Easily Grow Your Own Veggies and Giant Tomatoes on Your Balcony

Tomatoes are tasty and nutritious. They are delicious served fresh in salads or simmered in tomato sauce. Tomato plants are always great starter plants for your garden. They are hardy and fun to grow, you will be able to harvest the fruits by the mid-summer until autumn! We had tomatoes from the garden for 2 months! Try growing your own tomatoes this season.

Here are my tips on how to grow your own giant tomato plant on your balcony:

Choosing a tomato plant - We chose to grow two of my favorite types of tomatoes - a cherry tomato plant and an heirloom tomato plant since I loved the colors and flavors. Tomatoes are hardy and any plant from your local nursery will be perfect for your garden. Try to choose a plant that is a little more established - our plant was about 1 1/2 foot tall when we planted it, in late spring. It's best to plant your tomato plant in early spring, once the weather is a bit warmer and the sun is consistent. 

Setting up your garden - Make sure you choose the right planter, the planter should have a lot of room for the roots to grow as tomato plants grow very quickly and vigorously. They will grow as big as you allow them to with the right size planter.

Watering - Make sure the planter is a position somewhere that is easily accessible to water - some planters need 20-30L of water every few days depending on how hot your summer days can get. We chose the CedarCraft Elevated Self-Watering Planter, even though it was self-watering we still had to water it at least once a week due to the extra hot summer in Ontario, Canada. 

CedarCraft Elevated Self-Watering Planter from Costco.ca

Build your own self-watering planter with this easy tutorial from Life Garden Space

Make a wire tomato cage - Using wire and bamboo sticks, make a cage around the planter that you have chosen, this will allow the tomatoes to grow upwards preventing any rotting or bug infestations. Make sure it's sturdy, the tomatoes will be heavy and need the extra support. We bought our wire and sticks from the local Dollar store. They have a great selection of gardening supplies. 

Face your plant towards the sun - Tomato plants love lots of sun, they need the energy for growing all their fruits!

Choose the right soil - Make sure you choose an organic soil, you will be eating the fruits!

Fertilize and worms - Once you start to see your plant buds turning into little tomatoes, add some kitchen compost to your soil and worms for some plump rich tomatoes! 

Harvest - The tomatoes will not all ripen at the same time, harvest by cutting the ripens tomatoes off by the stems to keep them fresher longer. You will be able to continually harvest tomatoes until the beginning of autumn. At the end of the season, harvest all the green ones tomatoes, place them in a brown paper bag and allow them to ripen. You'll have tomatoes all summer!

Share them with your neighbors and friends, you'll be surprised at how many tomatoes you'll be able to harvest!

Happy growing!

                               

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