unless you have lots of help because upkeep ie weeding, thinning, watering, harvesting etc can be a daunting task. Enjoy those fresh veges…there’s nothing quite like them!
My husband uses manure on our garden each fall, turns it under and then turns it under again in the spring. Also a little tip: We have an elderly neighbor who has gardened for many many years and she told us to put a "pinch" of epsom salt in the hole before we set the tomato plant, add water, then the plant. I don’t really know why this works but last year we had more beautiful tomatoes than we had ever had before.