Description
How To Grow Tomato From Seeds:
Introduction and Uses: Tomato is a super vegetable with a powerhouse of nutritional benefits. Used extensively in preparing curries and authentic dishes, this amazing veggie is known to improve eyesight, stomach health, regulate blood pressure, as well as relieve diabetes, skin and urinary tract infections.
Botanical Name: Solanum lycopersicum
Sowing Season: Throughout the year
Sowing method: Transplantation
First harvest: 10 to 12 weeks
Because the seeds are small, Tomato plant is grown by transplantation method. Seeds are first sown indoors in seedling trays or outdoors on seed beds. Later the seedlings are transplanted into containers or in raised beds.
Growing container: Seedling trays/ seed cups/ small polybags/ Seed bed.
Growing medium: Coco Peat (Indoors), Fine soil (Outdoors)
STEPS FOR SEED SOWING (SEED STARTING) IN A CONTAINER:
- Take a seedling tray with medium sized cells & drainage holes at the bottom.
- Fill the cells/cups with a moist coco-peat medium.
- Hold the tomato seeds on your left palm & sow 2-3 seeds per cell/cup. Since Tomato seeds are small, avoid sowing them very deep.
Sowing Technique:
- Place the seeds on the surface of the medium & push each seed a little inside the medium by using pencil tip, so that seeds are not visible on the surface anymore & cover it with more coco-peat.
- Or make small, shallow depressions on medium with pencil bottom. Put the seed in that depression & sprinkle more coco-peat on the top to cover the seed.
- Keep the seedling tray indoors till the seeds germinate.
Covering: Keep the seed tray in a box or cover it with paper for first 4-5 days to encourage faster seed germination.
Watering:
- Water the seed cells with a spoon in the first week. Provide 2 tablespoons of water every day.
- Or keep the seedling tray in another tray full of water for half an hour, so that water will seed cells will absorb the water from the bottom, via drainage holes.
- If the seed beds are made outdoors, protect them from heavy rain or direct sunlight. Use well sieved fine soil as a sowing medium & make a nice raised bed from it. Cover the bed by making a temporary roof of the plastic sheet. Water it in the form of a light shower by watering can.
