Help MBE grow his dinner 2012

annie123

mrbadexample wrote: »

Apparently when they get leggy from lack of light you just take off another armpit, root it and ditch the parent. I'm not sure I could be bothered but I might give it a go sometime.

Think of the early toms you could get if you could overwinter them. Never seen it mentioned on the vine which is why I was questioning it.

mrbadexample wrote: »

I was going to post this the other day but forgot:

RIP Lonesome George.

I read that and was very sad too.

Fay

Mad-Frog wrote: »

Fay your garden is beautiful I was going to take some photos of mine, might just take some of the greenhouse instead

Oh please post them, I love seeing pics of what others are up to and where their veg are growing. I'm sure your garden is lovely too

Sambucus_Nigra

mumof3plusoh wrote: »

I also noticed that when I took the dead flowers off my tomatoes in a hanging basket I have the tiniest tomatoes.:T:T:T:T:T:T

You don't have to take the flowers off tomatoes; dead or otherwise. If you do, then you won't get tomatoes as they have to stay on there and the tomato appears after the flower has fallen off.

Sambucus_Nigra

Pre-war_babe_33 wrote: »

I have heard say that if you take large enough side shoots of tomatoes out you can put them in water until they forms roots, then pot them up and keep indoors over the winter for new plants next year. Bush tomatoes do not need their side shoots taken out.

Personally I never take the side shoots out after reading somewhere many years ago that it is totally unnecessary to do so - nothing like saving myself a lot of work I would say as the things grow back again directly your back is turned and you have to do it all over again.

The only thing I do is remove a few yellowing leaves at the end of the season to allow the autumn sunshine to get to the last of the ripening fruit.

If you do take the armpits out, they can go straight into soil or into water; and they will produce tomatoes this season; take them later in the year and they will overwinter if kept warm.

I also don't side shoot; and I encourage people to grow bush tomatoes so they don't have to either...

radiohelen

Hello folks. It's been a while. Just wanted to share my disasters.

Our allotments is a carrot free zone at the moment. I've got one germinated out of four rows! No beetroot. No parsnips.

I've managed to harvest very small garlic. It's all tiny and now has leek rust so is not going to get any bigger.

I also have bean issues. I planted eight runners from Homebase. I have two left. My neighbour gave me two bean plants. They look sooo sick. I have direct sown two lots of beans into the ground, at the base of 12 poles. I'm now on my third sowing from new seed. I got two plants from the second sowing, I'm waiting on the third.

Courgettes and pumpkins look so sick. They are just not getting going at all. I resowed some which are growing in pots but as soon as you put them in the ground they start looking sick.

I do have a bumper broad bean crop! Self seeded last year and tasting pretty good. I've got some strawberries, the ones the slugs leave, and my dwarf beans from Lidl seeds seem to be surviving and thriving. (Any advice on how far apart these plants should be? I sowed them pretty thick but as they are the only bloody thing to grow from seed I'm loathe to thin them.)

I also have a fine crop of poppies, weeds and slugs.

annie123

Thanks to PWB33 for mentioning it and SN for confirming that you can overwinter tomatoes.
I do like to try something different so will have a go this year. I'm still not convinced that we get enough light but time will tell.

Radiohelen, well done for getting lidl beans to grow, my neighbour gave me some after she'd sown hers and neither of us have had any sign of life from them. Had a rummage last night and 3 weeks later the beans are still there just not waking up. On a plus point it does mean the slugs and snails can't eat them

It would appear to be warm, muggy and cloudy today, I was hoping for some sun. I'm amazed anything is growing at all this year, and hoping that we have a late summer like last year, 80c in October was very nice and kept my toms going for ages so not giving up hope yet.

mrbadexample

annie123 wrote: »

Think of the early toms you could get if you could overwinter them. Never seen it mentioned on the vine which is why I was questioning it.

It's an old thread but I'm sure I've seen it mentioned a few times.

lemonjelly

Well, everything has survived thus far....

we even had sunshine today!

mumof3plusoh

Sambucus_Nigra wrote: »

You don't have to take the flowers off tomatoes; dead or otherwise. If you do, then you won't get tomatoes as they have to stay on there and the tomato appears after the flower has fallen off.

I didn't pull the whole flower head off I still have the toms on, I only pulled the petals off. Looking forward to eating them. x

Sambucus_Nigra

mrbadexample wrote: »

It's an old thread but I'm sure I've seen it mentioned a few times.

We had an armpit experiment a couple of years ago to overwinter toms; but not sure where the thread lurks right now...