Wind damaged tomatoes

scottishchick27

While I was at work yesterday the wind wrecked my garden :mad:. I had 4 tomato plants which were outside, two of which were beheaded and the other two have very wind battered lower leaves. The PVC greenhouse took off too :eek: and some of the tomato plants inside were also damaged. I've dumped those that look beyond help but a couple of the main stems have been bent over but not snapped so I'm hoping that they'll be ok. None of the top leaves are affected but a lot of the lower leaves are yellow or dead. Will I remove them? The worst thing is that the ones that were bent have tiny green tomatoes on them :mad:, the first ones .

So basically my question is, do I remove the lower branches that are dead? What about the little branches that are forming in the 'armpits' of the dead branches?

Another question I have which I might as well ask while I have this thread, I've grown gardeners delight tomatoes too (still indoors at the moment) and wondered how I go about putting them in a hanging basket. I don't know why but I wasn't expecting them to have the same kind of stem as the other tomatoes I thought they would be more vine like? *shrugs shoulders*. Do they start to grow down the way once there is fruit on them?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give a new gardener.

Sambucus_Nigra

Um; Firstly gardeners delight are vine/indeterminate and really should be grown up a cane [or similar] rather than a hanging basket....I'm sure someone will disagree but bush/determine ones are better for that.

With the wind blown ones; you can strip all leaves off apart from the top 5; is a general rule of thumb. I strip all my leaves off anyway [except the top 5] and yes, remove the armpits; you can use these as cuttings to replace the destroyed plants [just put them in compost, they will sulk for a week or so and then perk up and carry on growing].

You may not have had to dump the other ones; they could have been potted up and would probably have continued to grow...they will form roots along the stems so can easily recover from a fair amount of damage.

scottishchick27

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

Um; Firstly gardeners delight are vine/indeterminate and really should be grown up a cane [or similar] rather than a hanging basket....I'm sure someone will disagree but bush/determine ones are better for that.

With the wind blown ones; you can strip all leaves off apart from the top 5; is a general rule of thumb. I strip all my leaves off anyway [except the top 5] and yes, remove the armpits; you can use these as cuttings to replace the destroyed plants [just put them in compost, they will sulk for a week or so and then perk up and carry on growing].

You may not have had to dump the other ones; they could have been potted up and would probably have continued to grow...they will form roots along the stems so can easily recover from a fair amount of damage.

You're a star, thanks very much :beer:. I have got the gardeners delight growing up canes at the moment but assumed for some reason that they were bush ones. Nevermind, at least I hadn't hung up the baskets yet :rotfl:. Dunno where the heck I'm going to keep them all now though as I was hoping they would be hanging and out of the way. Any idea if they would be ok to put in that tomato planters you get where they grow out of the bottom?

I'll remove the dead leaves from the ones I've salvaged. I'm not too bothered at losing the few I did as I had too many just incase. Just hope that's the end of the wind now. Definitely investing in a proper greenhouse for next year, I thought about it for this year but didn't want to spend a fortune if this hobby was just going to be a flash in the pan but I think it's going to last.

Sambucus_Nigra

scottishchick27 wrote: »

You're a star, thanks very much :beer:. I have got the gardeners delight growing up canes at the moment but assumed for some reason that they were bush ones. Nevermind, at least I hadn't hung up the baskets yet :rotfl:. Dunno where the heck I'm going to keep them all now though as I was hoping they would be hanging and out of the way. Any idea if they would be ok to put in that tomato planters you get where they grow out of the bottom?

I'll remove the dead leaves from the ones I've salvaged. I'm not too bothered at losing the few I did as I had too many just incase. Just hope that's the end of the wind now. Definitely investing in a proper greenhouse for next year, I thought about it for this year but didn't want to spend a fortune if this hobby was just going to be a flash in the pan but I think it's going to last.

They would be fine in an upside down one; as fine as any tom plant in an upside down one, it's just that in a basket they would all grow on one side and topple over. Unless you trained the vine part up the basket chains and over the hook or something...that might work.

officeguru

Are you anywhere near Fife ??? I've got some spare tomatoes in my greenhouse.....

Cheers

scottishchick27

officeguru wrote: »

Are you anywhere near Fife ??? I've got some spare tomatoes in my greenhouse.....

Cheers

Thanks very much :T , I'm further north and have some back up plants on the go so I should be ok x