Red Beard Tomato Seeds

Red Beard Tomato is prized for its deep, glowing red colour and the full, classic tomato flavour that comes from letting fruit ripen on the vine. It is a versatile kitchen variety: the rich colour and balanced taste make it just as good sliced fresh into salads and sandwiches as it is cooked down into sauces, where the deep red holds its appeal on the plate. Raise it from seed and you get the freshest possible fruit, picked at peak ripeness for the best flavour.

Planting

Tomato is a warm-season, frost-tender crop, so start your seed indoors about 5 to 8 weeks before the last spring frost or before you plan to move plants outdoors. Sow the seed about 0.6 cm deep in a sterile, soilless seed-starting mix. Kept warm at around 24 to 29 C, the seeds usually sprout in roughly 7 to 10 days, and a heat mat helps hold that temperature until the seedlings emerge. Once true leaves appear, thin or transplant seedlings to about 5 cm apart, and harden the plants off over about a week before planting out. Move them outside only after all danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed. Set transplants deep, leaving just the top 2 to 3 sets of true leaves above the soil, because the buried stem will grow extra roots. Choose a warm, sheltered site in full sun with at least 6 hours of direct light per day, ideally 8 to 10 hours. Space plants about 45 to 90 cm apart in the row and roughly 90 to 150 cm between rows, giving vining types the wider spacing and bush types the closer end.

Fertilizing

At transplanting, use a starter fertilizer with an NPK ratio under 10, and go easy on nitrogen, since too much produces leafy plants that are slow to set fruit. Once the first fruits begin to enlarge, side-dress with nitrogen, or feed about 3 to 4 weeks after planting using a nitrogen and calcium source such as calcium nitrate (15.5-0-0). If you are growing in containers, switch to a high-potassium liquid feed every 10 to 14 days once the first fruits start to swell.

Care

Steady, even moisture is the key to good fruit. Aim for about 2.5 cm of water per week from rain plus irrigation, and avoid swinging between wet and dry, which causes fruit splitting and blossom-end rot. Plants in containers may need watering daily in hot weather. Keep watch for common pests such as tomato hornworms, aphids, flea beetles, cutworms, Colorado potato beetles and whitefly, and for diseases including early blight, late blight, Septoria leaf spot, bacterial spot, tomato viruses and grey mould. The disorders blossom-end rot, which is tied to calcium and uneven watering, and fruit splitting are both eased by consistent moisture. Harvest when the fruit reaches full size and the colour begins to change or is fully coloured, leaving the stalk attached for the best flavour; the first ripe tomatoes usually come about 52 to 90 days after transplanting depending on the season. Any green fruit can be ripened indoors at around 21 C.

Growing in Egypt: Egypt's mild winters and hot summers open several planting windows. In the cooler Nile Delta and around Cairo, the main summer crop is best sown or transplanted in late winter to early spring, roughly February to March, once frost risk has passed; start the seed indoors about 5 to 6 weeks earlier, in December to January, and follow with a secondary September to October planting. In warmer Upper Egypt, shift toward autumn transplanting around October to November and late-winter planting in January to February to take advantage of the mild winter while dodging extreme summer heat. A mid-summer planting is the hardest window for a home grower because of high-temperature injury, so it is best avoided or given protection.