TOMATO GROWING THREAD 2020

If you have blight on the plant is it still OK to eat the fruit, most of the fruit is perfect some have a light blemish on the skin ?

 

Use them up quickly as the ones that look OK now may not in another day or so.

 

Also useful for keeping Tomato Moth caterpillars off (that damage fruits causing them to rot before the seeds are viable), plus other pests like family members who eat tomatoes you've earmarked for seed saving.

 

This is the biggest issue I have - especially the chocolate cherry tomatoes Also have the same all year round with any soft fruits

 

Tomato season over, Carol has seized the greenhouse!
Not a prolific season but adequate, hopefully next year will be better, less neglect due to other commitments.

The star performer this year were the "gardeners delight" raised from seed supplied by our very own JWK....... straight off the vine they were great, baked in the oven at a low heat with balsamic vinegar or Worcestershire sauce, served with fresh Basil........SUBLIME!

 

I've been removing mouldy leaves almost daily from my polytunnel tomatoes for dome weekes now and for over a week I've had to remove mouldy tops from the stems (Tip for next year, don't cut tops too close to a truss because that gets lost if the top goes mouldy).

Yesterday I noticed one plant had collapsed and found the stem was badly affected with botrytus in 2 places. On checking my other plants I found several were going mouldy on stem where lower leaves had been removed, so might leave a bit of leaf stem next year.

I've reduced the ventilation to avoid the blight that's about as I'd rather they suffered a long, slow death from botrytus than being wiped out quickly from blight and losing all my remaining tomatoes. Thinking of covering the soil next year with (white to reflect light) plastic sheeting to reduce evaporation causing condensation dripping on the plants.

Haven't picked since last Friday, this is today's pick, 71 Suncherries and 33 Orange Paruche (there's about a dozen split ones missing that I ate whilst picking or gave to Dog). That's as many tomatoes as in 6 packets of Tesco 'value' cherry toms.



And this was this week's pick from tray of green ones ripening indoors

 

This week's Friday pickings (done a day early as it's too wet for anything else) 101 tomatoes from my garden polytunnel

1lb 12oz of Suncherries
8 ozs of Orange Paruche
2 Shirley

40% Of the cherry toms (mainly SCP) were split following the heavy rain, despite being grown under cover in raised borders. Definitively growing them in pots next year.

That leaves about 150 toms on plants that are rapidly succumbing to botrytis, so will pick the lot next Friday and clear the plants and finally Mrs Scrungee will get some clothes drying space.

Had a look through my seeds and have everything I need for next year apart from Suncherry Premium so ordered another 30 seeds. Bit hacked off that the cheapest place has now run out, but at least I still got them for about half the price of T&Ms.

 

Has anybody sown saved seeds from these two F1 tomato varieties before, and how did they turn out?

1) Suncherry Premium
2) Tumbler

I've saved seeds from F1s many times before with varying success, Sweet Million always come true, Red Alerts are barely noticeably different, and Sungolds can be a bit of a mixed bag, but the ones close to originals can be eaten raw, and any 'different' ones turned into roast sweet cherry tomato sauce.

 

Saved seeds from a morrisons tomato have come out pretty good, I'm guessing its a hybrid variety, they actually taste really good.
I grew it outside in a bucket and brought it indoors a couple of days ago to ripen the remaining fruit, I planted the seed late about early May.
I'm saving seed, but what I get next year is anybody's guess.

 

If you keep reselecting seeds for long enough, you should evenually stablise a variety. Every non-F1 variety started off as F1. I grow a variety that started out as an expensive F1, but has been grown out/reselected for sufficient years to have stabilised it, and is now more vigorous than the initial F1 cross.

 

This weeks tomato pick consisted of 1lb 8ozs of Shirlies that have been ripening indoors, and 12ozs of almost ripe cherry toms from the garden polytunnel.

The cherry tom plants were down to their last few leaves (everything had succumbed to botrytis), so I removed the last leaves and cut the stems at low level (fed up with splitting fruits).

About 100 viable fruits left on them which I expect to remove and bring indoors soon.

 

A bit of a strange year for me. Sowed mine around normal time (start of April - ‘Sungold’ and ‘Tumbling Tom’). All seemed fine at the start, particularly the ‘Tumbling Tom’ (outdoors). The ‘Sungold’ (greenhouse) seemed to get more and more spindly as they grew, particularly the leaves. Then it dawned on me that I may have mixed in some composted manure (bought in - bagged, which turned out to be suspect, Aminopyralid) to the compost. I still got a half decent crop, but nothing to be proud of. My outdoor toms (‘Tumbling Tom’) were going great, until we had a spell of very windy weather (early-mid July?) and didn’t really recover. They only cropped for a few weeks and then developed some kind of stem rot. All in all, a very poor year. I’ve decided that next year I’m going to set aside some space in one of my raised beds (not bothering with sprouts next year) to grow maybe half a dozen plants. I’ll also not be growing ‘Tumbling Tom’ again.