tomatoes

so far so good xxxx :D money maker and gardeners delight.

 

Nice healthy plants, are they staying inside or going out? Have you tried Sungold, similar to G D, same size and just as tasty but orange in colour?

 

hi strongylodon,i havnt tried sungold but will have a scout for a packet tomorrow.i got the others free from GN mag.they`ll eventually go and stay in greenhouse but were still having some bad weather here in NE,it was snowing yesterday,so i`ll wait a bit longer yet.last year i tried tumbling toms but eventually died cos i didn`t have them in big enough pots and no manure but hopefully i`ll do better this time.

 

At last something I can feel good about, here are some of my tomatoes pics taken at 06.30 today well I couldnt sleep. My plants are out in an unheated greenhouse in Aberdeen and have been there for over a month. They are ailsa craig and a red cherry.
Enjoy the view

 

Yes, Strongy - Sungold were excellent last year wonderful flavour. I am trying Sungella (their replacement) this year which promises same flavour but prolific cropping!

Elainefiz, they do look healthy, and nice to see someone else using those little square pots - I think more efficient!

Kaptainzep, They look great, can't believe you have no heat in the g/h. Have you got a giant propagator or something? :D
Is Ailsa Craig a tomato plant that don't need much warmth? What type of red cherry?
I have spent too much on heating g/h this year, so I am very interested in how you have managed it!

 

I dont know if old age is affecting my sense of taste, but last year I grew Sungold, Gardeners Delight, and Moneymaker, and none had any more taste than supermarket ones.
This year I'm trying some free ones called 'Gartenperle' and some seeds from last year. I haven't very many because I left the little plants out for some sunshine while I rearranged the shelf in the greenhouse, and forgot to put them back in. Temp. went down to 0C, and next morning they were all limp!
I'm not doing well this year, I thought all would be plain sailing once I got a greenhouse!

 

Liz, Gartenperle are great, growing them again this year. Planted them up 1 to each 10" hanging basket, try to encourage even growth over basket (if your using one), as sheer weight of fruit on one side makes the basket tilt! In May, hung them up outside (11 baskets) and we lived on tomatoes!

It sounds terrible, but we had so many that we even tried frying them on toast! If you haven't tried.............will be doing that again this year too! Supermarket toms on toast...YUK!

What we didn't use we froze and enjoyed them through the winter, (on toast of course!)

I used Sungold for salads only, but will be trying Sungella this year as its more prolific.

 

Nice to be apreciated and just to rub salt in your wounds here is a pic of my greenhouse on the 2 of March, a bit grim. the secret to this amasing story is ofcourse tip of the week from gardeners question time. i belive it was Bob flowerdue who's tip was get a grow light. I had my seedlings under a 400w light for 20 hours a day for the whole of Februaryand half of marh i belive I put them into the green house and some into mny Garage at The spring equinox, money well spent I think.

 

That's interesting kaptainzep, how did you harden them off between being under a warm light and suddenly into a cold garage/gh.?

Sorry,I can't actually pick out a g/h in that pic!

Anyway, you certainly got results, I'm amazed!

How much area for plants can you get under one of those 400watt grow lights?

 

Sorry about the delay its seems sometimes that my teenage son spends days on end glued to this computer despite having a very expensive lap top. Anyway here are two more shots of my greenhouse/garage, they are both there somewhere. My light is in an insulated enclosure about 2m high and approx 1m square. Two sides are a corner of my garage on which I have hung mirrors, the other two sides are hung fron the top of the enclousre, a layer of blue tarp and a pair of thick curtains . The top is just a a sqaure board hung from the rafters of my garage. Inside the curtain is lined with aluminium foil the floor is also covered with foil, topped off with 50 mm rockwool in bin liners. On the day the pictures were taken the temp inside with the light on only reached 8c at noon and must have been much colder between midnight and 4 am when the light was off. I placed a picnic table inside which gave me 2 levels, next year I will use a glass shelf. Everything I put in it grew very well despite the weather ouside but I germinated them in the house, I just took them all out on the 23 March and bingo.
I had been given a small parfin heater from my neigbhour which cost about �£5 a week to run and you have to go and buy the stuff which stinks anway or metered electric light giving ideal conditions for vigourous growth.

 

Well, my tomatoes are about 3" high, with only 2 leaves still!!! They germinated in the airing cupboard, spent about 3 weeks on the kitchen windowsill, and were put in the greenhouse about 3 weeks ago - since then, hardly any growth!!! And thats here on the sunny south coast!!! I still can't believe how FLIPPIN COLD IT IS!!!!!!! We had a good day on Saturday, but apart from that, cold, cold and nigh on Antartic!!! We usually have had some shorts weather by now!!

 

Dag did I didn't know that sungold has been replaced by sungella as my seed is two years old (I make one pkt last). Will look out for it.
Someone gave me Gartenperle to grow for them , I have never grown it before so I will try a couple.
Honeybee, I agree, this has been a very cool spring and considering it will be may next week but as far as work goes I don't want hot sunny days as the plants would bolt and be ready before the flower beds in the parks and sea front are cleared. This has been an exceptional year for polys, bellis and pansies, here at least so they won't pull them out to early, I hope.

 

Thanks for the info. kaptainzep!

Sounds as though you have gone to a lot of trouble?

 

i bought some grow bags yesterday for my toms and cucumbers.i was gonna use manure but was talking to a man who said that when he`d used manure in the past he had alot of probs with his toms.he`d gone so far as to write to The Sun who told him it was probably down to the chemicals the farmer had used,so he`d switched to grow bags and the difference was such that he would never use manure again.that was three years ago so there must be something in it.

 

I tried grow bags last year and their only major draw back was moving the plants around it was also a problem to remove one plant from a bag with three in so I am sticking to pot and compost.