Last month, The Window Ledge Gardener was all about potatoes. As those of you currently growing spuds will know, they're scarcely the sort of thing you can grow in six inches of space on a windowledge, unlike this month's subjects, which are tomatoes and chilis.
Fresh tomatoes, eaten straight off the vine, make shop-bought tomatoes seem like a cartoon drawing of what a tomato should be like by somebody who has never seen a tomato before. They take a little more intensive looking after than do other plants, but they are well worth the pay off.
If you haven't got outdoor space, tomatoes and chilis will suit you, because they do far better indoors. The more natural light and heat you can give them, the better, so from seed to fruition, try to find them a warm, south-facing windowledge.
Ideally, tomatoes or chilis should be started off from seed in March or April. They like to be grown indoors, in seed trays, in tomato compost, on a warm windowledge or greenhouse, and with a clear plastic propagator top (or clingfilm, if you prefer) over them to aid germination.
If you haven't started your seeds yet, don't worry. You could try starting some off now, or better yet, get yourself down to the garden centre to buy tomato plants. (Please note that buying plants, rather than growing them from seed in your first year of gardening, categorically does NOT count as cheating). Varieties that grow well easily in the northern hemisphere include Shirley and Moneymaker.
Once your seedlings are two our three inches high, they'll start to make proper leaves (the pointy, five-ended ones). At this stage, they'll start to look sturdy, and will no longer need their propagator tops. Once they look like this, they get a bit too big for their seed trays, and need replanting in their final pots.
Tomatoes need large, almost bucket-sized pots, but chilis can grow in something a bit smaller – perhaps a 7-9 inch pot. Both need to be grown in tomato compost. A lot of grow bags say on them that tomatoes can be planted directly in the grow bag, but I've never known tomatoes to grow properly in grow bags, so I think we can safely decry that as heresy.
To protect your little beauties from blight and disease, a little known trick is to crush up an aspirin in two litres of water, and water the young plants with the resulting solution. I don't know why this works, but I also know that I was one of the only people on my allotment site last year to not get blight, and I did the aspirin trick, so I think it works! Blight's less likely to be a problem if you're growing things indoors, but if you're super-cautious, it might be worth a try.
When your plants make flowers, you're starting to get to the exciting stage. At this point, you want to make sure that your plant uses all its energy making fruit rather than growing leaves, so once it's flowering, pinch off all the side-stems and leaves beneath the top few leaves and flowering branches. You'll need to keep pinching through the season and yes, it does feel cruel to do it, but it will mean you get more and tastier tomatoes.
The other thing you need to do when you've got flowers is to make sure they pollinate, so unless you've got bees in your living room, just lift the plants up and slam them firmly down again on a solid surface. This loosens the pollen enough for them to do their stuff.
Around this time, you should start feeding your tomatoes as well as watering them. Bottles of tomato feed can be bought at any garden centre or allotment association. You make up a solution of tomato feed and water, and water your plants with it twice a week, as well as doing the daily watering. And before too long, your plants will start to make tomatoes.
You'll know when your tomatoes are ready because you won't be able to resist taking them off the vine and stuffing them in your mouth. (Yum.) You might even end up in the unfortunate situation of having more tomatoes than you can eat, who knows?!
First image via Seedman.com
Second image via Sarah Bradley for BitchBuzz Home