Tomato season is well underway, and gardeners will soon be seeing their plants blossom with their fruit. Considered a rather simple plant to grow, it can still be difficult if you have a particularly small garden. However, there are still ways you can grow tomatoes, even if you have a rather tiny green space.
Gardening pro Alan Titchmarsh has recommended one method for growing tomatoes that will have them blossoming anywhere. n an episode of Gardening With Alan Titchmarsh, he began: “There is nothing more satisfying than biting into a sweet, juicy, sun-warmed, home-grown tomato. And I’m going to show you how to grow your own, whether you’ve got a large garden, a small garden, or no garden at all.”
He continued: “The beauty of a grow bag is it can go in any garden or no garden at all. So if you’ve got a balcony, a terrace, a patio, a yard where it’s concrete, this is your man.
“Because just lay it on the concrete, plant into it, and you’ve got an instant pocket border.”
For tomatoes that need a bit more support due to their height, Alan recommends using grow bag canes too. These come in particularly handy if you’re growing cordon tomatoes.
Cordon tomatoes tend to have one long stem that needs support to ensure it grows without any breakage.
These cane supports can be easily slotted around the bag neatly. You may need to do a bit of jiggling to get the bag in inbetween the support’s bars, but they should be able to slide through and sit nicely around the bag.
Cordon tomatoes are the variety known to grow tall and therefore require some canes, but it’s these that the expert believes to be “the best croppers”.
He said: “One, a red one called Shirley, and the other, a sort of orange-yellow called Sunset. I like a bit of colour on the salad plate, and those two should do very nicely.”
How to grow tomatoes in grow bags
Start by carefully cutting slots out of the bag to slightly expose the compost. Then, using a trowel, scoop out a decent-sized hole.
Remove the plant from its original plot and place it in the hole you just made in the compost.
Then it’s time for your canes for added support. Jiggle the support beams over your bag of compost so it sits nicely in between two, stabilising it on any surface.
