Topic: how early do your tomatoes ripen?

[pigeonseed]

Hi all

I got my tomatoes going really early this year, but the most advanced are still only small green fruit, that appeared only last week. But local tomatoes are in the greengrocers, red, ripe and sweet.

Is this because they'll all be grown under glass? Or I wonder whether there's some other trick that professional growers use. After all years ago they grew lots of tomatoes outdoors, and surely they didn't wait for them till August like I always have to!

How early in the year do you get your first tomatoes - and are you under glass or outdoors?

[saddad]

I have some basket types almost ready...  :)
After that it is how long the variety need from transplanting. Some are less than 50 days, some are 85-90...  :-\

[PurpleHeather]

Get some and take out the seeds to see if they grow fast next year. I know they are probably hibrids but. It is worth a try.

I think that the commercial growers regulate the growing conditions better than we do.

Yours will taste better when they are ready to eat than the shop ones and will be worth waiting for.

[tim]

Really early - like when? And planted where & when?

We don't get our first in the cold 'house, from an April sowing, until early July.

The growers use heat & bee pollination.

[saddad]

I'm fairly certain that light intensity is more important than actual temperature in raising toms... so perhaps they use artificial light to get the plants growing earlier...  :-\

[manicscousers]

we have some january sown tigerella about 2 weeks off, quite a large size and just starting to go lighter, under plastic but no heat

[Digeroo]

Have you tried hanging a banana with them.  There is a gas that the plants need for the fruit to ripen.  Some of the techically minded people will know what it is called.  The ripe fruit gives off the gas and then the others ripen.  Not much use outside.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Ethylene. I remember making it in the chemistry lab at school.

[Digeroo]

making it in the chemistry lab at school

Did you ripen any fruit with it?

Thanks for the original post it has jogged my memory.  I will give the method a try on some of my red currants.  I will put a piece of ripe fruit in a plastic bag and put round one branch and see if it has an effect.

[davyw1]

What is meant by professional growers IE top exhibitors or commercial growers.
As Saddad says here is no doubt that commercial growers use light intensity and also heat to a certain point as they grow all year round. What accounts for the difference in flavor is the fact that commercial growers pick the tomatoes when they are green and they turn red in transit due to being in the dark and they are hybrids developed to produce bigger crops.
A top exhibitor does not really grow any different to us only they have a hot house that gets plenty of light and a good heating system  so they can set the first tomatoes away at Christmas. Obviously they know every trick to get the tomato just right for a show, sacrifice every other tomato on a plant just to get one big truss or every tomato on a truss bar the one they want. As tomatoes turn red in the dark with the aid of humidity no doubt they have ways of doing that as well.

[pigeonseed]

There was that BBC4 programme a few weeks ago, about agriculture in the UK. They showed massive glasshouses with towering tomato plants in them. But there was one tomato grower (perhaps on Jersey?) who still grow theirs outdoors.

This man and his son were whacking quite small tomato plants into the ground one after the other at planting time - they left it quite late in the year - no dabbing them in with lots of manure or compost and fiddling about tying them to canes in a warm spot in the garden.

And yet they grow them commercially.

Maybe my tomatoes just haven't got enough sun. Or I need to grow faster maturing varieties as well as the slower ones.

[charlie888]

I had ripe tomatoes at the beginning of May while my plants were still indoors, I'm not really sure what caused them to produce fruit quite so early but they were on a very very sunny windowsill above a radiator so maybe they just thought it was summer?  The early start doesn't seem to have done them much harm though as they have now been outside since the end of May and I've been getting about half a dozen tomatoes a week ever since (off 4 plants, Gardeners Delight)

[pigeonseed]

You're doing well! I've got Gardener's Delight as well. It must be the sunshine then.

Mine are in a North facing garden now and in previous years I expect they had other excuses!

if I can stop my husband parking on the horrible tarmac-ed front garden, I could fill that with tomatoes in pots next year and it's South facing!