Vegetables - Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a bit of a fuss to grow, and you can lose the whole crop to tomato blight. On the other hand, they are fun, and very nice to eat!
One problem is that they don't really suit our climate. They are tender, and the plant will die at a hint of frost. So they cannot be planted out while there is a risk of frost in the spring. There is also quite a long growing season, so you will loose the plants at the first frost, in the autumn. You can grow plenty of tomatoes in between the frosts! But you will hear gardeners bemoaning all the green tomatoes they are left with at the end of the season. There is something called green tomato chutney, but I've never made it.
The other proble is tomato blight, which is a vicious disease that can wipe out an entire crop - very annoying considering the fuss that growing tomatoes involves. I have lost several years crops. I have discovered a variety that seems to work - Ferline. This is an F1 variety, so you don't get many seeds in a packet, which makes it very expensive. But it's worth it! Ferline is described as "blight resistant" and that seems a fair description. My tomatoes still get blight, but much later in the season, so I get a decent crop first. Blight does depend on the weather as well. So I have managed to grow cherry tomatoes successfully. There are many tomato variety, of different sized tomatoes (cherry means small and beefsteak means enormous), and different colours. But my main criterion is blight resistance!
As tomato plants are tender, you need to sow in pots inside, so they can germinate there, and be planted out after the risk of frost is past. I sow end of March, and plant out mid May. It may be necessary to repot. That means that you sow several seeds in a small pot, and once germinated, you divide them up to replant into different pots, one plant to a pot. It might be a good thing to have a little fertiliser at this stage. You want a reasonable sized plant to plant out in its final position. It's a good idea to "harden off". This means putting the plants outside during the day, bringing them in at night, and finally leaving them out at night (if there's no frost threatened!) for several days before planting out. Planting out is always a shock to the growth of a plant, but at least you're not adding the shock of much colder temperature as well.
Plant out as you would any potted plant. But tomatoes grow quite big, so they need to be planted well apart (I usually get this wrong! It's hard to believe that small plants grow so much.) They will need a stake, such as a bamboo, as the plants have thin stems, and grow quite tall, the tomato fruits drag the branches down, and the plant may even fall over.
If you lose the tomato plants to frost (we had a June frost one year! I was livid...) then garden centres sell tomato plants to plant out.
Growing tomatoes need a certain amount of care, apart from the normal weeding. They need to be fastened to the stake with ties. They need feeding, especially after the fruis start to grow. Tomato fertiliser is sold as a liquid, and you put a capful in a watering can with a gallon of water, and water the plants with it. This waters them as well, which is good. The final care of the plants is nipping out the side shoots. These happen between the stem and the side branches. These will grow into branches of their own, and produce yet more fruit. You would think that this is a good thing, but while the plant produces lots of fruit, it is slower to ripen the ones it has, so you end up with just green tomatoes! Nipping out the side shoots makes the plant concentrate its energy on the fruits it has.
Then you hope that blight doesn't strike... Some people like to let the tomatoes ripen on the plant. But I prefer picking them as they start to go orange, and let them ripen on the window sill. If blight does strike, then any that you've picked already are safe. So picking a bit early is to preserve as much of the crop as I can.
The blight attacks the leaves first. Then you notice that the tomatoes have brown near the stalk. If the tomato has started to ripen, you can use the red bit and cut off the rest, but it won't ripen any more. Finally the whole plant dies.
If you don't get blight, you are apt to have some tomatoes that don't ripen before autumn frost threatens. If you leave the tomatoes on the plant and there is a frost, not only the plant dies, but the fruits tend to rot. But blight is my problem!
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© Jo Edkins 2021 - Return to Garden index