Tomato wisdom

I've just been reading through the 'Which tomato variety' thread and I wondered what blight looks like in tomatoes, as I wonder if mine had it last year. Also, what are you supposed to do with them. All I've done is plant them and let them get on with it but I noticed that Dave W mentioned something about side shoots. What should I be doing?
Many thanks!

 

Blight will make the leaves go yellow and assuming you did nothing the fruit would turn to mush, so I reckon you would know if you had had it :thumb:

If you are growing some sort of Bush or Tumbling Tomato you don't need to do any "pruning". (These are referred to as Determinate type)

Indeterminate, or Cordon, Tomato varieties should be grown as a single stem - up a cane, or string - and "stopped" when they are tall enough. In the greenhouse I would stop them about a month before first frost is expected, but they may have hit the roof by then, in which case that's what most folk use as the time-to-do-it. Remove the top of the plant, ideally two leaves above a flower / fruit "truss".

Before you get to that point, though, for Cordon Tomato varieties you should remove all the side shoots that form at the base of the leaves. Be careful not to mistake a flower / fruit for a side shoot and whip that off by mistake! I advise that you don't remove anything unless you can see a flower truss on the main stem above it - that will prevent you mistaking the main growing point for a side shoot! It doesn't matter if the side shoots get to a few inches before for take them out, so no need to be paranoid about it (in fact the side shoots appear from nowhere when your back is turned, so there will always be some that are embarrassing long - either that or my eyesight is rubbish!). Gras the side shoot at its base between thumb & forefinger, bend to one side and it should just snap off at the point it meets the main stem/leaf junction; if not bend it the other way. Once you know what you are looking for you will be able to remove them when they are much smaller, and then they can just be rubbed-out.

Feed with a proprietary Tomato liquid fertilizer as per the instructions (usually once a week in the greenhouse, and once a fortnight for outdoor ones). The most well known brand is Tomorite, but I think it is expensive and I use whatever Brand-X is cheap - this year I'm using Doff. Do not start feeding (anything at all!!) until the fruit has set on the first truss. (You don't want to encourage growth at the expense of making flowers / fruit)

If you get a touch of light green, or even yellow, BETWEEN the veins on the leaves its worth spraying with Epsom Salts or Magnesium Sulphate (get it from the garden centre, not the chemist - much cheaper!). This is Magnesium deficiency. The leaves should green-up in a day or two, some folk say to spray every day, others again a week later. I've only ever had to do it once, but maybe I caught it early.

There are differing views on removing leaves. Most people advocate removing the leaves below the bottom truss when the fruits on the bottom truss start to ripen. Other people strip pretty much all the leaves off their plants about now (at the time that they "stop" the plants) - personally I think this is completely and utterly stupid (there, I make no bones about my view on this one!). The plant needs leaves to "work". If you are going to let the Tomatoes ripen by themselves get them from the Supermarket - they pick them under-ripe, and let them ripen whilst they travel to the supermarket. This method may work ("It lets the sun get to the fruit"), but so does sticking unripe fruit in a drawer, in the dark (preferably with a ripe banana as the Ethylene gas hastens ripening - good trick at the end of the season :thumb, so all I can say is "Pah!".

FWIW I only remove unhealthy / diseased leaves from my Tomato plants, nothing else.

I think this video is a pretty good demonstration of removing side shoots
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-prune-tomatoes

 

Crikey!
Great answer!

 

Wow! Thanks Kristen. So, what I thought was blight wasn't. But the toms had brown leathery patches on, though not all. It seems to have started on some already, though from here already I've realised I'm planting them too close together. I just don't want to have to do green tomato chutney like last year as I made stacks and haven't bought any branston in the last 12 months!

 

Hmm. brown leathery patches sounds blighty to me...

 

So, I've just been reading the various threads about blight. I have some brown patches on some stems. Do I strip the large fruit off to ripen inside and treat the plant and leave on the forming fruit, or is it too late? I will try to find some bordeaux mix tomorrow. I thought it wasn't blight because the fruit didn't turn to mush, it just had these brown patches on the surface. Am I in trouble as my potatoes are next door? I read that I musn't compost the diseased plants. SHould they be burnt or just disposed of in some other way? Thank you for all the help. SOrry for so many questions!

 

"SHould they be burnt or just disposed of in some other way?"

Burnt is fine. Otherwise put them in your land-fill rubbish bin.

If it does turn out to be blight then by particularly thorough with cleaning this Winter, and be careful not to carry the disease elsewhere - sterilise knives / secateurs etc. before using them on other plants. Actually, that's probably suitable advise for any diseased plant material.