The Unexpected Secret Weapon Some Gardeners Are Using To Grow Perfect Tomatoes

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Whether you're new to gardening or are an experienced green thumb, chances are you've come across hundreds of old-school gardening tips and tricks. While there is often a method to the madness, some plants don't require a large amount of effort to be coaxed into producing the perfect blooms or delicious fruits. For example, tomatoes are one of the most popular plants to grow — you can even grow a delicious harvest without a backyard. There are plenty of useful hacks for growing tomatoes, but one of the most surprising secret weapons gardeners are using to help their tomatoes thrive is sheep's wool.

Tomatoes are many people's first garden success story because of how easily they grow. But if you're having a difficult time or experiencing common setbacks, like the tomatoes being affected by frost, diseases, heat stress, or an influx of garden pests, you may not need any complex remedies. As it turns out, sheep's wool might be the one-ingredient fix to many tomato plant growing issues.

Adding sheep's wool to the soil around your tomato plants is an effective gardening technique because wool contains nutrients that encourage growth, like nitrogen, magnesium, potassium, and calcium. When the wool decomposes, all those nutrients are transferred to the soil. Another benefit of adding sheep's wool to your tomato plants is its ability to hold water. For potted plants, which lean on the dry side, mixing wool into the potting medium is a particularly good idea, since it improves the soil's water retention. Wool can also help aerate the soil, enhancing the tomato plants' fruit yields.

Apart from the uses above, consider employing wool as mulch in your tomato garden; it will keep soil cooler in summer and warmer in winter. Likewise, wool aids in pest control, specifically by keeping away slugs, which have trouble climbing up its fibers. Wool can even aid in germination if you use it as a cover to shield tomato seeds from hungry birds. 

So, where can you get this unorthodox garden ingredient? Some farmers sell what's known as "waste wool" for cheap, so that it doesn't otherwise get discarded. You can also find wool pellets designed specifically for gardening, like these Wild Valley Farms Wool Pellets. Alternatively, look for sheep's wool online via retailers such as Etsy.