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Growing Tomatoes in Soil

Everybody loves tomatoes. Eating them freshly picked and still warm from light of the sun is a pleasure only tomato growers get to experience. The tomato plant is very easy to grow from seeds or cuttings. They grow and flourish everywhere as long as there’s enough sunlight and water as you can see below.

fruiting tomato plant surrounded by weeds
This tomato plant is growing unattended. It’s fruiting despite all the competition around it.

Tomatoes can be grown from seeds or cuttings. Seed packets can be bought from your local gardening center. If you are feeling adventurous you can try growing them from kitchen scraps. Put tomato seeds on a layer of newspaper and dry them under the sun. They need to be thoroughly dried otherwise it might take a while to germinate them. For the lazy (like me) you can just put fresh seeds on potting soil, put it under the sun to dry, wait a few days, then add water. That’s how I germinated tomato seeds recently.

small tomato seedlings on some potting soil
Seedlings! It is fascinating how hard to decompose the tomato skin is.

Wait for them to grow big enough to be transferred to your plot. I usually repot the seedlings into individual nursery pots and wait until they are around 10-15cm long before I transfer them to my garden.

a potted young tomato plant
A young tomato plant in a nursery pot

If a friend or neighbour has a tomato plant you want to experience the pleasure of growing, try asking them for cuttings. Just choose healthy shoots and cut them to 10-15cm. Then put your cuttings in a container filled with clean water. Keep the container in a place with indirect sunlight and wait for a couple of weeks for them to take roots. Be sure to refill or replace the water as needed.

When the roots are long enough, 5cm will do, transfer them to a nursery pot filled with soil. Keep them in indirect sunlight for a couple of days. And slowly introduce them to more light. In a few days you’ll have a healthy potted tomato plant ready to be transferred to your garden.

Once transplanted all that’s needed is regular waterings and plenty of sunlight. You might want to add a tomato cage too because these grow until they can no longer keep themselves up.

Described below is my recent experience in growing tomatoes. I had a blast growing the Costoluto Genovese Pomodoro.

four tomato plants growing on soil
Tomato plants transplanted January 19th. Pictured 2nd of February.

Pictured above are tomato plants grown from clones given to us by a friend. It has grown so much since it’s been transplanted.

big tomato plants
Tomato plants pictured February 21st.

Above I added strings to support the plants. Using strings proved to be a mistake. Because they just kept growing.

big and bushy tomato plants
Tomato plants pictured March 5th.

Until the string broke and the plants collapsed under their own weight. They are already bearing flowers and fruits at this point.

We just propped them up with a better support structure and they went about their business of growing and bearing fruits again. Soon enough we are harvesting tomatoes.

a bunch of Costoluto Genovese Pomodoro
Costoluto Genovese Pomodoro

At first I thought I might be doing something wrong because my tomatoes have a weird shape. My friend who gave me the seedlings never told me what variety they are aside from telling me they are “pomodoro.” It took me a bit of Googling to find out that they are Costoluto Genovese Pomodoro. “Pomordoro”, by the way, is Italian for tomato. So I guess it’s wrong to say “pomodoro tomatoes.”

I eventually had to take down the plants because they’ve grown too big and they started to attract pests. I made sure to save and root cuttings before I did so. Below is a video of me planting the cuttings I took from my previous tomato plant.

Thanks for reading. Good luck and happy growing!

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Growing Pipino (Cucumber) Using SNAP Hydroponics

a healthy one month old cucumber plant.

Cucumber is one of the easiest fruiting plant that can be grown in SNAP hydroponics. Here I’ll share my growing experience with them. The first time I ever grown cucumber is the second time I’ve ever grown my own food with SNAP. That’s a testament to how easy it is.

pipino seedling in a seedling plug
My very first pinino seedling 9th September 2016. This seedling was recently transferred from a germination tub.

Prerequisites

A sunny location
The more sun the better. I’ve grown mine on an east facing and awning protected side of the house. It receives around direct sunlight from 7am to 12nn it’s under our house’s shadow for the rest of the day.

 

a healthy one month old cucumber plant.
This is the same set of seedlings on 10th October 2016.
A trellis to grow on
Cucumber is a vine that tends to grow everywhere. You’ll have to give it a trellis to grow on. I let my cucumber plants grow on window grills and plastic twine (taling straw).
Enough room for roots
Cucumber grows fast and to support this growth it develops a big root system just as fast. It’s very easy to run out of room (root bound) in your growing box and as a result the cucumber plant die.

 

I’ve successfully grown five of them on a single growing box but I think managing them became too much for me. You’ll need to regularly visit it because like I mentioned before they tend to grow everywhere. When they are big (and they get big fast) they drink so much water you pretty much have to top up the growing box with water almost every other day. I guess it depends on what you intend to do with the fruits. If you just need them on a regular basis, growing a couple of them on a single grow box would do. If you need them in bulk, like for example when you intend to pickle them, then 10 of them split in two growing boxes will give you lots of them faster.

Other things to consider
Leaf miners can be a little nuisance. Cucumber grows fast despite of them. Leaf miners will make the leaves look ugly though.

 

They can be infested with aphids. Aphids tend to slow them down and can be a big problem. If an aphid infestation starts I tend to just discard the plant and start over.

Strong winds can mangle them. Cucumbers have big leaves and soft stems. Summer is the best time to grow cucumbers if you don’t have a greenhouse.

Starting From Seed

I tried both sowing cucumber seeds on a germination tubs and sowing them directly into a seedling plug. Both works but I find sowing directly into the seedling plug more convenient. Sowing them directly into a seedling plug saves them the trouble of getting transplant shock.

Maintenance

As the cucumber plants grow it will take up nutrients and water from the growing box. However, the plant tend to drink more water than nutrients specially during hot seasons. The plant will do well for over a month with only water being added to top up the grow box. I replenish the nutrient solution after every four weeks and gets more frequent as the plant grows larger.

Cucumbers grown in SNAP hydroponics will start flowering in four weeks and fruits will be ready for harvest typically around six weeks. When harvesting, use snips to cut the steam about a centimeter above the fruit.

The cucumber plant’s roots tends to grow dense and heavy relatively fast and will eventually end up filling the growing box. I haven’t tried trimming the roots because I tend to start over from seed when the plant gets root bound.

dead pipino plant
This is the same growing box on the 28th of October 2016. Five cucumber plants filled up the growing box with roots in just over a month.

Thanks for reading. Feel free the leave a comment if you have any questions. Happy growing!