help needed for tomato plant
colmruhpBr6U
Posts: 9
I have what i'm pretty sure is a tomato plant, that grew from a seed in a washing up scourer, so I've put it in a pot, complete with the scourer, which i pinned down to the soil so the roots wouldn't have any air gaps. it seems to be doing pretty well in my south west facing first floor Yorkshire window, but I know this is completely the wrong time of year, so it's going to need help.
I'm not fussed about fruit, though some would be nice, but I'd just like it to survive.
What should I do now? I've bought a grow lamp from Amazon, but the instructions are so minimal, I don't really know what to do with it.
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Tomato plants are generally treated as annuals, so most people are removing and composting them now. If you're just trying to grow it as a house plant (and not sure why as there are many house plants that will be far more rewarding in terms of flowers etc at this time of year), it won't need a grow light, just put it on a south facing window ledge and water it when the compost and scouring pad
You'll be able to keep it alive over winter and, given the right care, you'll get some flowers and maybe tomatoes next summer.
I'd suggest the "grow light" is pretty worthless. Plants require specific spectrum lighting to grow, flower and fruit, so although there are specialized LED solutions and T5 tubes and halides etc available, they don't look anything like that Amazon purchase and are probably more expensive. You don't need a grow light anyway, just a south facing window ledge will be fine.
But, as above, there are far more rewarding house plants you could try!
The plant actually looks pretty healthy so far, so you've done a good job. I'd suggest trying to cut away as much of the scourer as possible without damaging roots because you'll want to repot it at some point and you want to minimize the roots growing through the scourer (you usually bury tomato plants up to their first leaves when repotting, but don't worry about this just now). Don't worry about adding perlite or changing the compost just yet.
You should remove the plastic tie and replace it with soft jute, twine or string, otherwise you run the risk of damaging the stem.
As for feeding, you don't need to worry about this too much. There will be plenty of nutrients in the fresh compost to keep it growing for a couple of months, and then you can use your baby bio diluted 50% down as a weak feed (or seaweed feed if you have it) . Don't over feed as you can "burn" the plant.
Do you have a link to the light you bought from Amazon? If you have a link, or the full description, we might be able to tell if it's a proper full spectrum light or if it's not helpful to your plant.
2 final questions. How long ago did you spot the seedling and put it in compost? And where have you kept it since you potted it?
@Fire they might not need earth but it takes a tom seed, say, 10+ days to germinate? So it's survived a good number of days in an old washing up scourer, filled with oils and soap, dunked in hot water and rubbed over dishes, soaking wet for long periods. And look at the photos, that's a well used scourer, hence my scepticism... Forget pyrophytic germination, I think this could be the world's toughest seed!
As @Fire says, compost, warmth and good light will hopefully be sufficient to keep your tom alive for next year.
Good luck
thank you Fire, for your welcome. i’m not specifically looking for fruit, though i do have a great green tomato chutney recipe. at first i didn’t even sort of plant it was, it just seemed to be growing against the odds, and i’ve always been a supporter of the underdog!
not only is it a Yorkshire windowsill, it’s one in a valley!
yes i do have some outside space. it needs a bit of clearing out though!
will do the rest of this reply when i’m next back at my computer, as all this scrolling is getting a bit much!
it was definitely in need of repotting, and i cut off the scourer. and replaced the plastic tie with string.