Growing Heinz Tomato Ketchup – Getting Started
If you are a regular reader you will have seen that we’ve recently geared up for gardening season. I’ve shared a fantastic list of quick growing flowers and edible plants for kids to grow as well as our essential equipment for green fingered kids. Today we’re growing some of the plants that take a little longer and gearing up to make our own ketchup at the end of the summer with Heinz.
Some plants like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers do take a very long time to grow – however you can help speed up the process a little by starting them off on your window sill at home, tomatoes are one of the easier green house plants to grow but can also be grown on a sunny patio in a pot or into the soil as well, and I can tell you there is nothing tastier than tomatoes picked straight from the vine. Starting them off is easy and March is an ideal time to get started and you don’t really need any special equipment.
Materials for starting your own Heinz Tomatoes
Tomato Seeds – pick up your own seeds from selected stores on bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchip
Paper Egg Carton
Compost
Craft Sticks or Plant Labels
Starting off Tomato Seeds
Egg cartons are idea for growing seeds in the cups are the perfect size for the seeds to germinate and the cups are biodegradable so you can plant them straight into the soil once you have grown them.
We started off by making sure that the egg carton would fit on the window sill and then cut off the excess.
Each cup was filled with some compost – because we grow a lot of seeds we have some seedling compost however normal compost would work just as well.
Into each cup place 3 tomato seeds – after the germinate you will thin them out and remove the weaker seedlings continuing to grow the biggest of the set
Once you have the seeds lightly cover them with some more compost
Label up – if you don’t you won’t know what you are growing
Then place on the window sill – I put some bubble wrap underneath or an old plastic bag to prevent the window sill getting damanged.
Water lightly and let them grow.
Our compostable seed trays are now full – we’re also growing some other varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet peppers all of which we start off indoors in the early weeks of March to plant out in May/June and start harvesting.
Don’t forget to pick up your Heinz Tomato seeds in selected stores on Heinz Ketchup bottles from 5th March to 25th March with Waitrose and Ocado joining in from mid-March.
This post is written on behalf of Heinz Ketchup
I think all kids love watching things grow, it’s wonderful to do it with them, and growing veggies like these tomatoes is a great way to encourage them to eat healthy as well.