You don’t need a garden to grow your own tomatoes! You can easily get started inside your flat by planting them in containers or pots. It’s much easier than you think and it will not only give you deep satisfaction, but it will also reward you with the best tomato fruits you have ever eaten. Speaking from experience, tomatoes always taste better when grown at home than those you can buy at any produce stand or supermarket.

Tomatoes are the base ingredient for many products you can easily make at home, and growing tomatoes indoors can make the whole list that much fresher! Among many other things, some of the most obvious things you can do with the fresh tomatoes you’ve grown are sauce, homemade spaghetti sauce just like in the old country, then of course there’s juice and many other products.

For starters, you’ll want to choose from a tomato variety that isn’t susceptible to cracking. These types will do better indoors under the lights, and as a bonus, they’re also better suited when you want to make pasta and tomato sauce. Next, you’ll want to prepare a good starting soil mix. The best I’ve found is a standard potting soil mix that includes about 10% worm castings already added. To balance soil pH, add one teaspoon of hydrated lime to each gallon of potting soil. This is rich in calcium and absolutely great for tomatoes. This calcium prevents the flowers from rotting later. You don’t want to start with the soil too wet. Add water little by little until you can get only about 2 or 3 drops of water when you squeeze. Any more than that and you’ll want to dry the soil out a bit before you start using it.

Now starting seeds is a critical time for tomato plants. In the early stages of development, the resulting plants must be handled with care because they are very delicate. The best way to get started with seeds is to use flat nurseries, trays that have been divided into many sections. The biggest are the best. This way, you don’t have to worry about repotting them as they grow. As soon as they get over the tray, you know they are strong enough to handle easily.

Tomatoes germinate best at around 80 degrees and you will find that most of the seeds you have planted will grow in about 12-15 days. Once they have started to appear, you will want to remove the covers if they were used on the trays. At this point, you’ll want to use fluorescent lights placed about 6 inches above the plants and leave the lights on for at least 18 hours a day, and better yet, leave them on 24 hours if possible.

You are well on your way to having some really delicious tomatoes! Take good care of them and they will bear fantastic fruit no matter what time of year it is!