How To Grow Organic Tomatoes

Did you know that tomatoes can protect asparagus against the asparagus beetle?

Since they are tender plants, put tomatoes in during late spring after the early crop of asparagus spears have been harvested. Tomatoes and all members of the Brassica family repel each other and should be kept apart. Tomatoes protect gooseberries against insects.

Tomatoes are compatible with chives, onion, parsley, marigold, nasturtium and carrot.  Though not containing fungicidal elements, tomatoes will protect roses against black spot.

The active principle of tomato leaves is solanine, a volatile alkaloid which at one time was used as an agricultural insecticide. 

To make a spray for roses: Make a solution of tomatoe leaves in your vegetable juicer, add 4 or 5 pints of water and a tablespoon of cornstarch.  Strain and spray on roses where it is not convenient to plant tomatoes as companions.  Keep any unused spray refrigerated. Tomato juice will neutralize the odor of butyl mercaptan, the defense spray of the skunk.

Unlike most other vegetables, tomatoes prefer to grow in the same place year after year, and this is all right, unless  you  have a disease problem, in which case plant your tomatoes in a new area. Stinging nettle growing nearby improves their keeping qualities and redroot pigweed, in small quantities, is beneficial, too. 

Be sure to give them ample quantities of compost or decomposed manure. Mulch and water in dry weather to maintain soil moisture and stave off wilt disease and blossom end rot.  But never water tomatoes from the top. Water from below and water deeply. Tomatoes are inhibited by the presence of kohlrabi and fennel.

Root excretions of tomatoes have an inhibiting effect on young apricot trees and don't plant tomatoes near corn, since the tomato fruit worm is identical with the corn earworm. Don't plant near potatoes, either, since tomatoes render them more susceptible to potato blight.

If you smoke, be sure to wash your hands before you work in your garden, for tomatoes are susceptible to diseases transmitted through tobacco.

Check out our Natural Tomato Fertilizer (ESTF) which offers numerous advantages in many different growing mediums. It will conserve plant energy, improve photosynthetic efficiency, aid in biological nitrogen fixation, suppress plant pathogenic organisms and replenishes and maintains long-term soil fertility by providing optimal conditions for soil biological activity. ESTF tomato fertilizer can promote plant growth, even when the plant is under nutrient stress. 

ESTF fertilizer contains substances that can open up pathways in plants that allow them to extract more moisture from soil during drought conditions. Similarly, testing has shown that plants fed with ESTF, can withstand up to three degrees of frost.