How To Grow Tomatoes Indoors

It is very simple to grow your own tomatoes indoors, ensuring a fresh supply through the winter months when they are absent from the local farmers markets. Not only is growing tomatoes indoors a rewarding practice, but you can use your homegrown produce to make spaghetti or tomato sauce. [Comment: the first sentence is absolutely incorrect. It's not easy. In fact, it's not easy to grow tomoates successfully in containers even during the summer. And I don't believe that most DIYers would be successful enough to have enough tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce - you'd be lucky to get one or two.]

Step 1 - Choose a Suitable Place

Before you get started, keep in mind that tomatoes need a well-lit heated area to grow. Natural lighting can be a problem due to the short days of the winter, so supplement with grow lights or a few fluorescent lights suspended over your container. Also, ensure that the temperature of your growing room remains higher than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. [Daylength is everything to a tomato. If you're going to try to grow them inside a house, grow lights would be essential, and maybe even full-spectrum lights would be necessary.]

Decide where you want to grow your tomatoes. These plants thrive when away from traffic, so choose a quite corner in a utility room, basement or garage. Make sure the space is heated to provide the tomatoes an environment that is conducive to their growth.

Step 2 - Purchase the Seeds

Purchase your seeds at the local nursery on online. Choose a crack-resistant variety that will grow better indoors under lights. You can even purchase dwarf tomato seeds.

Step 3 - Germinate

Germinate your seeds in small peat pots with 2 or 3 seeds in each. Avoid overwatering the mix. Positions your lights an inch from the top of the plant for 12 to 24 hours a day. Germination will occur in a week's time.

Step 4 - Transfer Seedling into Bigger Containers

Once the seedlings are around 3 inches tall, transfer them into bigger containers. Your containers should not be smaller than 5 gallons. Fill each with standard potting soil, and carefully transplant the seedlings into them.

Insert plant stakes into the mix, keeping them a few inches away from the delicate plant roots. Use a piece of thread to tie your seedlings to the stakes.

If more than one seedlings sprouts in each pot, pull out [Comment: snip off the smallest one, we don't want the roots of the one the reader is keeping to get damaged with pulling.] the smallest one and discard it, leaving one seedling in each container.

Step 5 - Tomato Care Basics

• Fertilize the seedlings at transplant time, using an all-purpose fertilizer at half the recommended strength.
• Water the plants regularly at a normal level. Over watering is as harmful as under watering, so make sure the soil is never soggy.
• You may need to turn down the lights if your plants begin to thin.
• Spray a mix of soap and water on any insects you find on your plants.

Step 6 - Flowering

The flowers the plant will soon develop need to be pollinated. The easiest way to do this indoors is to give it a light shake once a week while holding the main stem.

Soon, your homemade tomatoes will be ready for you to use in your recipes!

[Comment: The tone here is so sunny and positive - "it's so easy to grow tomators in winter!" But really. If it were so easy, why do we eat those California tomatoes in winter that taste so crummy? And if it were so easy, peoplle would do it. They don't. My recommendation is to just pull this article, or re-write it using careful language like "Some people have had success growing tomatoes indoors in winter. An ambitious gardener can try it, using the steps outlined below..." Photos could help and a link to the one person on the face on the face of the earth that grows tomatoes successfully in winter would be REALLY good. I don't want to sound flip here, but we shouldn't encouage people to try this unless we know how to do it. Maybe you have another gardening expert that could take a look at this one.]