2016 Tomato Growing

I was planning to put them in our allotment, which is south-facing and has summer from morning to evening as there are no buildings around. We do get some rather hot days in the summer, but you know what the Northeast is like. I think this year it will be trial and error.

 

Thanks
I started in March last year, end with lots of green one be frozened ..., so will try a little early this year

 

Cutting off additional trusses sounds like a good idea. I never considered it, but now that you mention it.. last year I had a few trusses that had lovely ripened tomatoes, others never ripened. I will give this a try, too.

Another thing learned, thanks!

 

My list for 2016, 28 varieties:

Bush
Micro Tom (mini-bush for indoors)
Red Alert (very early cropping outdoors, guaranteed that every fruit will ripen before frosts come)
Brasero (heavier/later cropping)
Koralik (blight resistant, but a bit bland)
Tumbler F1 (for containers), Red & Yellow

Cordon
Ferline F1 (blight resistant, decent size for stuffing)
Sweet Million
Sungold F1 (growing less of these now as they're too prone to splitting and soften/lose flavour too quickly for my liking).
Mountain Magic F1
Gardener's Delight
Suncherry F1 (good for cutting 'tomatoes on the vine')
Golden Cherry F1
Shirley F1 (for village show)

EDIT1: Missed a few from my T&M 'hauls'
Sungrape F1
Brutus F1
Berry F1
Black Cherry

EDIT2
Scotland Yellow & Kenches Gold

EDIT3 'Heinz' free seeds

Beafsteak/'Giant'
Phil's Fantastic
Ian Neale's UK record tomato strain
Dan McCoy's World record tomato strain
Gigantomo (for Vanmeuwen's competition)
Angelina's Bulgarian
Ovi's Romanian Giant
KF's Giant

 

I grow maskotka in hanging baskets and they never fail to produce. You don't need to take out any side shoots either. They just need watering and feeding. Use at least a 14inch basket - I found smaller baskets need watering a lot more. Last year I lined one basket with a mpc bag and put some holes in it. It was just a trial to see if the compost remained more moist through the day. It worked very well as I found the basket did not dry out as much. I also had hardly any fruit cracking. I'll be doing the same this year.

 

I wondered how you'd got on with that! May try that myself

 

This year I will try these on my small garden

1 ToLA - Latah Very Early Red Tomato
2 Tomato Black Cherry
3 Tomato Sungold F1

 

@fat controller 'innards of disposable nappies'.....for a moment you had me worried!

My first batch of tomatoes have germinated nicely, as have my peppers and aubergines.

 

I've used the insides of NEW disposable nappies in my wall baskets but I avoided using them for tomatoes, not being sure what chemicals may be in them.

I can't say whether it worked or not as the basket plants (Begonias, never again!) failed to grow. I'll be trying something different this year.

 

ill be growing 2 Praxxus tomato plants in my 1st year garden this year,,,,, can not wait!!! so I'm taking people are starting there seeds now, think ill start mine off on my window seal now, then move them into their final home in the green house in about 5 weeks