There are many fruits and vegetables that you can plant in your home garden, and you can even do it in pots if you don’t have the space. But if you still think that growing a fruit that you can later eat takes a long time, requires a lot of care or takes up a lot of space, you should think about cherry tomatoes.
This small variety of tomato requires almost no special care, is easy to grow and grows fast. Also, taking advantage of the fact that the cherry tomato grows like a vine, you can plant it vertically, so that you get more tomatoes in the same space.
How to cultivate it?
1. Since the tomato grows fast, you can grow it from seed. Once you get them, you should know that the tomato is sown when the winter is over, so that it can begin to develop protected from frost and can grow a lot in the hot season.
2. To start, plant the seeds in an outdoor seedbed.
3. When the seedlings reach about 15 centimeters in height or have 3-4 leaves, transplant them.
4. Three months after the transplant you will be able to collect the first little tomatoes.
How to take care of them
Fortunately, cherry tomatoes require little specific care:
- Most importantly, they like to be in full sun. That is why they grow better in a garden or terrace than on a balcony or patio where the sun reaches indirectly. Choose the sunniest part of your space for the tomato plants.
- The soil you choose for them should be white, deep, and enriched with organic matter.
- Irrigation should be constant but with little quantity.
- The tomato grows in warm temperatures; the ideal is an average of 20ºC.
- Cherry tomatoes like to receive fertilizer once a week. You can make your own compost at home to feed it.
- Lateral shoots in the axils of leafy stems detract from the plant’s strength. In order to have abundant bunches of tomatoes, they must be picked regularly.
- Support the plant with rods to support the weight of the fruits. A great way to farm them is to build a structure for them that they can climb on.
- Cherry tomatoes are removed from the plant when they are red, fully ripe.
How to grow them vertically
In order for your tomatoes to grow vertically like these, in a vine-like fashion, all you have to do is provide them with a structure that they can vine around.
You can build it from reeds, as in the photograph. For that, first you place the vertical rods, and then you fix the horizontal ones with ropes, making a square tie that you can learn in this note (it is number 6).
Another option is to build a pot for climbing plants, which you can learn how to do in the article. It is a very good option if you need to move it, and you can also build it the size you want, adapting it to your space and your needs.