2015 Tomato Growing

I went out to the greenhouse this morning and found one plant that had been severed just above ground level. Any ideas anyone?

 

Give the pot a soak, bet there's a catterpillar hiding in it

 

Still far too cold for planting in the open here, I'll even need to put paraffin heaters in my tunnels for the next 3 nights.

 

Ah yes, hadn't thought of that. The plant was in the border which I've now replaced with a spare. I hope this is just an isolated case

 

I had a tall pot with a tumbling tom in last year. The plant grew to a huge size trailing all around the pot. It's dwarf, which means that the distance between leaf nodes is short, but it's very vigorous. It's a cherry, but the fruit take a while to ripen and it's determinate, meaning that you don't remove side shoots and it fruits all at once then dies.

 

I just planted 2 Toms in a 2ft deep 14" wide pot. Is that too many for that size pot?


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Yes Rob, they'll need room to spread. Mine will have a bucket each.

'Sungold', 'Gourmet' and 'Manx Marvel' still in 1.5 ltr pots and haven't put on any growth for two weeks. We have had a few hours of sunshine today though, every little helps!

 

Great thanks for the tips - at least I can move them now before they strangle each other. They just look so small and one looks silly in the pot but I suppose I will need to be patient.

Wow, yours look so beefy and strong!

 

You're welcome, yours will catch up soon enough!

Thanks, but that's no good without top growth, I sowed them mid-March.

 

Here are some quick tomato photos from my greenhouse:
The one on the left with fruit visible is Bloody Butcher. I knocked off the first that had set (whoops)! The big fruit is a megabloom (2 fused flowers here), but it also has a couple of normal fruit. The megablooms are slower to develop :( and are more common at colder temperatures and in the larger varieties. I've taken some megablooms off my Ananas Noire. By the way, last year with my outdoor tomatoes I allowed strong early plants to have 2 or 3 stems and then spaced the stems out with canes. This gave me very high yields, but is not the recommended technique. I don't have enough room in my greenhouse to allow them to grow tall....and allow me to walk down the greenhouse.

Rob, the Magic Mountain on the right was sown nearly 2 months after the Bloody Butcher on the left. So yours will catch up! I've did 2 sowings of cherry tomatoes after the Magic Mountain.

Here's a gratuitous photo of some of my tomatoes from late last season cos I'm proud of these handsome chaps!

 

@Freddy Been thinking about your severed tomato plant. It could have been caterpillar, although they tend to go for leaf munching rather than eating stems in my experience.

Another possibility is a leatherjacket or cutworm. Chomping through stems at ground level is their speciality. If it happens again, have a good poke around in the soil surrounding the base of the severed plant and you may find one of these little boogers hiding there.

 

Well mine are planted up in there final pots 2 sungold, beefsteak and 3 tigerella .

 

Wow they are beauties!


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Finally cleared out the propagator and planted the other 5 plants in the greenhouse border. I have some 'Sweet and Neat' plants that are looking decidedly blue whereas the other plants look fine. Seems like they won't tolerate temps of 10c. Hopefully they'll pick up.

 

My toms have also stalled over the last two weeks, putting on very little growth, although a couple have thrown out flowers. Still waiting to plant outside due to the chilly nights we are still having, although the forecast does seem to offer a little hope.