The ups, the downs and the insides out of growing your own in 2024!

FreeBear

Been indoors for the last few days playing with new tech.

Just as well, as it has been cold and wet outside (currently raining).

Checked the plumcot, and just one fruit is hanging on. It had been covered in a mass of flowers, most of which had set. It is only in to its second year since planting, so I didn't expect anything from it..

Silvertabby

alfmurph said:

I am doing everything by the book and yet for the third year running my tomato seeds in greenhouse have failed to germinate .  I give up .

Assuming your greenhouse is unheated, it's simply too cold for them.
I start my toms and chillies indoors,  in heated seed propagators.  They are now potted on, and are happily romping away on the spare bedroom windowsills.

I won't move them into my cold greenhouse until mid May at the very earliest.

kimwp

I started my tomatoes in February, under a clear plastic cover inside on the windowsill, but no heat, a few failures to get going but generally happy plants (and the seed was "use by" end of 2022 or 2023). 

I asked earlier in the thread about floppy, leggy tomatoes and got excellent advice to bury them up to their first leaves when potting on. I was talking to my mum about how tall the pots/deep the holes outside will have to be because the roots are currently down to the bottom of rose pots. I sowed the seed in root trainers, then in planting them deeper, put them nearly to the bottom of the rose pots. She said I didn't need to keep the roots vertical when potting them on, I could have put them sideways. She's an excellent gardener, but has never grown veg, can anyone refute/corroborate her advice?

ladybird1106

Yep she right. I've done the same on several occasions and they've grown fine. Just be careful putting them in to avoid snapping the plant.
Love 🐞

kimwp

ladybird1106 said:

Yep she right. I've done the same on several occasions and they've grown fine. Just be careful putting them in to avoid snapping the plant.
Love 🐞

Perfect, thank you ladybird!

ArbitraryRandom

If you think about tomato grow bags, they're generally only maybe 10cm deep - but when the plants are done they're a solid mat of roots  

kimwp

ArbitraryRandom said:

If you think about tomato grow bags, they're generally only maybe 10cm deep - but when the plants are done they're a solid mat of roots  

Funny you mention that, it was actually me saying to my mum "how do they fit into the grow bags when the roots are so tall??" that caused her to make the comment. I was just assuming that every time they were potted on, they needed to have new compost a couple of cm around and below the existing structure.

-taff

If you up end the gro bag on it's side and give it a shake, you have a deeper root run for the tomato plant and a more stable bag area fo a stick or whatever you're growing them up, cut a slit into the bag about an inch or two above the floor and the same wide to provide drainage and still keep a reservoir of liquid.

I grow mine in supermarket flower pots, the round ones, and fill to within a few inches of the top and stand them on gravel in trays. By the end of the growing season, the roots are in the gravel to get to the water, and as above, the pots are a mass of roots. At the end of the season, I cut the stem level with the compost, leave them alone all winter and empty them onto the veg bed come spring. the roots have rotted down and it's all nice and crumbly again for mulch. If you do that, just leave the gro bag on it's bottom or side out of the way, then cut i and spread in the spring.

Silvertabby, it al depends really. I sowed my tomatoes in the propogator mid ish march, they went into pots thebeginning of April and have been in the greenhouse since then. I am in the South West though. Some are on the windowsill [ the ones I especially want to coddle] but the rest are in the unheated greenhouse coping as best they can. They're all still alive except the ones the snails are eating so it's feasible. I used to sow the beginnig of March in the greenhouse and leave them there, usually took two weeks to sprout, it's just much quicker in the propogator.

droopsnoot

Tomatoes are about the only thing I have at the moment - I've now planted a third set of chilli seeds in another pot to see if anything comes up, there's nothing from them or the ones I moved to the airing cupboard a few weeks ago. I've also planted some pepper seeds, but that was only a few days ago. 

Suffolk_lass

@-taff I stopped putting my spent tomato compost in the veg beds after the potatoes got blight one year. I now use it to mulch the flower beds and fill the holes the rabbits dig