Growing tomatoes

droopsnoot

Nobbie1967 said:

Novice_investor101 said:

I’ve had a few green tomatoes on each plant & plenty of flowers but it feels like they’ve stalled growing/flowering/tomatoing for a week or so now. I’ve been watering consistently & the pots are well drained. 

The plum tomatoes are coming on & looking good. My experiment with an Aldi bought Gardeners Delight plant & my own seed grown one is interesting. The self grown one is a lot more bushy & the growing tomatoes are a deep green. The Aldi plant has small & sparse leaves & very pale looking tomatoes. 

Suspect the cooler weather has slowed things up. Mine would have been at the roof of the greenhouse if they’d kept growing at the rate they were in the second half of June.

Just started removing some lower leaves on mine and giving them regular feed to boost the crop. Looking good so far.

Someone mentioned removing lower leaves to me last week, does that help? I've pinched out the top growth on a couple, to see what happens. Getting short of low enough places to put them so they don't hit the roof of the greenhouse, though I guess there's always the floor.

Novice_investor101

Mine are about a metre high & don’t seem to be growing much higher. I have pinched out the suckers on the GD & feeding regularly. The bush variety is very densely packed but I’ve managed to clear the lower leave & stems. There’s flowers growing in amongst the dense so I’m hoping they’ll stand out more as the tomatoes ripen. I may thin those out a little later on if needed. 

JohnB47

droopsnoot said:

Nobbie1967 said:

Novice_investor101 said:

I’ve had a few green tomatoes on each plant & plenty of flowers but it feels like they’ve stalled growing/flowering/tomatoing for a week or so now. I’ve been watering consistently & the pots are well drained. 

The plum tomatoes are coming on & looking good. My experiment with an Aldi bought Gardeners Delight plant & my own seed grown one is interesting. The self grown one is a lot more bushy & the growing tomatoes are a deep green. The Aldi plant has small & sparse leaves & very pale looking tomatoes. 

Suspect the cooler weather has slowed things up. Mine would have been at the roof of the greenhouse if they’d kept growing at the rate they were in the second half of June.

Just started removing some lower leaves on mine and giving them regular feed to boost the crop. Looking good so far.

Someone mentioned removing lower leaves to me last week, does that help? I've pinched out the top growth on a couple, to see what happens. Getting short of low enough places to put them so they don't hit the roof of the greenhouse, though I guess there's always the floor.

I take the lower branches off completely when their leaves go a bit dried and mottled. This allows me better access with the watering can and I'm pretty sure those old leaves are no longer doing much for the plant.

I agree with others. As long as there is drainage, regular watering, even to excess, is better than infrequent watering. Letting the plants wilt is definitely not good.

Mee

This rather pithy advice arrived in today's GW post - 
https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/tips-for-growing-better-tomatoes

Nobbie1967

Greenhouse is getting pretty full now

Getting hard to get in the door

The purple cherry tomatoes will be tricky to work out when they are ripe as they are already purple

Had a few cucumbers and the the French beans are almost ready to pick. Chillis are growing nicely now they’ve been potted up out of the duff bag of Lidl compost they were in. Everything I used it on just sat there and didn’t grow. Back to peat based for me.

Silvertabby

Nobbie1967 said:

Greenhouse is getting pretty full now

Getting hard to get in the door

The purple cherry tomatoes will be tricky to work out when they are ripe as they are already purple

Had a few cucumbers and the the French beans are almost ready to pick. Chillis are growing nicely now they’ve been potted up out of the duff bag of Lidl compost they were in. Everything I used it on just sat there and didn’t grow. Back to peat based for me.

Bumper crop of everything!  My toms have  a few little green fruits, although my chillies are a bit more advanced.  Still a bit behind the drag curve this year due to being without a greenhouse while the old one was removed and the new one (and base) built.  My plants are in large pots filled with tomato grow-bag compost with peat.  Going to be difficult/impossible to find peat based composts from next year.

RobM99

Mine have gone nuts! I think I've planted them way too close together. Lesson learnt there.

Nobbie1967

Had another battle to get into the greenhouse and while tying up the plants I found a couple of ripe Sungold Must make a note in my diary to compare to next year.

droopsnoot

I've got a couple that will be red enough to call ripe in the next three or four days, I think, with a lot more on the way. I did find a photo from when my Mum used to grow them, and she got much better results in the same place, so I can't blame the greenhouse.

Novice_investor101

Got my first few red tomatoes coming now, from the GD I bought from Aldi. The one I grew from seed is a few weeks behind it but looks a much healthier, bushier plant with plenty of fruit. 

The rome plum tomato plants have really grown. Very bushy & I need to thin them out very soon to find all the fruits. Cut off a few growing tips to try & control the growth after I staked them all yesterday on my lunchtime break. Definitely looking forward to the abundance of ripe tomatoes in the next couple of months & having them in my salads for work lunches.