Grow your own Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes are available in many colours and varieties, and range in size from as small as a peanut, to as big as a golf ball. They are an excellent fruit to grow with your children as they grow quickly and are easy for little fingers to pick once they have ripened.

Step-by-step guide to growing your own cherry tomatoes :

• Sow cherry tomato seeds in full sun in well composted soil. Make sure that the seeds you buy are suitable for garden cultivation and do not require a greenhouse environment.
• Sow seeds 0.5cm deep and lightly pat down the soil over the seeds. Insert support stakes for the plants when you sow the seeds as this will prevent damage to the young plants that could occur when inserting stakes at a later stage.
• Water seeds daily until they have germinated. Once seedlings appear above the ground you can water every second day. Take care to water directly at the roots so that you do not wet the leaves unnecessarily.
• Once the seedlings gain some height tie them loosely to the support stakes. This helps to keep the plants off the soil where they are more susceptible to disease.
• Feed your cherry tomato plants once every two weeks with a liquid fertilizer that is high in nitrogen such as Seagro or Multifeed.
• Cherry tomatoes are ready to harvest when the skins are glossy and their colour is even.

Did you know? Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, a powerful antioxidant which has been shown to improve the skin’s ability to protect against harmful UV rays.