Hi all, a couple of years back when I first started with my allotment, a few self seeded tomatoes grew and fruited reasonably well.
All the literature I have says you should sow indoors and plant out later, but what I'd like to know is how viable is it to sow outdoors (for a later crop perhaps?) and has anyone else tried it?
Thanks all,
james
I doubt it!!
Bah! Well maybe I'll try some anyway and prove everyone wrong (or right as the case will probably be!) I have plenty of seeds to spare anyway - bought too much again  ::)
i think the issue is that they will need a certain amount of warm growing and fruiting time
which in the UK weather is only guaranteed if you start them indoors so whe they go out in may they are already starting to blossom, rather being tiny seedlings.
this i would think is the main reason for any plants native 'to warmer climates to not fruit (or fruit well enough) in northern europe
svea
We used to grow outdoor toms on the farm at home, but by accident.
A few years ago we used to take delivery of digested sewage as an organic fertilizer. Basically it is human sewage that is but through a special process using bacteria that digest sewage to produce gas. The black sludge by product is ideal to spread on the ground as a fertilizer.
One thing that was not digested though was tomato seeds. They used to germinate all over the place. Very few ever made it big enough to crop though.
The main risk after getting them to germinate would be late blight I think. The longer toms are out in the open the more likely they will be infected.
Jerry
Blight!!! :o
Ohh, now I'm thinking I'll give that trial a miss and further crowd the (unfortunately north facing) windowsill at home instead... Mrs Jammyd won't be too happy mind...
I'm trying tomatillo this year too - anyone had any experience with this crop?
ta muchly
jams
Last year I had a couple of self-sown tomato seeds. (from my compost heap). One grew well, in a flower bed, produced loads of small fruits, but none of them rippened before the whole thing got blight.
The others were so small they never would've produced fruit before getting frosted.
I grow all my outdoors, but start them off indoors about now.
I had quite a good plant growing in the middle of my French climbers. Must have been a bird dropping. Funny thisg is, it was the only not affect at all affected by blight. I often wonder why.
protected by the beans? maybe the blight couldn't find the tomato because it gt confused? ;)
(that's how nasturtiums work for aphids, right? ???)
svea