Tomatoes in cool UK conditions

RHemmings

I'm doing gardening for the first time ever this year, and my tomatoes seem to be doing well, but none of them are going red. Is this likely to be due to a problem, or do I just need to wait longer? 

Silvertabby

RHemmings said:

I'm doing gardening for the first time ever this year, and my tomatoes seem to be doing well, but none of them are going red. Is this likely to be due to a problem, or do I just need to wait longer? 

Outdoor or greenhouse?  My greenhouse toms only started ripening a week or so ago.  Everything seems to be behind the drag curve this year.

LessImpecunious

Don't know of any reason they won't go red, other than that they're not ready. May be due to planting time, local temperatures, or variety - e.g., I have Sungold type, Bloody Butcher and, more recently, Purple Ukraine, ripening well, though fairly slowly, in a greenhouse (and the first two also outside), but other varieties - Moskwich, Costoluto Fiorentino and Nagina, with a good set of fruit growing well, but no sign of any colour...

RHemmings

Silvertabby said:

RHemmings said:

I'm doing gardening for the first time ever this year, and my tomatoes seem to be doing well, but none of them are going red. Is this likely to be due to a problem, or do I just need to wait longer? 

Outdoor or greenhouse?  My greenhouse toms only started ripening a week or so ago.  Everything seems to be behind the drag curve this year.

Outdoor. The greenhouse I inherited has big holes in the walls. I need to fix it eventually. If your greenhouse toms are only ripening now, then I think that pretty much means it's not time for my toms yet. I'll wait, and eat radishes and courgettes in the meantime. 

I planted them when I planted them, and can't remember when that was now. I planted them far too closely, so nearly all of them were dug out and transplanted to different places all around my allotment. One got dug up again by a probably stripey-faced mammal and got replanted. But it's recovering now.

This may have slowed them a bit. 

-taff

Depending on where you are in the country there is a two week difference between the top and the bottom  in general [ there was an experiment about daffodils blooming to work that out] so even if someone elses are ripe, yours may be a bit behind. It's never great for tomatoes outside because of blight, I'm in the south ish and despite me trying every year, they usually get blight and I end up getting green tomato chutney....I have some plants outside and they are nowhere near ripe yet, but the ones in the greenhouse I've been picking the odd ones for the last couple of weeks.

twopenny

I'm in the South West and we've had a summer of bone dry but dim and cloudy, low temperatures and my tomatoes are still green and not full size.

It rained last night so I'm going to feed them later and see if that helps.

Locally there's no one at events/classes offering bags of tomatoes as surplus so I guess we're not alone.

Thinking next year of a couple of pots and one of those plastic 'greenhouse' type things that blow away in wind. A lady down the road does that, it's right by her driveway gate, and she has ginormous plants and long season of tomatoes

LessImpecunious

Greenhouse definitely makes a big difference to growth of my plants (in a cool hilltop location), but this year I have some outside Bloody Butcher and Sungold that were beginning to ripen very soon after the GH ones - just in much less abundance, as the plants are nowhere near as big. The outdoor ones were planted out about 3 weeks after the GH ones too... But this has been a very odd year!

Dustyevsky

I'm at 500' in Devon, and we've had toms to eat from the polytunnel for a couple of weeks now.

Using the so-called 'Arctic' types, I've had ripening toms from 9th June, but setting them off early and mucking around with untidy-growing plants is a pain, so I don't bother now. I'd normally expect edible fruit by the end of July, but this year has been exceptionally dull and cool.