Fruit vegetables
Tomato
Solanum lycopersicum
Timings for your region
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Start indoorsearly March – early April
Plantingmid May – early June
Harvestmid July – early October
Practical tip
Never water over the leaves, and give them a roof if you can — blight almost always arrives with splashing water.
And in the kitchen?
Wochentopf — the weekly meal planner by the same operator — knows everyday dishes with Tomato, with recipe, photo and shopping list. Free, no account.
Dishes with Tomato at Wochentopf(opens Wochentopf in a new tab)Origin & history
The tomato comes from the Andes and reached Europe in the 16th century, where it was first grown as an ornamental — as a nightshade it was suspected of being poisonous. It only became a vegetable in Germany in the 19th century. The foliage genuinely is mildly toxic; the ripe fruit is not.
Varieties
Cordon tomatoes grow upward on a single stem and need a cane; bush types stay low and manage without. For an unroofed outdoor spot it is worth looking for explicitly robust varieties; cocktail and cherry types ripen faster and split less than large beefsteaks. Open-pollinated varieties can be saved and re-sown true to type, F1 hybrids cannot.
Care
Cordon types get side-shooted: pinch out the shoots in the leaf axils weekly while they are small. Water evenly and generously, always at the base — swinging between dry and wet splits the fruit. From mid-August cut out the growing tip so the plant ripens the fruit it has instead of setting more.
What can go wrong
Blight is the main problem: brown patches on leaves and rotting fruit after wet weeks. It almost always arrives with soil splashing up, so a roof helps more than anything else, along with generous spacing, watering at the base and removing the lowest leaves. Blossom end rot — a sunken black patch underneath the fruit — is not an infection but the result of uneven watering.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Best picked fully ripe and then kept out of the fridge — below about 12 °C a tomato loses its aroma irreversibly. Fruit still green will ripen indoors next to an apple. The simplest way to deal with a glut is to cook it down into sauce and preserve it.
Frequently asked questions
- When do you sow tomatoes and when can they go outside?
- Sow indoors from the start of March to about 10 April, and plant out from 15 May to early June. Around seven weeks of lead time is enough; starting in January only leaves you with long, spindly plants by planting-out time.
- Why is my tomato flowering but not setting fruit?
- Temperature is usually behind it: below about 12 °C at night, or sustained above 30 °C by day, the flowers drop without setting. Under glass there is no wind either — tapping the flower truss once a day shakes the pollen loose.
- Are tomatoes winter hardy?
- No. Tomatoes are frost tender and the first light night frost finishes the plant. They are grown as annuals here and cleared away in October; trying to carry one through the winter is not worth the trouble.
- How much space does a tomato plant need?
- About 50 cm within the row and 80 cm between rows; in a container allow at least ten litres of compost per plant. Set closer, the plants shade one another, the lower trusses ripen more slowly, and you can barely reach between the canes to pinch out side shoots.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.