Tomato plants will never grow bad fruit if you avoid Monty Don’s 1 simple mistake in May (Image: inanavci via Getty Images)
Growing your own tomatoes is a rewarding and pleasurable pursuit that yields fresh, delicious and nutritious fruit far superior in flavour to anything found on supermarket shelves. One of the greatest advantages of cultivating your own tomatoes is the vast selection of varieties on offer, including cherry, plum and beefsteak, each boasting distinctive tastes, shapes and culinary applications.
However, to ensure any variety of tomato thrives, there is one crucial task gardeners must carry out this month. Highlighting essential outdoor jobs, Monty Don took to his gardening blog to reveal that now is the ideal moment to be planting tomatoes—though this task comes with an important warning that gardeners would do well to pay attention to. Monty stressed that tomatoes should only be planted in the greenhouse at the beginning of May, with gardeners advised to hold off planting any outdoors until late May.
Gardeners should avoid planting tomatoes outside until late May (Image: undefined)
He said: “It is time to plant out tomatoes in a greenhouse – although wait till the end of the month for outdoor ones.
“This is because tomatoes hate too much temperature fluctuation, and May nights can be chilly – especially if the days are warm.”
Gardening expert Jane Perrone, who presents and produces a houseplant podcast and has authored numerous gardening books, echoed Monty’s advice, describing this as the “number one error” tomato growers make in May.
She said, “The number one error in the month of May is being lulled into a false sense of security by the weather and planting tomatoes too early.
“Tomatoes stop growing once the temperature drops below 10 to 12°C at night, and ideally they need 15°C in the day.
“And frost will kill them, so wait till the frost risk is completely over before sending them outside for good, which is the end of May in my neck of the woods, which is southern England.”
Introducing tomatoes to gardens prematurely in May, while the soil remains excessively cold, can impede their development, interfere with pollination, resulting in inferior fruit quality, and even increase the risk of fungal diseases in plants owing to damp conditions.
Conversely, when tomatoes are transplanted outdoors in late May, the possibility of frost damage is greatly reduced as the weather typically becomes considerably sunnier and warmer.
For those getting an early start and cultivating tomatoes in the greenhouse, it’s essential to use a generous quantity of soil enriched with substantial compost. Furthermore, if you’re utilising a container, ensure it’s no less than 30cm in depth to facilitate robust root development.
Monty said: “Plant them deeply, burying them right up to the bottom leaf, as the buried section of stem will develop extra roots.”
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