Homestead 24 Plant Care: How to Grow Homestead 24 Tomato Plants

By growing 24 Homestead tomato plants, you get a certain main season tomato. They are good for canning in late summer, for making sauces or for eating in salads and sandwiches. There’s probably enough for all uses during your particular harvest season and beyond. Read on to learn more about growing and caring for these tomatoes in the garden.

About Homestead 24 Tomato Plants

The fruit of the Homestead 24 vegetable tomato has a firm texture, about 6 to 8 ounces, and is dark red in color with a balloon shape. They usually ripen in 70-80 days. Homestead 24 is an excellent tomato for growing in southern coastal areas, as they perform well under high heat and humidity conditions. The inherited plant is open pollinated, resistant to cracking and fusarium wilt.

Those who regularly grow this tomato plant say that it behaves like a semi-determinate specimen, providing firm fruit after the main harvest and not dying quickly as most determinate tomatoes do. The 24 Homestead tomato plants grow to about 5-6 feet (1.5-1.8 m). The foliage is dense, useful for shading the fruit. This is a tomato that is suitable for container growing.

How to grow Homestead 24

Start with the seeds inside a few weeks before the danger of frost passes. Some information on growing tomatoes recommends starting with the seeds indoors rather than sowing them directly in the garden. If you are used to starting outside successfully, of course continue to do so. Starting seeds indoors allows for earlier harvest and more fruit for those with a short growing season.

If seeding directly outdoors, choose a sunny spot with fertile, well-drained soil. Homestead 24 produces in a heat of 90 F. (32 C.), so there is no need for shade in the afternoon. Keep the seeds moist during germination, but do not allow them to soak as the seedlings will be wet. If the seedlings grow indoors, keep them in a warm place, refuse them every day and let the air circulate for a few minutes each day.

Growing Homestead 24 tomatoes from small plants is another way to harvest quickly. Check with your local nurseries and garden centres to see if they have this tomato plant. Many gardeners love this variety so much that they save the seeds of their Homestead 24 tomatoes to plant the following year.

Homestead 24 Plant Care

Caring for Homestead 24 tomatoes is simple. Provide a place in the sun on a clay soil with a pH of 5.0 – 6.0. Water regularly and provide additional fertilizer when the fruit starts to develop.

You will find the growth vigorous. Homestead 24’s plant care can include staking the plant if necessary and, of course, harvesting those tempting tomatoes. Expect a bountiful harvest, especially if you are growing more than one Homestead 24 tomato plant.

Trim side shoots as needed, especially when they start to die. You will probably get tomatoes from this vine until the first frosts.