2015 Tomato Growing

Had trouble with Tomato Moth Caterpillars for the first time this year

 

Is that what they are? I've been plagued with them

 

I had some of those little Devils too, I wondered what they were!

 

AKA 'Tomato Moth' http://www.wildlifeinsight.com/the-bright-line-brown-eye-tomato-moth-laconobia-oleracea-bf-no-2160/

Signs are chunks munched from leaves, caterpillar poo, but most importantly round, grey holes in your tomatoes, like these:

 

Yes that's exactly what I had little devils! What do I have to do to prevent them next year?

 

OK so all my outdoor toms are now ripening fast, I have taken every leaf off and I can see the change from morning to afternoon. Especially today, the hot sun when it came out the clouds was amazing. None of my outdoor toms has blight, so I will be trying to find out what variety they were from the free experimental packet from gardeners world. but I am going to save some seeds for next year

 

A bit of a bad year for me. Only the Sungold have performed anything like. What with the cold and the caterpillars, it's been quite disappointing. Loads of unripe tomatoes on my outdoor toms, although the Maskotka (1plant) produced some ripe fruits, so will be growing more of these next year.

 

Sungold have been the worst performing cherry tomato this year, small crops, prone to splitting (both outdoors, in polytunnel plus for days after picking), continuing to ripen too quickly and rapidly going soft and losing flavour.

 

Today's picking of bigguns, 28lbs, biggest 724g, not many left in the polytunnel now, but still plenty of cherry toms which are now ripening above head level.

Several Omar's Lebanese on the right and some Purple Calabash on the left.

 

Well, we have a final total of :

Harbinger / gardeners delight 10.5kg
Picking from early August onwards - plants pulled up today
(4 plants of of each)

Tumbling toms 8.5kg
Picking from end July onwards - plants pulled up today
(6 plants, 5 in plant trough, one in open ground)

Probably about 3kg of yellow pear tomatoes
(Didn't think to weigh these...)
Picking from 1st week of July onwards - plants still cropping (growing against south-west wall)
(2 plants)

All grown outside, and bear in mind we probably lost at least 2kg because we were way over the last two weeks, so had to leave all the plants to their own devices.

I think we will grow tomatoes again next year!!

 

Yesterday's 4lbs picking of cherry toms from my tomato polytunnel



Today's 56lbs picking of all my outdoor Ferlines




Today's 14lbs picking of bigguns (with a few smaller toms) from the tunnel, biggest was just short of 2lbs and I haven't been bothering to regularly water/feed it for weeks.





That makes 144lbs of tomatoes picked in the last 7 days! (see previous few posts)

Looking a bit sparse in the big tunnel now (but a bit crowded back here indoors)