Tomato Growing Thread 2012

Some will swap bottles from other brands, you'd just have to ask and see. But if you can buy a different brand cheaper, locally, I reckon your best bet is to buy an empty on eBay, and flog your empty one (to someone who's local supplier is that brand)

Funny how different areas have different brand loyalty. The empty bottles that came with the heater I bought on eBay are hard to find around here ...

 

Started a separate Propane Gas thead

http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/cheapest-source-of-propane-gas-calor-flowgas-etc.42491/

 

I have just ordered 10 square pots 18x18x19cms from Amazon. Just cannot find them around here. I hope they live up to expectations after such a treat!! They will swamp the window ledge!!

 

They'll only be in them for a few weeks (3 weeks max perhaps?)... get ready for the size-after-that already

 

Uuuugh-groan. They'd better turn out tops as they are starting to become high maintenance. Still, I 'm sure their taste will make it all worthwhile. We can't move house Kristen just to let these "cuckoos" take over! Still, I suppose we could live in the garage until June......

 

I personally don't faff about to much with my tomatoes, I sow the seed, 2 per pot, in small 1" pots (more pots for the propagator), transplant into 3" pots at the potting on stage and keep them there until big enough to plant them into their final "bucket"

I do however, keep the 3" pots in very large trays, water from beneath and once or twice a week, add feed to the water. It works for me!

My toms are raised in an unheated greenhouse and I start them off in late January/ early February, probably being taken out of a heated environment the first week of March. Any suggestion of frost and I cover with fleece.

Temperatures regularly drop below 10C but the proof is in the pudding, most of mine are now either in flower or the first trusses have appeared......

I do plant very deep into their final buckets though, removing the bottom leaves and planting to just above that level.

We all have "our" way of doing things, none are necessarily right or wrong, trial and error (and there have been many errors in my case ) will eventually give you the method most suited to your environment.

Forgot to mention, I do have heated propagators in the greenhouse

 

Dr Hessayon says yield is 8lb / plant (4 lb/plant for outdoor ones). Variety and other factors may increase that of course ... dunno what a pound of Toms costs relative to the cost & Faff of growing the plants? Not to mention the freshness of home-grown of course ...

 

I can honestly say i have never had a shop bought tomato that tasted as good as my own.....it's worth the wait

 

Thank you my lovely experienced shepherds. I will get these little Polish blighters to stand stout but straight in their new pots and they will have regular team building "jollies" and the odd slosh of - well what do you reckon, as they are still indoors? Baby bio or Orchid feed or Lidyls version of Tomorite?
on behalf of my Maskotkas, thank you for you support,
Jenny namaste

 

Nothing! Not until the flowers on the first truss have set, and you can see little tiny ball-shaped fruits forming in the flower heads. Otherwise they will luxuriate in their soil and not rush to produce any fruit - no matter how rousing your team-building speeches are!

"We shall flower on the benches, we shall flower in the ground, we shall set fruit in the sunshine and in the rain, we shall ripen in the greenhouse; we shall never get blossom end rot ..."

 

I must have rejected tomatoes at a very early age as my first encounter with one that I remember was at 6 years old. I found one on my skool dinner plate, bit into it to see what it was & instantly spat it halfway across the room

Since i've been growing my own though, I love em.

 

Ooooh Kristen that little speech at the end brought tears to my eyes and had the Toms cheering like mad!!!
thank you,

 

Hiya John.

You've probably already said somewhere, but do you heat at night?