Just bought some lovely tomato plants, now what do I do with them?!

missymoo81

Thank you empty pockets, the tips are much needed as I would have just yanked them out of their pots, not realising!!

Foreign correspondant, OMG thank you so much for the diagram, I didn't realise I'd need to do that, I thought they would just grow.

They grow flowers first don't they then the flowers fall off?? And then the tomato grows?

OOOh save money I think I feel a trip to poundland coming on.

how many tomatoes do you usually get off one plant? As I don't know whether to get more, as we eat so many???

Thankyou again all you lovely people, you are angels!!

Missy

Lotus-eater

foreign_correspondent wrote: »

Sideshoots grow out (like armpit hair!) between the main stem and the leaves - they eventually get big and thick if left.

Just like armpit ha.............. bleh!

EmptyPockets

Hehe, Missy - I can sense your excitement from your posts It's great :T

missymoo81

lol indeed, yuk yuk

savemoney

I believe the reason to cut the side shoots is to encourage growth and lots more toms, the side shoots are just wasted energy the plant gives

My neighbour grows them he told my its late July early August before he gets toms any much later than that and they are harder to ripen so he told me yesterday in his greenhouse, as I said I am know expert on toms

Lotus-eater

missymoo81 wrote: »

They grow flowers first don't they then the flowers fall off?? And then the tomato grows?

OOOh save money I think I feel a trip to poundland coming on.

how many tomatoes do you usually get off one plant? As I don't know whether to get more, as we eat so many???

The flowers turn into tomatoes (sort of, you'll see when yours does it)

You don't need to buy tomato feed, go and collect a load of nettles from somewhere and make nettle fertiliser. Search on here or google for info.

Moneymaker are quite standardised plants, if everything goes well and you don't get any of the many tomato problems you can get, you can look forward to (I think) 8 or 10 tomatoes per truss and 4 trusses per plant outside.
So up to 35 to 40 tomatoes per plant.

missymoo81

not an expert savemoney, extremely helpful and full of information, which makes you an expert in my book!!! Hmmm I suppose if the toms don't ripen I can make green tomato chutney or something, but that's obviously way down the line.

I can't get over all the wonderful info all you lovely people have given me!! I'm amazed.

missymoo81

ah ok Lotus, so I'm in for lots of tomatoes then yaaaay (well hopefully, fingers crossed!)

OOoh nettle fertiliser, that sounds good, have got some nettles i think at the bottom of the garden will go and investigate when my back isn't quite so sore.

It still amazes me that you can eat almost for free just by growing your own! I always thought it was hugely complicated, but now i think you just need to know where to start.

So are you all growing lots of other veggies too? Where did you learn to grow things? Are there any good books I can get from the library, I have veg growing month by month, but thats it. Or is there a good thread on here. I have this little dream (sad I know lol) of growing all our own veg and not having to go to horrid T*#co's!

foreign_correspondent

If you have any growmore or similar, it would probably be worth chucking a little of that around them to help them get started. You will also need to use some canes or something to support the plants, otherwise they are likely to end up flopping over.

The tomatoes get pollinated, and then fruit set, little tomatoes start to grow in the bases of the flowers, then the flowers eventually drop off, leaving the tomato attached to the calyx - like this...

oops.. sorry image came out vast - may be better to visit the link instead!

http://164.107.85.47:8004/flower_fruit_morphology.php

Lotus-eater

missymoo81 wrote: »

It still amazes me that you can eat almost for free just by growing your own! I always thought it was hugely complicated, but now i think you just need to know where to start.

In all honesty it's as complicated as you want to make it. I could probably talk for an hour about techniques for growing tomatoes, without repeating myself.

But if you stick them in and follow basic instructions as above, you'll get fruit.
In fact, if you just stuck them in and forgot about them for a couple of months, the chances are you'd get some fruit off them. But to get them to do what we want, which is produce a number of well sized tomatoes that have a chance of ripening in our summer we prod, preen and groom our tomato plants like little princesses.