Allotments 4 All

Is there anybody out there planting tomatoes now, or later,I have always done mine early but have few I should still do , not sure wether to or not though . Any help appreciated
XX Jeannine

Planting?-or sowing?-plenty of time for both?

Nothing to lose by planting or sowing now. The weather is completely haywire, last night in Liverpool it went down to 11.4, the forecast for Saturday is 22 max!

I started my allotment last year in mid March and found that as I was planting as I was digging that everything grew anyway.

I keep making it clear on my site  that if you do an early sowing followed by others at 2 weekly intervals you will be OK.
This weekend I shall duplicate the sowing of, Squash, Melon, Cucumber, Courgette, Pepper tomatoews and sweet-corn.

After messing up my first sowing (soil too wet and airing cupboard too hot) the replacements will be going into cells this w.e.

I am still sowing.  ;D  Not thinking of planting out for a while longer yet though.

Same here E-J..
8)

Sowing, yes; planting, no way! (The forecast is for a return to 'normal' weather by the end of the month.)

My outdoor toms are just about ready to be pricked out into 3" pots; I'll plant them next month. The GH toms are in 3" pots and in the next day or two I'll pot them on. They can't be planted until the GH cladding is all down anyway because they need the light, but in practice it's a fight for space and the GH is full of bedding plants & pelargoniums & stuff.

have got plants which spend days in a cold greenhouse and nights indoors but I would not plant out yet as the weather is so unpredictable it could yet turn nasty

Planted out two in the greenhouse.

The Garden Perle has around 6 flowers already and begining to bush up and that with heat fluctuations of 30 F - 110 F  !!! 

Also at the weekend i planted out a Marmande into the greenhouse too.

Last sowing was a few weeks ago for me, but i do think i was too early. My kitchen is over run with tomato plants.

No , My post was confusing sorry, I wll rephrase it.


I have all my usual tomatoes all done, they are already in their final pots and in their own greenhouse.

My question is..Because I always start mine off early I am not familiar with late sowing in the UK. I wanted to know if anyone has yet to sow their seeds as I have a few varieties that I only received  a few days ago that I want to start.

I never have any bother with not maturing at seasons end and am wondering if stating them late is common.I wanted to know of anyone is doing it and WHY they choose to start at this time as it is not what I usually do,

Thank you Jeannine

I sow some now to prolong the season.  On my allotment I have a tomato house, which is nothing more than a wooden structure, about 7 foot high, which has open sides, but a corregated plastic roof.  This slows down the blight problem considerably, but also creates a much warmer are for my toms and I can harvest ripe fruits into October from the plot.  I also keep a few fancies back and grow them in huge pots in the greenhouse, and if the sun continues to shine, I can be picking the last toms at Christmas.  I have also found that toms I sow in January, and toms I sow in March all start harvesting with a week or 2 of each other.

Mine went in in the middle of last moth, but I'm sure you could still plant them and get a crop.

I seem to recall last year we had a warm spell in April followed by a very cold spell in May.

The reason I recall it  is; I became a bit complacent and as a result of this I lost a lot of my bedding plants!

Now I agree these are unlike veg but they are not unlike things such as runner beans,tomatoes, corn and all the curcuburites so it is a case of once bitten twice shy with me this year!

I will catch up in the end!!

From my tomatoe experince, I have found that there is little to be gained from sowing seeds very early (eg jan or Feb) and those that are sown in March and April soon catch up.  The tomatoes seeds I sowed in about a month ago are only just germinating.

As EJ points out, we had a lousy May, and those things I planted in June did much better than those planted out in May.

At the end of last year, I  remeber reading a thread that was all about what people learnt over the past year.  One post (I cannot remember who) said that whilst it is possible to sow/plant out too early it is rarely too late.  This is my new mantra for 2007!

I'll sow some more tonight then  ;)

I don't have a GH, but do build a tomato frame each year (wooden posts and plastic sheeting), so have only sown my tomatoes about 10 days ago  in an indoor propagator. They germinated in two days so brought them onto windowsills for more light - I will pot them up individually next week as they hare already putting out their true leaves.

Last year I transferred them into a cold frame at end of April, to free up the windowsill for squash cucs, and courgettes. They weathered the cold snap well - probably beacuse I don't think we actually had a severe frost - unlike 2005 when the last frost in our area was June 6th!

:D