Leggy tomatoes - do they ever come good in the end

mrbadexample

NinjaB wrote: »

They are all at the seed leaves stage and most I think are short but some are about just over an inch of stem before the leaves.

I have to say this doesn't sound at all leggy to me. Not yet, anyway. Yours are still at the seedling stage - I think mine are leggy when they're 3' high and still on the windowsill.

I think this one is leggier than yours sound:



So here's what you do:

In MSE style, you find a nice deep pot. Eat the yoghurt and put a few holes in the bottom of it. Put a bit of potting mixture in the bottom, so that the seed leaves will be roughly at the top when you've finished:



Using your long-handled teaspoon or other implement of your choosing, lift out the seedling and place it in the pot:



Then add your potting compost right up to the seed leaves:



Or if it has its true leaves, you can even remove the seed leaves and plant it up to the first set of true leaves, like this one I did a couple of weeks ago:



The plant will make lots of new roots from the buried stem, giving it a nice healthy root system. All will be well.

RedLass

Excellent pictorial :T I expect I'll be doing this in a a couple of weeks, some of my tommy seedlings are a wee bit taller than their pals...

DaftyDuck

And you can use loo roll innards too! That's real MoneySaving. Some of us ain't rich enough to eat doubble cream an' yoggut, but we still wipe our .... :eek:

NinjaB Those are just cheap vegetable trolleys. Struck me while I was taking that photo, they are twenty years old, and have had seedlings on every year.. that's a lot of seedings...

darkrain

They are not leggy, he needs his eyes testing.

Ive got a money saver tho,
Its hard to get a decent root system in a growbag without paying out extra for the bottomless tomato pots that are pushed into the top of the growbag to make it deeper. You don't need to do that at all, you can layer you tomatoes instead.

To layer, make a slit in the bag a little bit longer than you normally would, draw a little trench with your finger just deep enough to lay the plant in and be able to cover it in about half inch of dirt. Take off some of the lower leaves if you can leaving at least 4 leaves at the top, Cover the roots with soil and work your way up the stem until you reach the leaves then stop. It doesn't matter that the top of the plant is laying down, it will head up towards the light by itself very quickly.
A tomato puts out its best roots just below the soil surface, when you layer, all of the stem is just below the soil surface, so you get a stronger root system without the extra tomato pots than you would with them
It helps if you start your seeds off really early so that you have a decent length of stem and some good top growth.

darkrain

Leif wrote: »

I wonder if you can overwinter a tomato plant? Chillis do great, producing more pods in the subsequent years. I cut mine back to an ~8" stem and trim the root ball. Would toms work if thimmed thus?

I think it may depend on whether its determinate or indeterminate.

The bush and trailing are determinate, they do their own thing without being pruned, give a flush of fruit mostly all ripe at about the same time then the plant is exhausted and dies.

The indeterminate vine tomato on the other hand keeps on going for as long as its fed, its suckers are removed and until the frost gets it, so it didn't die of exhaustion..... so maybe that would still some go left in it?
Or I could be completely wrong

There is a tomato tree that is perennial, supposed to taste like a cross between a tomato and a plum ..... which sounds interesting

Bitterlemon

I grew some very leggy tomatoes a few years ago. They were very neglected but got lots of lovely cherry tomatoes on them in the end.

This year I am trying some kind of dwarf patio tomatoes so that some can stay in my conservatory. They are about a month old and nice and compact.

Leif

A bit off topic, but I've just read about a technique of growing the main stem along the ground such that it roots, and allowing 4 side shoots to grow upwards. It sounds worth trying.

Linda32

Leif wrote: »

A bit off topic, but I've just read about a technique of growing the main stem along the ground such that it roots, and allowing 4 side shoots to grow upwards. It sounds worth trying.

Would this work with cherry tomatoes? I will possibly have one or two plants left over after I've filled the garden pots. I could try it on the allotment and see what I get. it would be a fun experiment to try out

pinkcandyflossprincess

the man needs to see mine...his head would probably explode:o

whwn is it safe to plant out please? i have loads living on the windowsills?

Leif

Linda32 wrote: »

Would this work with cherry tomatoes? I will possibly have one or two plants left over after I've filled the garden pots. I could try it on the allotment and see what I get. it would be a fun experiment to try out

It has to be indeterminate plants, the kind whereby you normally remove the side shoots. So whether it is a cherry is not relevant, but it can't be a bush or intermediate type. It strikes me as a good way to get more tomatoes from one plant, although you would not save ground space. It is good if for example you buy a couple of different varieties from a garden centre, you can save by buying only one plant of each kind.