Best trailing tomato for pots on garage roof - any ideas?

colnun

I'm a bit short of space and want to grow trailing tomatoes in pots around the edge of my garage roof. I'm looking for early/mid season varieties, can anyone offer any advice, please.

lisa26_2

Not sure what season they are but I have always bout the variety that are simply called 'tumbling' and they are brilliant. HAve always had loads of tomatoes from them. I've always bought plants but I've seen seeds are available too.

Primrose

I can recommend Tumbling Red variety or Tumbling Yellow. Both are F1's which mean that you're not supposed to be able to save the seed and get exactly the same plants the following year. I've grown both and they were really prolific, and also ripened slightly ahead of the tall upright varieties.
However, I would recommend that you grow them in the biggest containers you can, otherwise if they are too shallow with too little compost for the roots they will dry out far too quickly. If they're based on a hot tarmac roof, they will almost certainly need generous watering every day. I recommend you buy some water retention crystals (available from any good garden centre) and mix them generously in the compost before planting your tomato plants to help retain soil moisture in hot weather.
PS Last year I raised my tumbling plants from saved seed, even though the plants are supposed not to come "true". Still got excellent results and saved the cost of buying plants.

Sally_A

Tomatoes are natural sprawlers, and in their original state would "tumble", the weight of the pots on my garage roof would frighten me most. I tend to grow in flower buckets, I think each one is 10 litres-ish so that would give you an idea of the weight.

Tub varieties include Gartenperle (I found them quite tough skinned and bland to tell the truth), another bush variety that grows teensy toms is Hawaiian Currant, you'd need about 20 for a sandwich, but they're great if you do posh nosh and want a small vine to drape over the dish.

I'd be interested to see you try a few Gardener's Delight on the garage roof, letting them dangle over the side (you might need to tie them in to support the weight of the fruits).

To see a pic of your garage, and the access you have to the roof would be great, as you may be able to stake them like normal if access is good. I guess it has to be fairly good for you to feed/water them.

Have a quick look at the veg growing website mentioned in my profile - if you choose to join up, there is no end of advice, veg growing experiments, seed swaps etc

angelavdavis

I grew tumbling tom and hundreds & thousands varieties last year in hanging baskets, with a selection of basil and cut and come again lettuce and they were really successful. Not many toms actually ended up on the plate - they were lucky to make it past the hanging basket - they were a snack on a hook for our household!

If you search for hanging tomatoes on Youtube, there are plenty of videos with ideas on methods to grow hanging tomatoes.