I'm growing 4 different tomatoes outdoors:
Marmande
Gardener's delight
Ailsa Craig
Tigerella
Should I treat these all the same, training them as cordons? I vaguely remember having read somewhere that Marmande should be trained as a semi-cordon (whatever that is :-\?)
Grow them all as bush regardless. They only have a short cropping season outdoors, so you want as many fruit to set as possible in the time available. so just let them branch as much as they want. The big problem is supporting them.
I find supporting tomatoes a nightmare. Sticks everywher, and they always fall over anyway. Maybe this should be a whole new thread! ::)
It probably should. I staked mine carefully last year, and they ended up all in a heap like trousers round someone's ankles.
;D ;D ;D So glad it's not just me Robert! One year i made them fabulous frame/ support arrangement and they still all fell through it!
Hi Dandelion. I have to admit I do treat my toms. according to their variety,I prune the vine/indeterminate ones and I don't prune the bush,determinate ones.
Semi means the plant will grow as a cordon/indeterminate but it will have extra width that many of the bush/determinte ones have. I would therfore prune it but I would not remove all the suckers but be prepared for a wider plant that will need extra support.
The determinate bush ones grow to a mature height then stop as the growing tip ends in a flower cluster, the fruit ripen almost at the same time or accross a small window.The plants are smaller but often bushier. Don't prune.
The indeterminate ones will continue to grow and produce fruits till frost kills them
By removing the suckers from these plants you keep the foliage under control( they dry quicker from the rain nad dew, so are less vunerable to blight if grown outdoors, and thwy will set a later crop of larger fruit
I believe if you do not prune the ones that need pruning the fruit will be smaller and they will have job ripening later in the season as the plant is still using energy to grow branches of greenery is doesn't need. Pinch out the side shoots/suckers when they about an inch long, andpinch out the growing tip after the 4th truss has set fruit.
I I grow a lot of long saeson tomatoes and I would not get ripe fruit if I didn't prune.
Everyone has a differnt idea on this, this is mine.
XX Jeannine
PS Gardeners Delight,Tigerella, Ailsa Craig are inderminate. I believe Marmande also. So I would prune them all.
If you prune the ones that don't need it, your yeield will be less.
I'm afraid I treat tomatoes like small boys: don't let them do their own thing, but keep them under control! I stake & prune all of them, but obviously with the bush toms it's less easy, so you have to go with the flow and compromise a bit. We have had serious blight problems on our site (so much so that most plot-holders had given up growing toms there) and I've found that if I let them do their own thing they flop & produce masses of shoots & foliage and succumb to blight. So I settle for more work, a slightly smaller crop, but a more certain one. I know I'm wrong, but it works for me! (And I am in the balmy south, so perhaps I've got a longer growing season that some folks.)
As for support, I use very stout canes and tie the plants in every few inches (certainly at first). But still some fall over (especially big ones like Black Russian), so this year I think I might invest in something like tree stakes for those! One of my neighbours takes pallets to bits and uses the timber. From a distance it looks like fortifications!
Trevor, you are not doing the wrong thing actually you are doing what the books suggest, I would suggest that you try not to prune your determinates much though as they try to compensate in a different way to the indeterminates to being pruned and consequently take longer to reach maturity which is when the bulk of your toms arrive ,so pruning them slows things down. Re your blight if you grow short season determinates you might get and edge on it. Can give yus somes names if you need them XX Jeannine
I grow the indeterminates in cold frames so that I can train them up strings to the ceiling (and pinch them out pretty strictly) - bush ones go outside as they don't need much support.
Last year Clear Pink Early did me really well, and was finished by the time the blight struck. Another good one was Taxi; it started early, and was still producing lots when it all died off.
Hi
I am planting toms with chillis in a 4 by 10 bed.
I plan on making 2 layers of twine or wool cris crossing the bed which would allow the tom and chillis to grow up and then become self supporting as they grow. Giving each plant 2ft by 2ft of space to grow and i have treated the soil with fish, blood and bone.
I have made a frame for the bed to be 3ft high which would allow me to add the rigid plastic and allow me to keep them warm if needed.
Just need the tomato/chilli plants to grow :-)
Cambourne7
Quote from: cambourne7 on April 10, 2007, 13:30:54
I plan on making 2 layers of twine or wool cris crossing the bed which would allow the tom and chillis to grow up and then become self supporting as they grow. I have made a frame for the bed to be 3ft high which would allow me to add the rigid plastic and allow me to keep them warm if needed.
Cambourne7
Genius, consider your self robbed of an idea Cam x
is there a website somewhere that I can find out whether mine are bush, cordon or indeterminates (?!) .. I'm growing Cristal, Golden Sunrise, Sweet Olive (plum) and Tigerella this year.
Last year I removed all side shoots from the ones in the greenhouse, but pretty much left the ones outside to do as they wished (Ace, Juliet & ANO). My biggest issue was the outside ones splitting every time it rained.
Cristal, Golden Sunrise, Tigeralla are all indeterminate so prune. Sweet Olive is determinate so don't.
Cordon is the same as indeteminate. eg
Vine,cordon,indeterminate mean the same thing...
Bush determinate mean the same thing.
Sometimes the fruit split is you let them dry and water them, or if they go dry then it rains, the plants absorb and grow rapidly then split,better to water a little and often. If the soil is moist they sem to take what they need.
Some varieties split more than others.
XX Jeannine
Thanks for the advice everyone! This is the first year I'm growing toms on the allotment (have grown some in the garden before). I've been told that tomatoes tend to get blight on the allotments (though potatoes don't ???), so I I think I will stake all my tomato plants and prune them. What would be the recommended distance between plants (considering blight could be a problem)?
If you're planting outdoors, I put mine two feet apart. Given that blight is windborne, I'm not sure that the spacing is going to affect it. When I've had outbreaks, they've all died regardless of distance.
As an experiment, grew some tomatoes last in home made cages. I didn't have the right size mesh - had seen someone's with squares about 4" but thought I'd have a go anyway with what I had. It worked very well, and didn't have to put in any extra support at all and will do it again this year. The variety grown was Marmande, which do tend to flop about. Here's a picture: (http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a215/jennympics/TomatocageforA4a.jpg)
How easy was it to pick the toms inside the mesh?
Robert I've just got your Clear Pink Early and Taxi seeds underway - thanks again- and am looking forward to beating the blight with them. ;)
Get them going as fast as you can. They did best of all last year, but I still lost the end of the Taxi crop.
Quote from: dandelion on April 10, 2007, 19:58:40
I've been told that tomatoes tend to get blight on the allotments
I've been told this too. In fact my nighbour said not to bother growing them there but to grow them at home. Too much trouble he says, watering etc, then they just die.
What do you all think? Is it every year or just every few that blight is a problem?
A friend of mine puts chicken mesh horizontally over her raised bed, and grows her tomatoes through that. I've always used a cane tunnel, even though it means more work keeping them tied in, it makes picking easier.
I just grow them at home as it's easier to water them there, but blight avoidance may be a side benefit since (touch wood) blight is not something our plants have suffered from over the years.
Blight does seem to be more of a problem at allotments than in gardens. Is is because they tend to be more open, so the disease can spread quickly? Or perhaps we just grow on a larger scale? Don't know, but I bet someone does.
You must spray with copper fungicide every two or three weeks from mid-July. And watch the humidity. (Metcheck will tell you.) If it gets above 75, then spray. I'm sure there'll be a thread on this in the summer (probably was last summer). And if it does strike, be totally ruthless about destroying affected plants and warn your neighbours to do the same.
I haven't had it every year, and even when I have I've still managed to harvest huge crops. You just need to be vigilant. (So perhaps lots of folks find it easier to be vigilant in their garden than at the allotment and that's why allotments are more prone?)
I do get it on the allotment, but it's always worth trying. Supposedly you can discourage it with plastic sheet stretched over the plants, but I haven't tried it.
Quote from: Trevor_D on April 11, 2007, 13:12:03
Blight does seem to be more of a problem at allotments than in gardens. Is is because they tend to be more open, so the disease can spread quickly? Or perhaps we just grow on a larger scale?
On our site one of the plotholders didn't bother removing his tomato plants when they gort struck by blight. He just left them in place all winter...
I`m fed up of tomato plants falling over on me so this year I`m getting serious!
75mm*75mm spikes in the ground,5ft posts into the spikes-wires trained across and 6ft canes tied into the wires.
I`ve done the same for my tall peas and mangetout with huge pea sticks I found in the grave grave yard tied in rather than canes-it took ages but looks wonderful-just hope things crop well :)
Keeping them covered helps a lot, it is the moisture on the leaves that makes it so prevalent, if the leaves stay damp for 48 hours it can hit, keeping them dryer is the answer, this is why it hits in damp weather. On the coast can be worse because of mist or dew. If you water, don't wet the leaves. Grow short season ones that ripen before the later damp weather sets in . Xx Jeannine
On our site one of the plotholders didn't bother removing his tomato plants when they gort struck by blight. He just left them in place all winter...
The words `justifiable homicide` come to mind
Fortunately blight will only survive in living tissue. You don't have to worry about dead toms, just live spuds left in the ground.