 ASK any budding gardener which crops he would try to grow first and I guarantee that tomatoes would be among the top answers. They not only look and taste infinitely better than shop-bought ones, but there are so many varieties that even if you only have a hanging basket you can plant a cascading type which will give you dozens of sweet, cherry tomatoes. However, many beginners end up disappointed, as their tomatoes suffer blossom end rot or are decimated by blight, where the stem and the fruits end up with brown blotches and become inedible, particularly in wet, windy summers. Kevin Smith, of Gardeners’ World magazine, which is launching a Grow Your Own Week campaign from March 29, says: “Few crops are more rewarding than tomatoes, and they’re easy to grow in any space, even a tiny urban balcony. Don’t be put off by the recent cold weather, even if it persists for a few more weeks, as you can delay sowing seeds until April, or even buy pot-grown plants as late as May. Producing a delicious tomato crop is easy.” He offers the following tips to help you produce healthy, delicious tomatoes: Water the soil or compost daily to ensure it never dries out. Pay special attention to plants grown in containers, as irregular watering causes nutritional imbalance, leading to low calcium take-up, which causes blossom end rot. Keep plants well fed. For tomatoes in pots and bags, watering won’t be enough to ensure healthy growth. Feed weekly with a high-potash fertiliser, increasing the frequency as plants grow larger or if leaves show signs of discolouring. Train tomatoes to canes or supports. Different types will require different training. For example, bush tomatoes will need little, if any, training. However, most others are trained as single stems, or cordons, and the main shoot needs to be tied upright to a cane or support. Pinch out tips. Outdoor cordon tomatoes will usually form three or four trusses of fruits during the season. Pinch off the tip of the main shoot a leaf or two above the fourth flower truss. You can leave greenhouse plants to grow on. Combat blight disease. Warm, humid weather provides perfect conditions for blight disease which attacks tomatoes and potatoes. This fungus disease spreads rapidly via airborne spores. Keep an eye on the weather and, if these conditions occur, use a preventive fungicide spray, such as Sitahen 945, straight away to stop the blight spores infecting your plants. The greenhouse is the obvious place to grow tomatoes as you can give them a longer season and are likely to get bigger crops. Indoor tomatoes can be sown in March in a heated propagator set to a minimum of 15C, but preferably a little higher. Outdoor tomatoes should be started off indoors eight or nine weeks before it’s safe to plant outdoors in your area. Two years ago, during the wet summer – which tomatoes hate – the magazine held a trial of container-grown tomatoes to discover which performed best. The overall top choice was ‘Apero F1’, a rich, red cherry tomato with a slightly elongated shape, followed by ‘Tomatoberry F1’, which produced an abundance of , strawberry-shaped fruits on trailing trusses. | 
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