Tomato Growing 2024

I feel like pulling up all my plants. Most have flowers now but not a lot. The only one that produced a tomato has withered and died - ananas noire. We do leave the polytunnel doors open at both ends to let in pollinators and I suppose that means they've been a tad to cool at night but it's mid July!! Surely something more should be going on by now.

 

Is it just me, or are people just growing more and more weird varieties of unknown performance.
I'd experiment but if I did I'd always grow some more well known variety as a back up.

 

@JWK they're in the ground in the polytunnel. The bed was cleaned by th echooks over winter then given a good layer of ourown garden compost and then a layer of well-rotted manure. They were watered in at planting time and subsequently by a seep hose.

@pete Ananas noire is readily available in SMs here in the season and tastes good so not unusual to grow one's own.

 

Sounds like a pollination issue to me...

 

@Obelix-Vendée , I've just looked them up, it says they are late season so I wouldn't give up on them yet.

Have you grown them before?

 

I love trying the weird and unknown! It's interesting in itself and it's also the route to finding new "must haves" that work well for my growing conditions.

 

I have all new for me varieties this year, but not unknown, I'm in tomato group on facebook, these varieties grown by many people successfully. The other thing is that my technics are still not perfect, my greenhouse is small, hence I have to go back to some hybrids that are more forgiving. I want different shape/colour, and tasty tomatoes. Not giving up on learning.
So far I see that even with not that good year Barry's Crazy Cherry, Flaschen tomato, Night Queen started doing well.

 

Each year I grow mostly old reliable favourites, then experiment with one each of new varieties to try them. Sometimes the new ones aren't to my taste (Brad's Atomic Grape) so I don't grow them again, but I also enjoy finding new favourites (Auntie Madge's plum).

 

I'm trying a small black beef named Black Passion. Fingers crossed it's a good one.

 

You're right, when I went down to the plot earlier, some of them have started to ripen

 

i've grown ananas, including the Noire version. The chicken/compost/manure treatment is the same every year but the low light levels and poor temperatures are not. here are plenty of insects in the PT but just not many tomato flowers for them to pollinate.

Normally by this time I've had to stop the tomato plants as they reach the top of their supports and have been picking for a week or two. This year they're only 2/3rds of the way up. I have a mix of big beefy types plus medium and cherry types.

The assorted basils are happy tho.