The Tomato Growing Thread 2019

All tomatoes now pricked out into cell tray inserts:

Bulgarian x6
Gardeners Delight 2005 x12
Harry's Italian x15
Magic Mountain x9
Micro Tom x21
Oh Happy Day x9
Orange Paruche x30
Red Alert x72
Red Fig x18
Santonio x4
Shirley x18
Suncherry Premium x30
Sweet Million x6
Tomatoberry x4
Tumbler x33
Big Zaz (Evans) x9
Big Zac (Glazebrook) x9
Big Zac (McCoy) x18

Total = 323

 

Blimey Scrugee what do you when they start fruit, tomatoes for Breakfast - dinner - tea and supper .

Your canna's ( if they are canna ) are coming on well

 

Fried/grilled with breakfast, loads in salads/sandwiches, stuffed tomatoes, homemade pasta sauce, etc., etc. plus we've got a big dehydrator, 2 passata machines and a pasteurising boiler for preserving them.

We'll have plenty of spares and surplus plants will go to charity plant sales, our dog is mad keen on tomatoes, our hens also love them (especially if very ripe) and there will be plenty to give to people who've given us other stuff.

Over 40 plants are for competition tomatoes, some will get planted out early and lost if there's a late frost, the 33 Tumblers are for containers around the back of the house, and the Gardeners Delight will be used to reselect seeds for saving.

Nothing will be wasted.

Grown from saved mini rhizomes CANNA 2019 I've also got another 51 grown from seed this year.


It's getting rather crammy under my lights and I'll put my third 'pop up' growlight box on next week, plus start having them on 24/7 and organising everything into 2 x 12 hour growlight shifts a day (previously on timer, 7 hours overnight on Econ 7, + 6 hours standard tariff, slightly less artificial light, but they'll now also be getting more natural light).

 

Gardeners Delight (Thanks for the seed John}
Gigantomo
San Marzano
Big Zac
Manx Marvel

All doing well, I'll be potting them on soon.

 

wow @Scrungee that's brilliant! You've got some patience. I got fed up of pricking out toms after about 16!

 

Coming along ok, just 1 of gardeners delight (@JWK) and out door girl potted to 9cm this morning

 

Interesting info JWK....keep us posted please
(This is what makes the forum for me)

 

Two days after I finished pricking out the last toms and the first to be pricked out need potting on. This is now going to be a ongoing task until the end of May.

EDIT: A bit of additional info - I find it easier potting up to go from rectangular cells to small round flexi pots to larger rectangular pots, to larger circular pots to larger square pots, etc. All that's needed (apart from additional depth), is filling in the 'corners', which I find much easier than trying to poke a very small amount of compost all around the existing rootball without disturbance when placed in a marginally larger but same shaped pot.

 

Sowed mine today. ‘Sungold’ (my favourite) and ‘Tumbling Bella’, one I’ve not tried before.

 

More adventurous than me, out of 16 varieties, only 2 (12.5%) are ones I haven't grown before, bought at the Wyevale 50p seed sale, 10 pkts for £5, less one of their £5 off £5 PDF vouchers = free (my favourite price).

And when taking account of numbers of each variety,it's only 13 out of 323 plants, a meagre 4% of new varieties. That's not very adventurous for me, maybe time to try some new stuff like cross pollinating for new F1 hybrid seed saving.

 

TBH @Scrungee , I only bought them (Bella) today. There wasn’t that many to choose from, apart from one or two I’ve already tried. The past couple of years I’ve grown mainly ‘Tumbling Tom Red’. They were ok, but nothing special. Trouble is, I always compare to ‘Sungold’ when it comes to flavour, I haven’t found one that comes close, yet.

 

I’m being adventurous too; six varieties, four of which are new: Orange Paruche, Red Cherry, Rosella and Costoluto Fiorlantino.

 

@Scrungee which Bulgarian tomato do you grow ?

I grow what they call Buffalo heart - really meaty large tomato but the ugliest plant out there

 

An unknown variety grown from seed originally provided by GC member in Bulgaria many years ago, which produces large round meaty tomatoes, biggest I've grown is 2lbs 8ozs.