Tomato Growing Thread 2023

The self-sown tom that seems to have darker foliage than any of the others. I took a photo yesterday of it with another plant's leaves overlapping it's leaves but it's difficult to see any difference. I had thought of uploading it but I don't think anybody will be able to distinguish which plant is which!

I realized also that at least one of the other plants is fast catching up to the self-sown one! But it hasn't many flowers on it yet. The self-sown one has 4 trusses with fruit & a 5th forming. None of the other plants are anywhere near it!

The day I planted the tomato plants in the growbags I accidentally broke one off very close to the base. Still I went ahead & planted it anyway, hoping it would grow from the the piece of stem left - but it hasn't shown any signs of growth. :( The top part I cut up & treated it as a cutting. I put the cutting in the same hole as the the rooted stem part. I've never taken tomato cuttings before & I was sure it had died as well but looking closer today I see that it must have rooted as there is now a growing tip after I removed it from the cutting at the time of planting! If it does grow I hope it will produce a truss or two before October puts an end to the tomato growing season.

 

Like you I've never seen caterpillars on tomato plants before. In the USA they are a very common pest I believe but not nearly as much here in the UK. Have you searched for them online?

 

Regular leaves, no ribbing... definitely not Black Truffle, despite what it said on the packet. They look lovely, though. Hope they're tasty.

 

Apparently they are a lot more common than I imagined!

I've done a search & come up with one page in particular that lists 17 different caterpillars that feed on toms!!!

Don't be worried though as they are not all here in the UK! Have a look at the page I mention:
17 Caterpillars Found On Tomatoes (& How to Get Rid of Them)
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This is the most likely culprit though maybe: Bright-line Brown-eye - Lacanobia oleracea Bright-line Brown-eye | NatureSpot.

 

Yes that's the one I got from using Google lens.

 

Today's harvest:

 

What lovely fruits @Garret,
Jenny namaste

 

@Garrett ,that's a great harvest!

 

The greenhouse toms are starting to ripen, some weigh slightly more than a pound each and are very solid. The taste was well worth waiting for, the plate is a full size dinner plate.

 

I really don't know, my wife brought home the seeds, some sort of big boy as I recall. There were only 15 seeds in the packet, so they must have been hybrids. I had been growing the same variety for years and saving the seeds, but the results were getting worse and worse. I simply told her to pick up a pack of tomato seeds just to switch varieties. There is no sense saving seeds, as I am pretty sure they must be hybrids. Unfortunately, a lot of toms are called big boys.

 

Thanks for this. Seems they are local but never knowingly found. Plenty of other food choices apart from our Toms!:
www.hantsmoths.org.uk/species/2160.php

 

Two new-for-2023 cherries from Vital Seeds. Santiam Sunrise in the greenhouse, Mango Lassi on the house wall.