How to Cultivate Tomato in Sri Lanka

How to Grow Tomato in Sri Lanka
How Cultivate Tomatoes in Sri Lanka
Thakkali Wagawa
Tomato Plantation in Sri Lanka
Organic Tomato Plantation
Kabanika takkali wagawa
Organic Tomato Cultivation
Kabanika Thakkali Wagawa
How to cultivate tomato correctly
How to get good tomato harvest in home garden
Tomato & gardening tips
Tomato plantation guideline.

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About Plant

Scientific Name: Solanum lycopersicum 

Family: Solanaceae 

Common Name: Tomato, Thakkali

Category: Fruit, Vegetable 

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Tomato is a very popular fruit and vegetable in Sri Lanka and, it is mostly used as a cooking assistant. Therefore tomato has essential cooking ingredient in every kitchen in Sri Lanka. Apart this, tomato is used to make sauce. Tomato sauce is most popular appetizer in restaurant and hotel industry. 

 

Figure 1: Tomato Plant 

Although tomato has more consumption in each home, but most of people never think to grow them at home. Because most people has lack of growing knowledge. Today I hope to give you an idea, how to grow tomato plants in your home garden. Different types of tomato are available in our country such as roma tomato, marglobe tomato, etc.

Preparation of Growing Media   

Little tomato plants can be easily taken by matured seeds. For this plantation process, you can use your normal ground soil. But if you want to get quick growing result, you can mix thin soil, cow dung powder, and coco peat in 1:1:1 ratio. After completion of growing soil media preparation process, you can mount them into suitable planting bags to cover 2/3 depth of planting bag. Next, you can insert several tomato seeds into top area of planting bag. After, it is compulsory to add small growing media soil or ground soil layer to close each seed on growing media. Then, compress applied soil layer by hand to protect covered seeds by different insects such as ants. Finally you can spray small water drops on the top of planting bags seeds covered growing media.

Figure 2: Tomato Seeds on Fruit

Secondary Steps of Tomato Cultivation

Five days later, you can see grown little tomato plants. Do not put any fertilizer in this period. Two weeks later, you can remove unwanted tomato plants from planting bags and, keep 2 or more good and health tomato plants in each planting bag. In this moment you can add cow dung fertilizer as a nitrogen based fertilizer to get better growth of tomato leaf. After there weeks, you can see highly growth stem and leaf. But in this time, highly growth stem is not strong and tend to break. Therefore it is needs to avoid by binding or tagging with suitable stand.

Figure 3: Suitable Stand with Tomato Plants in Planting Bag  

Four weeks later, you can see tomato flowers. Between 40 - 60 days, you can see the harvest of tomato. Sometimes you may have a question, there are no flowers after four weeks. So you can use potassium based fertilizer and if you want to use organic potassium based fertilizer, you can put small amount of hardwood ash for planting bags to get better blooming. And also in this situation you have to keep your planting bags and tomato plants in sunny area to get better flowering. After three weeks you can see some of the flowers and small tomato harvest on your tomato plants.

Figure 4: Tomato Harvest 

Now you have another question, and it may tomato diseases. The first thing is fungi effects such as root rot. This fungi effect can be terminated by spaying water based captan. If you are not willing to apply synthetic fungicide, you can use tobacco extraction. Another damage may happen to fruit and carpel area. Most time, fruit worm effect on the carpel can bee seen. Sometimes horn-worm attack to the stem and leaf area of tomato plants can be seen. This is happening due to activities or life cycle of the insects such as varieties of some lepidoptera. We can spray tobacco and black pepper capsicum extraction to repel the most of these insects without chemicals. Because above extraction is good repellent and can be sprayed each area of the tomato plants and not harmful to human body. Above  I told instructions and information are very helpful to obtain healthful of natural and organic tomato harvest for your consumption.