Tomato Growing Thread 2023

For all us crimson crush fans…can I suggest trying cocktail crush. Smaller tomatoes (but bigger than cherry). A friend gave me a plant this year and it was far and away my best plant. Huge crops, not a sign of blight and really tasty fruit. Definitely in the list for next year!

 

Having loads of seeds I didn't try yet, I already hoarded much more varieties. As those seeds are mostly sold in tens, , I might have enough for decades to go with now.
Let's live till the next season and see what it will be like.

 

Re: Crimson Crush and its blight resistance. I had blight on my outdoor cordons, including CC, and decided to deal quickly with almost all the plants in this outside area. Nothing was recycled and went to landfill!! Result??? NO FURTHER BLIGHT!!
So we collected masses of fruit, enough for us.
So it'll be CC again next year unless there's a better variety that snubs it's nose to blight!!!

 

A very sad day……my last fresh tomato

 

I've still got a couple of CC on the allotment, they have blight on a few leaves but they have not died and even made some new growth, I dont think you need to panic when you see blight on this one at least, it seems to be able to live with it.

 

DON'T EAT IT SUSIE....just look at it it is a sad day,I have 3 beefmasters and 4 alicantes hanging on for grime death and dreading buying horrible shop tomatoes

 

It took me a while to realise what was causing the splitting.Then saw on You tube that it is watering too much .the flesh swells up and the skin cannot do the same especially in this damp weather we are getting now ,
Their isn't enough heat to draw the moisture out.
(It is the condensation with me as I grow in a greenhouse)

Suppose it's logical when I thought about it, so this year I only did watering when leaves drooped.
I'm still getting them ripening , though I'm also wiping condensation from the windows. Leaving the window open a little through dryish days doesn't make much difference so it stays closed.

Yesterday I easily picked enough for a pasta dish!!!

 

Today I also picked the last of my tomatoes. It's no good leaving them any longer so off came those of a size that will ripen over the coming weeks in the kitchen & then I cut down all the plants.

The self-sown seedling looks in every way a different variety to 'Gardeners Delight'. I have never grown this tomato before so I have no idea where the seed could have come from, perhaps it hitched a ride on a bird, though few ever enter the balcony. This seedling reached the ceiling of the balcony even though I removed the growing tip at the start of September. It had grown another sideshoot which when it reached the ceiling just kept on growing - sideways!


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As I don't know the name of this variety I just kept on using 'Gardeners Delight' even though it clearly isn't!
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That's it for another year!

I have been growing tomatoes on this balcony for the better part of the 22 years we have lived in this flat. I've also grown them in a greenhouse on the allotment I shared with a friend from church as well as in the open ground. I also grew them when we lived in different flats in Spain. But I'm not sure if I will continue another year. It's a very expensive hobby - though the tomatoes do taste better than the ones we get from the supermarkets.
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Is it expensive because of necessity to buy grow bags every year?

 

Blight is a problem if you grow tomatoes. It spreads so efficiently given what Fungi need to be efficient. In my case I predicted that I'd provided what it needed! Not deliberately but to check on how resistivly Crimson Crush did its job!! However my years of blight meant that I POUNCED immediately, and HAD EM OUT !!! They might have survived but the only ones that did were in the cold greenhouse or a small, 3 plant tomato house! Significantly many of the green fruit that was collected at 'ripping-out' time!! also developed blight before ripening!!!

 

Yes, in part, but the fertilizer also works out expensive & the time it takes from seed sowing to harvest as well as all the attention they need till they are removed in late October. If we counted up the hours dedicated to them & then applied the "living wage" to them you will see what I mean! I would miss them though - so I'll probably continue another year more!

 

Very impressed they are still going. We've had a couple of -3c frosts, I think mine were removed 6 weeks ago

 

I've still got a couple of CC plants on the allotment, I just left them to see if blight finally kills them off, but they are still there.