HOW TO PREPARE DRIED TOMATOES AT HOME

If you growing tomato from seed and if you want to prepare dried tomatoes at home, you can use this recipe.

INGREDIENTS:
1 kg small tomatoes
Sea salt
Pepper
5 small garlic cloves
Provence herbs – 3 teaspoon peaks
1 hot pepper
Olive oil

PREPARATION:
1. Choose little tomatoes variety, with more flesh and fewer seeds. Wash well, absorb with wipes and then cut in half long.
2. Put tomatoes in the oven tray with cut up and the space between them (not touching). Sprinkle with sea salt and a little pepper.
3. Give tomatoes at the oven at 100C (or minimum temperature of your oven) and leave between 3 and 6 hours, depending of the tomatoes size. When tomatoes are ready, they must be more flexible, like raisins.
4. Crowd tomatoes in a jar, introducing whole garlic between tomatoes, hot pepper rings and Provence herbs. Put the olive oil until they are fully covered. Keep the jar in refrigerator for 2-3 weeks and after that you can consume.

HOW TO REPLANT TOMATO SEEDLINGS

In another post I told you how to plant tomato seeds, as a first step in obtaining tomato plants from seeds. In the following post I will explain to you how to replant seedlings in separate pots for an appropriate development.

After 3-4 weeks from sowing, when the plants have 2 leaves, it is the time to replant each plant in a separate pot.

For this operation you will need patience and an object to gently pull the young plants from the earth without destroying the roots. The object at hand is a pencil or a pen.

Before that you need to prepare your pots. You must fill the pots with soil and compost to the top; the post must be well ventilated and a bit loose and wet. Important notice: the soil should not be cold. Then you make a hole with a finger in the middle of the pot and then we water the soil easily.

10 minutes before moving the seedlings from the hotbeds, water the soil, thus the roots will come out more easily and will not break. Then you take out the pencil and take the plants one by one and replant them in the pots prepared in advance. You press down on one side, then cover the roots with soil, without pressing the soil around the root, but only in a part.

After you finish replanting the last tomato, leave all the pots in the shade for two days, until the seedlings will be cached. Then you can remove them from the sun gradually, without watering them too much lest they grow too long and thus they do not develop normally.

In these pots, the replanted tomato seedling will stay until the time comes to plant them in the garden, 4-5 weeks later. Planting seedling in the garden will be in early May, just when the temperature during the night will not fall below 10 degrees, three nights in a row. If you have greenhouses, you can move the tomatoes seedlings faster.

HOW TO GET TOMATO SEEDLINGS

Many people ask: how can I grow tomatoes from seeds? Because I love gardening, I want to share with you the steps for growing tomatoes from seeds.

First step is to obtain tomatoes seedlings. The work for this should start in middle of February.

Sowing seeds will be made in small greenhouses, boxes, pots. In these pots you will need to make small holes for excess water to drain.

If you do not buy small greenhouses with soil, you must buy soil for vegetables which will be mixed with manure. This mixture will be put in pots and leveled. Important observation: the soil must be warm, at room temperature, not cold. Also, it is necessary to spray the soil with a solution against bacteria because they will be alive in the soil and can cause the damage of the seedlings.

When the pots are ready, you can put on the bottom a thin layer of sand, then fill the pots with soil mixture and level it slightly.

Next step is to put tomato seed in pots. Seeding process can be made in rows, at 4-5 cm away or by uniform scattering. Over the seeds you must sprinkle a 1-2 cm layer of compost. Next, you tamp down the compost and water it with warm water, using a watering with fine mesh.

When all these steps are completed, you will cover the pots with glass and foil mat or newspapers to maintain the warmth. After that, you must place the pots in warm places. Until the seedlings will arise you will not longer check the containers. After the seedlings have emerged, you can remove the foil mat or the newspaper to allow light to penetrate. The pots or small greenhouses will be ventilated daily by sudden raise of the glass for a few seconds and then put back. Ventilation will be made even if the time is cooler.

As time heats, ventilation will be increased. If the soil tends to dry out, you will easily water it with warm water. Do not put a lot of water because there is the risk that the plants grow more in length due to moisture and do not develop normally and healthy, leading to illness and loss of plants.

After the plants have two leaves (photo - Google image), not those that appear first, when the plant rises, take each plant and replant it in pots. There will be another article related to re-planting each small plant in a separate pot.

These would be the steps that should be taken get tomato seedlings from seeds.

In these articles I will explain other stages of care and growth of tomato plants.

How To Grow Organic Food?

HOW TO HAVE TOMATOES CROPS

Growing tomatoes from seeds is not very difficult. There are some stages to be followed and a lot of patience, so that the results should be satisfying. Here are the steps you should take to growing tomatoes from seeds and in the next posts I’ll give you some advice about the cultivation of tomatoes.

1. First you have to decide what type of tomatoes you want to plant in your own garden. It’s a difficult choice because there are many types of tomato seeds. To see exactly the types of seeds, you can visit the page dedicated to this. After you decide about the type, you have to buy: seeds, soil, pots and other useful tools that you can find on the page. This should be done in January and the first part of February.
2. In February you have to plant the seeds. There are details about this activity here. There are some steps that have to be taken and my advice is for you to read carefully the article and start working after, so that you won’t damage the seeds you have bought. 
3. After 3-4 weeks, when the seedlings have 2 real leaves, put each seedling in a separate pot. You can find out how to do this here.
4. Until the weather is suitable for planting the seeds in the garden, you have to start preparing the ground layers. And you have to do this carefully if you want to have good crops. Read here about preparing the layers. 
5. After 2 months and a half from planting the seedlings, they can be re-planted in the garden. This has to be done with care and patience, not to damage the young plants.
6. The layers with tomatoes must always be located to the south as they need sun. Until the plant is mature and the tomatoes can be picked up, all you have to do is to clean them from time to time and water them 2 times a day (in the morning and in the evening) and, of course, sprinkle them with natural solutions against pests.  
7. If everything goes smooth, at the middle of August, you can pick up the tomatoes.

These are the steps to take when cultivating your own tomatoes. This is the short version of what you have to do. For each stage there will be other steps, that I will detail soon. 

How to grow organic tomato? - Click Here!