2015 Tomato Growing

Big thumbs up for that chutney recipe you posted FC. I made it yesterday and it's yum - nice and spicy! Much better than the one I made last year

 

Blight has got in the greenhouse now






These are coming down the pub with me tonight

 

All outdoor toms now have blight, including every single 'blight resistant' Ferline and Koralik plant.

Another 16lbs from the polytunnel, and that's without the loads of cherry toms awaiting picking



Looking really sparse in there now, but cherry toms ripening right up into apex.

 

All my tomatoes have done well this year after stalling three times. These are the last of the Manx Marvels and the rest of the tomatoes, Sungold and Gourmet have only a couple left on the plants.

 

My gardening neighbour has blight. Her tomatoes are 100metres away from mine and it's definately late blight. There are no signs of blight on mine, but I lost everything to blight at the end of last year. What should I do? (Aside from careful watering.)

 

Hi Cinnamon. I cut down and destroyed about 30 pounds of tomatoes yesterday that were affected. It was heart breaking. I too, would like an answer to this. All the best. Russ

 

I had a good look round the garden today and there were a couple of plants that looked suspect, so I decided to harvest the lot and uproot the plants. Really don't want a repeat of last year when I decided it couldn't be blight on the plants as it wasn't spreading...of course one day it did and I lost all the remaining tomatoes as all the plants were infected and they quickly went pock-marked and rotten in storage. (Also the green bin is being emptied tomorrow and I have winter greens that need the space!) Fortunately I stopped all the plants really early on so pretty much all the tomatoes will ripen in storage.

 

I think pickings from the polytunnel are going to get much smaller from now on

 

T&M 10 pkts for £10 offer this weekend, got some more Suncherries as fed up with Sungolds splitting and only short period from being ready to getting past it http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/t-m-weekend-seed-offer-10-packs-for-£10.104453/#post-978147 plus Suncherries last longer after picking, although they do have tougher skins.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=UAfgYgCqR7k

 

23rd September 2015

Time to pull them up.






Roots are more fibrous and finer than if grown in normal compost.



See, you can grow some decent tomatoes in Wickes sharp sand.

I picked 3.2kg of the Tumbling Toms for my own use. Other people were also invited to help themselves so the overall yield from 24 plants was about 4.5kg.

The total yield for the Legend tomatoes was 5.7kg from 24 plants, although it did not look like it. About 2/3rds were still green and so were set aside for cooking purposes.

 

Hmmm, not sure I'm convinced misterQ. I'm in the Midlands, it's my first time to garden on this unimproved site and my garden is north facing, so they really haven't had as much sun as they'd have liked, but my yield is literally 10 times yours i.e. 23 plants and a total yield of about 45kg.

 

Restricted area is probably the difference.

That's 48 tomato plants, 4 Pot Marigolds and 8 French marigolds all grown in under 2 square meters of sand. Optimum would be about 18 plants but I grew a lot more because I was hedging my bets.

There is a trick to increase yield by stressing the tomato seedlings (similar to what you do to chillies) but I didn't use it.