Tomatoes are one of the easiest vegetable to start your garden with! When it comes to growing, a healthy harvest begins with keeping them happy and healthy all season long. Nothing can be more hurtful than seeing your cute tomatoes die with blight and diseases. The plants with diseases become home for many pests and can be downward spiral that leads to frustration of a gardener.
No worries! Here are 5 simple tips to eliminate blight and diseases naturally and keep your tomato plants healthy year long.
5 Simple Tips To Keep Tomato Plants Healthy:
- Mulch Your Plants:
Mulching can do wonders to any plant including tomatoes. They prevent weeds and many soil borne diseases that affect tomatoes are splashed on leaves directly from soil every time it rains or water. Mulching can easily prevent it, use straw, compost or dry leaves as mulch and ensure you haven’t leave any soil bare for at least 18 inches around each plant.
- Add Eggshells Or Coffee Grounds For Calcium Boost In Soil:
Blossom rot and black rot are two common issues face by tomato gardeners. It causes due to the deficiency of calcium. Well, egg shells provide much needed calcium to tomatoes as they break down. This is one of the best ways to eliminating black or blossom rot.
All you need to do is crush two or three eggshells in your hand and mix them in your planting hole around the roots.
You can also add two teaspoons of coffee grounds during planting for boost of nitrogen. Coffee and egg shells are great benefit for your tomato plants.
- Rotate Where You Plant Your Tomatoes:
Growing tomatoes in the same place of your garden year after year is just like inviting disaster. Tomatoes are one of the most susceptible vegetable plants when it comes to soil-borne diseases, so planting them in the same location make your plant infected with tomato blight spores and more.
It’s better to rotate your plant and instantly minimize the potential for blight and diseases. Never grow tomatoes in the same place for minimum of 3 years and 4 is even better.
- Prune Them When Necessary:
When plants growing, keep the bottom of each plant trimmed at least 6 inches above the soil line. It helps in healthy circulation of air to plants which are crucial in keeping mold and fungal diseases at bay. Be sure to prune off any foliage that shows sign of blight or diseases. Trimming back each passing day, you can keep from spreading quickly to other parts of plant or adjacent plants.
- Clear Them At The Right Time:
Be sure to clear out your tomato plants at the end of each growing season. Because allowing old plants to over winter is inviting disease and insect problems to take hold in garden soil. Pull up your plants as soon as they are done producing and do not compost tomato plants.
Follow these simple tips to grow healthy tomato plants. Happy Gardening!
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