How are your tomatoes doing ?

yogi_brrr

...And how long should it take for tomatoes to get ripe on the vine? My biggest tomato (Gardener's delight) finished growing over 2 weeks ago but is still rock hard and totally green. It's outside.
Has the recent heatwave made any difference to your tomatoes. I am in the East Midlands and we have had very warm weather - about 30 degrees. Maybe it's too hot?

Silvertabby

Despite the heat, I've only just picked the first of my greenhouse tomatoes - although it looks like a lot of the bigger green ones will ripen all at the same time in the next week or so.

I think the heat may have stunted their growth.

Linda32

I am in the East Midlands as well. Mine are same as previous years, according to my allotment diary I bought home my first tomato on 24th August last year and previous year before that 25th July. 27th August year before that.

Keep an allotment diary, best thing ever

yogi_brrr

Linda32 wrote: »

Keep an allotment diary, best thing ever

I agree about the diary. I have been keeping one since 2008. It has proven invaluable !

unrecordings

I use a calendar on my iMac. Very handy to see what was happening in previous years.

On the tomato front, mine (in greenhouses) are just about to crop properly - give it a couple of days for the first vines to colour properly. I've been picking the odd early one for a couple of weeks now, mainly with blossom end rot (which seems to happen every year)

trigger_fish

In the greenhouse mine are starting to turn red. The heat doesn't seem to have made any difference to their growth speed.


I've given up trying to grow outdoor ones but for those who do if you can't get a reasonable crop this year then you probably never will.

yogi_brrr

trigger_fish wrote: »

I've given up trying to grow outdoor ones

Is that due to blight or are you too far north?

unrecordings

I get blight. I tried once to grow tomatoes outdoors, got the makings of a really good crop then the blight hit them really bad - didn't get a single useable tomato from the outdoor plants. Fortunately I'd still got my greenhouse crop, so in the general scheme of things it wasn't anything like a disaster

trigger_fish

yogi_brrr wrote: »

Is that due to blight or are you too far north?

Blight mostly and for me they just don't seem to do much outdoors.

tootallulah

I am in the East Midlands too and ate my first tomato today from an outdoor plant on a south facing wall. One tomato in the green house is just turning orange. I have a bumper crop this year but they aren't ripening any earlier than any other year. And yes it was delicious.

yogi_brrr

tootallulah wrote: »

I am in the East Midlands too and ate my first tomato today from an outdoor plant on a south facing wall. One tomato in the green house is just turning orange. I have a bumper crop this year but they aren't ripening any earlier than any other year. And yes it was delicious.

Hehe! I bet it was! What variety are you growing? I also have tonnes of blooms and tiny baby tomatoes. They pretty much all got pollinated. Maybe that's the issue. The plants are struggling to support all this new growth... :huh: