Tomato Plant Advice

Hi everyone, first time poster today. I've joined the forum to try and pick up a few tips and to learn. I have had a bit of a mid-life crisis this year and started growing and planting things. One of the things that I planted was some tomato seeds. I initially grew them on my window ledge, then moved them outside into one of those cheap plastic framed greenhouses. I have just re-potted them for the third time, the plants are about 15 inches tall from base of roots to top of plant. I am at the stage as to what I do with them next. Do I move them to a really big pot, do I move them outside full-time, do I need to trim any of the lower branches off?
The plants are either Tiny Tim or Currant Sweet Pea, I have 8 of these. I have attached a couple of photos below.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

Welcome to GC Irob. I have just looked up your tomatoes on the web. Tiny Tim is called 'determinate' meaning it's a bush tomato. Currant Sweet Pea is called 'indeterminate' meaning it has upright growth although it doesn't grow very tall. This second one may need support from a cane or two as it grows. Final planting would be best in something the size of a bucket with drainage holes in, and plant them so that the bottom leaves are almost touching the soil. Don't remove any leaves or branches.

They can be grown outside but over night temperature shouldn't be lower than 10C although they will cope with the odd night at 8C. Once the first tomato appears on each plant they should be fed once a week with tomato feed and kept well watered. Good luck!

 

Thank you for replying and for your advice. At what size/ stage should I move to a large container.
Kind regards

 

Sheal's advice is great.

They won't need potting on for a while as you've got them in quite large pots at the moment. A lot of us would go straight from a 9cm diamter pot striaght into their final home.

When they seem too big for their pots, dry out quickly and need watering every day or when their roots fill the pot that's when they need to go into a bucket-sized pot. When they have had a bit of time to fill their pots, hold them upside down with your fingers either side of the stem, and gently remove the pot to check the root growth. If there are lots of roots growing in circles around the bottom then it's definately time to give them a more spacious home.

 

I would have planted them up to their bottom leaves at every stage of potting up, to build up a bigger root system right though the full depth of pots (roots will form on the buried stem). It looks like you may have planted them at the top of the pot. When they go into the final pot the soil level can be left slightly low and topped up later.

If they're as on the left and have only just be potted up in the last day or so, I would quickly re-plant at lower level.

 

Thank you so much for all your advice everyone.
Kind regards

 

Hi again, I have started to re-pot the tomato plants from the existing 2 litre pots I had them in, to a considerably bigger pot (I have attached a couple of photos at the bottom of the post). Will this be their final pot now?
I'm sorry for all the questions, my wife used to do all the gardening but unfortunately suffered a brain haemorrhage a few years ago at a young age. She had our garden lovely, so its down to me now to get it back to the way it was. She is in too much pain to do it herself.
So expect a lot of questions over the coming weeks.
Many thanks again.

 

I'm sorry to hear about your wife Irob. I'm sure she is proud of you taking over and achieving things in the garden. You'll be surprised how quickly you pick things up and there's plenty of members here to help you along the way. Don't be afraid to ask questions even if you think they are silly, simple ones. Gardening is a big subject and ever changing so even the more experienced don't know all the answers, it's fun finding out though!

 

just a shout to say that I'm glad of this Thread as it helps me with my own Tomato plant growing

 

I'm on my way out to check mine as I didn't cover them so that the bottom leaves are almost touching the soil.... Great advice @Sheal

Welcome to the forum @Irob

 

You're welcome Apple Blossom.