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Tomatoes

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  • GardenmaidenGardenmaiden Posts: 1,126

    Thanks Mel M I'll have a look. I'll PM you.

  • A mixed bag with my toms this year; some good and bad.

    My Cherry toms all flying along fine outdoors- sweet million are pretty reliable.

    My plum roma toms (outdoors) have a lot of fruit on them but are slow to ripen; I think I may have to finish ripening off indoors.....

    Gardeners delight in the greenhouse pretty standard- have adopted a resident frog in there as well so not all bad. Free slug control image

  • ommthreeommthree Posts: 314

    I have two plants on the balcony which are doing ok, but nothing ripe. Then I have six in the ground, but the leaves and bits of the stem just went black and the fruit has mainly just rotted on the vine. There's almost nothing left. I think it's the constant rain and lack of sunshine. Very disappointing indeed. image

  • Mel MMel M Posts: 347

    ommthree.   Could be blight if they have gone black. I have two very large, healthy Russian via America Urbicany tomato plants outdoors. I noticed that the centre fruit and leaves were rotting and dying off yet the outside leaves and fruit were healthy and thriving. I thought it was blight - then I read the instructions on the tomato feed container "Do not wet the leaves or tomatoes" Because they are so large I have been water/feeding them from the centre. Lesson learned. Mind you, the heavy, cold rain has not helped one bit.

  • BoaterBoater Posts: 241

    I have Sweet Millions in my conservatory in Scotland - I've made some first time errors - sowing too late, understimating how high they will get etc.

    The cold weather over the last month or so really hasn't helped, I open the windows every day before work, usually put the fan on too and it's a lottery whether it stays below 20C all day or hits 40C+ in a sunny spell....

    I think I read it takes about 6 weeks for tomatoes to fill out and ripen? In which case I'll be expecting the first ones to be ready about the end of September. They have been slowing starting (lots of buds, no flowers open for ages) with one or 2 opening at a time, but when we get a couple of hot days the trusses grow suddenly and put out more flowers. I don't think I have any trusses close to the 100 they say is possible on the packet, but quite a lot with 10-20 and some that seem to be splitting 3 ways that will have a lot more.

    Probably not going to get crops like they show on the packet, but I reckon they will be OK, just quite late.....

  • TomskTomsk Posts: 204

    After transplanting my vines into the soil late and then recently seeing them battered by a hail storm, the very first fruit is today not quite green anymore. I wouldn't even call it orange, but it's clearly at the very early stages of starting to go red. It's also a tomato at the bottom of the vine, two inches above the soil and part of a truss of two fruits. The trusses further up have more fruits but are still smaller and green.

    I hope there's enough of the year left to get more edible fruits. In a way, I'm disappointed that such a long hot summer hasn't resulted in more fruits growing faster and turning red by now, even though I planted late.

    As for the hail storm a couple of weeks ago, most of my fruits do seem to have dents, scars and other marks left by it. Some have developed small brown holes, though they continue to grow OK. I don't know if they'll be edible when they ripen. The biggest shame is that I'd only just heavily pruned the leaves the morning of the storm, so the fruits were more exposed. Perhaps if I hadn't done that, there would have been less damage. But that's life!

    Does anyone else have vines that are yet to produce a ripened fruit, and is it normal for ripening tomatoes to have this speckly colour before they turn solid red?

    image

     

  • My tomatoes have been brilliant this year. I sowed the seeds in January in a heated Propagator and I have been picking them since July. I have bottled a lot of them and have got 15 bottles of tomatoes. They have all been grown in a greenhouse in Autopots so they are watered automatically and I have fed them two or three times a week. It has got to be the best crop I have had. 

  • Mel MMel M Posts: 347

    My outside Urbicany toms are now no more. Pulled up and garnishing the compost heap. They were rotting (fruit and stems) and being attacked by a hoard of small slugs and snails-hundreds of them! Managed to save quite a lot of greenies for chutney so not a total waste. Going to grow one inside next year but as they are up to a mtr high and very wide (bush type) it will take up a quarter of my little poly tunnel. But it is a very prolific, handsome plant.

    Tomsk, I think you will find that the scars and holes on your toms are probably slug and snail damage. Mine were covered in such damage. I think the speckles are normal.

  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,491

    I'm really pleased with my tomato crop this year for the first time. Planted 4 plants, two from seed - Maskotka, which have done really well and been cropping for about a month now, one plug plant "Red Alert", also okay and one I lost the label from.

    Maskotka was grown outside in pots (although they're in the porch now the nights are colder) Red Alert was in a small greenhouse and the unknown one in a hanging basket, which I won't bother with again - needed too much watering. Red Alert is now finished but the two Maskotka doing fine so I will definitely grow these again and am actually going to enter some into our local Flower Show on Saturday!

    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • TomskTomsk Posts: 204

    Today I picked the tomato pictured a few posts previously. It's the first tomato to go red this year, and was the lowest on the vine, but I'm not that impressed with it. It's more orange than red, and is very speckly rather than the smooth red surface of a supermarket tomato. It's also smaller, though maybe Moneymaker aren't that big?

    This is how it looks today, though I'm leaving it a few days to ripen further and can't wait to taste it. Will later fruits further up the vine improve?

    image

     

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