Topic: Tomatoe advice, what have i done wrong?

[bellebouche]

wow...never saw tomatoes like those before.

Belle - i love all your toms! how many actual plants do you have growing? i have 27 and still haven't been able to collect more than a few at a time, certainly not enough to make pasta sauce (i live for pasta).

Thanks! We have about 70.. 9 different varieties. I planted out four 4m rows and one 6 metre row of the bush 'roma' variety. I'll nip out this afternoon and take a snap of the patch to show the growing arrangement.

With some many plants we're trying a new experiment this year. I've not staked any individual plant... just used a rigging system with poles running the length of the rows and the plants being wound up string suspended from the poles. It looks precarious but has saved hours and hours of labour with us not having to bother to tie in the plants as they grow... they just get the top 20cm/30cm or so wrapped around the suspension string.. it's a massive labour saver.

[caroline7758]

What has convinced me to grow outdoors next year, apart from all the people on here saying outdoor-grown are sweeter, is that I found some seedlings growing among my parsnips, presumably from the compost, and just left them to it & they are producing lots of fruit without any attention!

[tim]

I seem to recall someone else doing that, Adrian?

I tried it in the greenhouse - as they do commercially - total failure!! The plants just slipped down the string.

[Merry Tiller]

I will never grow my Toms outside again, 6 months of delicious anticipation that ended with a rotten stinking mess. Tomato Blight, I hate it more than slugs and that's saying something >:(

[Hyacinth]

I've always had to grow outdoors til this year & the advent of a g/house and not inclined to do it again unlesss they're in movable tubs. The weather this year has been great for ripening outdoors - but this is the first time  for, what? 4 - 5 years? I've managed to achieve it with the bulk of the fruits. So greenhouse for me from now on or, as I've thought, outdoor ones in tubs which can easily be moved. And just think of that extra ground I'll have for other stuff :)

[Mrs Ava]

I feel for you MT.  That happened to me on the first year of having an allotment in Essex, and I had never come across it before and had no idea what I had done wrong!  Lost my entire crop so the following year, did half in the greenhouse and asked you lot what to do about the outdoor ones.  On Tim and others advice, I know dust with Bordeaux mixture in June and July, carefully, but thoroughly.  Fingers crossed, it does the trick when many other loose their entire crops on the site.

[tim]

Dust, Emma? Better to spray. Easier &, with a lance, you get over and under.

[natasha]

We got our allotment because of tomatoes  ;) ; I came from Russia and there people grow toms in open ground in Siberia, but my English husband didn't believe that it is possible to succeed without a green house, so we had a bet and got our allotment for the trial. I'm happy we did! Here they are:


This is the way my mum used to do it and we always had more tomatoes than anybody else on our allotment site there. So, I try to follow her footsteps:

I start planting seeds on the 1st of March and never earlier than that, the late maturing varieties first (Black krim, Cour di bue). I don't have grow lights and without them the seedlings grow too tall and thin if you start them too early.

Just before putting the seeds into the seed tray, I water the compost with boiling water, sort of disinfection.
 As soon as the seedlings appear ( I check them twice a day) I move them into conservatory, the temperature there is about 15-17 C, but everything between 12 and 18 I think is fine, the seedlings do not like to be hot, re-pot them into bigger pots as the plants grow. Tomatoes like to be moved, intentionally or not the roots are disturbed and it provokes the plants to develop a stronger root system and this is the main job for this period; to grow strong roots, not leaves.

First half of April; all my grown ups go into a green house in their pots and get acclimatized. I shut the green house door only if the weather is going to be below 8C.
I add nettle/parsley and dry onion/garlic skin into my water butt, I'm not sure why I'm doing that... Habit, more than sense.
Last week of May-first week of June; all toms go outside, most of them are flowering at this stage. Also just before planting out I sprinkle the leaves with copper based solution. That's it. No more sprinkling, no pinching. I came across this article from some Canadian agricultural Uni, they carried out a research, which demonstrated that non pinched tomato plants are more prolific and healthier comparing to the pinched ones. I guess it works better for the open ground, where you are not as limited in space as in a green house and roots can grow as far as they need to feed the plant. While pinching it is easy to pass infection from one plant to another one.
The drawback is that the plants are really heavy and bamboo sticks are not strong enough to hold the weight. I use bricks now.
The picking season starts from 15th of July.

[Hyacinth]

Natasha, thank you SO much for all this - there's a lot to take in there! You say that you 'stake' with bricks? So your toms are bush varieties & you let them sprawl, presumably? And, do you feed them when the fruits have set? I'm well-impressed by your 1st date for picking in the open & perhaps, after reading your post, I'll revise my ideas for only growing in pots. Many thanks for your input.

Alishka (not Russian but my Dad loved Russian literature 8)) - my sister, poor soul, is called Anastasia..... ::)

[Robert_Brenchley]

What's a Siberian summer like? Since it's continental, I imagine it could be warm and dry, better for tomato growing than many of ours.

I was about three weeks later than Natasha with my first picking, but apart from that, my dates are about the same. The only thing I'd add is that when I planted them out, very few were flowering, and I put them under cloches just in case of frost. Maybe I'd have gained the three weeks given a more normal spring.

[tim]

Great spiel, Natasha.

[plot51A]

Very interesting post Natasha, thank you. I now feel less guilty about all my sprawling toms on the plot as most of them were bush varieties and as you say bamboo doesn't hold them - but they look very neglected! Producing though.

[calendula]

there is a variety called Siberia, bush type so will do good outside sprawling, or in a pot and is quite early, hence the name  :)

check out the 'totally tomatoes' web site (you'd have to google for the address)

[tim]

No, no, no - with respect!

Go to our own www.simpsonsseeds.co.uk/

They even do plants, should you be lazy.

[natasha]

Hi everybody,

Robert, you are right and Siberian summer is dryer, but it is hardly warmer, in fact the first thing which impress Russians in Britain is the weather, it is so pleasantly mild. But you see summer over there is short, so the same principal; to do your best to make them fruit before rain and diseases get them.

My father-in-low grows the same varieties and his crop starts about 3 weeks later than ours. It is difficult to detect the reason, he starts them slightly earlier and keeps them in his bedroom, where it is a bit warm and not enough of natural light, moves them into his green house in May, which is for me slightly late, apart from that everything seems the same.

I think it is a good idea to plant different varieties as well, so instead of 10 plants of Moneymaker, may be 2 plants of 5 different varieties, to see which ones work better for you and ... the element of surprise.

Alishka, I don't feed my tomatoes with anything apart from watering with dodgy smelling water and some patches were manured last year, also it is obviously madness, but I take all my family into a forest in mid Autumn and we all collect some old leaves, to dig into the soil later (not just for tomatoes). This year my mother-in-low said she will be doing the same, it is infectious.

For me the earliest ones this year were:

Principe Borghese (smallish but early, seeds came from DJBrendon, thank you very much :-*) )

Black mavr (gorgeous)

fireworks (some of them have a bit of a funny skin, sort of scratched)

North pole (krajnii sever) in Russian language there are several names for North pole and also there are several varieties of tomatoes called these names, not to confuse with the other North Poles.
This one is nice; the fruit is smaller than medium, but perfect shape and not too low to the ground, it tastes nice, there are varieties more prolific than this one, but for me this is a "Cinderella", it works when everybody else is still asleep.
Give me a shout if you want some seeds!



 


 

[bellebouche]

As promissed, here's some snaps of my tom growing patch/methods


I've popped in links for the other two as I've left the actual snaps a little on the large size... don't want to muck up the flow of the thread.

http://bellebouche.com/snaps/a4a-tompatch2.jpg
In the above snap you can see the steel poles, the rigging and the string I use to weave the plants around. The large bundles of fruit that are sagging down are marmande.. big bunches of heavy fruit has the plant sagging a bit but it still works well. The smaller fruited varieties are now close on 2M tall and doing very well

http://bellebouche.com/snaps/a4a-tompatch3.jpg
A better/bigger snap of the whole patch.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I'd definitely be glad of some seed! I'll be posting some seeds in the swop section soon, when I have a few varieties sorted out. I'd be grateful for anything which does well out of doors here.

[tim]

Natasha - leaf mould? Nothing better!
Summer in Russia? Not much of it in all our time in Murmansk!!

Adrian - you obviously have a younger back than I do??

[Garden Manager]

Re Leaf removal, I always remove them up to the first truss when it starts ripening then on up to the second when that starts ripening. I feel it lets in more light and air and concentrates the plants energies into the fruits rather than foliage growth.

Of course leave some leaves on, the plant needs to make food for fruiting after all!. In addition leaf removal helps the plants conserve moisture (less leaves to support) and helps against disease (the bottom leaves tend to decay and attract fungal problems).

i have done a few (not very scientific) experiments with my tomatoes this year in an attempt to spread the crop and avoid the usual glut. This has included stopping plants earlier (afte one or two trusses instead of the usual 3 or 4), with the hope these would crop earlier. This has not worked really, the 'stopped' plants did not ripen their fruits any quicker than the normal plants.

I also tried to save space  by growing more than one plant in a larger than usual container. This again has not had any advantage over the normal method (used as a 'control'). I would probably be better off trying twin cordons on one plant, in one pot.

What has worked though is my experiment with planting mixture. I normaly use a 50;50 mix of multipurpose compost and john innes no 3. However growing the quantitiies of tomatoes that i do, this can prove qute expensive (if effective). So this year when i found myself with some good topsoil from the garden spare I decided to use this instead of John Innes. The soil was seived but not sterilised (dont have the facilities), to produce a fine material which was then mixed with the bought multipurpose, and the tomato plants planted into it in the normal pots.

I did worry that there might be too many weed seeds or worse pathogens in the soil would harm the tomato plants, but whilst a few weeds did appear, the tomatoes grew fine, just as good as in the John innes mix, and are now cropping heavily. I shall certainly be thinking of doing the same again next year!

[tim]

I hate an argument - so this is NOT an argument.

But I just cannot see the logic in removing most of the feeding leaves from tomatoes.

In my 45 years here, I have never done more than what I've said above, & when we were growing them commercially in Jersey, there were certainly not enough hands to defoliate an acre of toms.

And we didn't do too badly, despite that!