Sowing tomato seeds

Raised nursery bed is preferred to raise healthy tomato seedlings. Nursery bed should be kept in the site where there is ample sun shine. The tomato seed bed should be protected in such a way that the seedlings will remain undamaged from heavy rains and frost. For it, water color polythene house is one of the alternatives to raise the nursery bed for growing tomatoes. Nowadays, ultraviolet proof polythene is also available for making tunnel to sow tomato seeds in winter.

Growing tomatoes can also be done in this type of tunnel for large scale fruit production. For growing tomatoes in one hectare land, tomato seeds of about 500 grams are required. The tomato seeds are sown in the finely prepared seed bed. The tomato seeds are broadcasted and lightly covered with light soils. The tomato seeds may be sown in shallow rows. The nursery bed should be irrigated lightly with fine sprays of water immediately after sowing tomato seeds.

Regular and close watching should be done to see the emergence of the young seedlings. Sometimes ants will damage the sown tomato seeds immediately after sowing in the nursery, so suitable contact insecticide with water should be applied with sprayer. Better you see the leaf manual of the insecticide spray for its concentration in the water. The nursery bed after sowing tomato seeds should be mulched or covered with opaque polythene for about three to four days.

Once the tomato seeds start germinating, the mulched material or covered opaque polythene should be removed from the nursery bed. Very young seedlings of the tomato seeds should be protected against scorching sun light using the roof of opaque polythene.

In case; if it is hot weather, open house with tall roof of water color polythene is preferred to sow tomato seeds in the nursery bed. Very young tomato seedlings are susceptible to damping off, so suitable fungicide must be sprayed to protect the tomato seedlings from the common fungal problems. The fungicide application must be done immediately once the tomato seeds start germinating and seedlings become visible.

For growing tomatoes seedlings, regular watering should be done to the tomato seed bed based on moisture availability. I advice not to water the bed excessively since it promotes extraordinary stem elongation of the tomato seedlings. The extraordinarily elongated tomato seedlings cannot tolerate transplanting shock. The shock causes the tomato plants susceptible to disease infection. So, gardeners should consider the hardening of the tomato seedlings.

The tomato seedlings should be transplanted to the production field when they become 3 to 4 weeks old. For growing tomatoes successfully, hardening of the seedlings must be done to make tomato seedlings tolerant to the transplantation shock. It is done stopping watering to the nursery bed, letting the seedlings to enough sunlight and creating a stress of water deficiency for about ten days.

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