A few pics from inside my 9x6ft poly tunnel

[Rustybean]

Reluctantly pulled up every other one ( although replanted them outside) thanks for advice 🏃

[Scarlet]

I'm sure you'll get a better crop from giving them some growing room and as a bonus you should get fruit off the outside ones too if the blight stays away!

[Rustybean]

there - they're spaced out and few flower heads appearing - although seem to be producing double heads ?

[BertieFox]

Like "pricking on every single seedling disease", I would guess almost all of us plant tomatoes far too close together in the greenhouse. We might get away with this if we defoliated the lower branches as soon as the leaves show browning and also if we rigorously took out ALL the sideshoots. Once a missed sideshoot has really got going (seems to do so in a couple of days!) and has flowers of its own, I cannot bear to remove it, so the end of the season means an octopus crawling over the greenhouse tied up with lots of string, and lots of tiny tomatoes rather than the larger lush ones.
This year I am going to rigorously keep the sideshoots under control, defoliate as soon as necessary and stop the plants once they reach the acceptable height at the top of the cane. And I will keep the air flowing between the plants.
(But I somehow think it won't happen like that! )

[Penellype]

You sound like me BertieFox - I can't bear to throw away viable plants. My outdoor tomatoes are (wait for it...) 8 inches apart and I usually can't bear to remove the side shoots. Yes I get a tangle of foliage, which I do my best to tie up so it doesn't all fall over. The tomatoes don't seem to mind as long as I feed them (Shirley, Sungold), although last year the blight got to them. This year I am so short of space I have just planted 4 tomatoes (2 Shirley and 2 Sungold) in an 18" square pot, and I have 4 plants (2 Totem and 2 Bajaja, both bush varieties) in 7" pots on my garden seat!

I would love a polytunnel (or a greenhouse) but I simply don't have room so I make use of the bottom of an old glass cold frame, ringing the changes with a polycarbonate sheet early in the season as a lid, followed by bamboo canes, flexi-balls, plastic mini greenhouse covers and polythene sheeting weighted down with bricks until the frosts finish.

[simon180399]

Best of luck with the water melons, but maybe in South Devon you might succeed. Our experience is that they are extremely difficult to grow (just north of the Loire) (apart from getting tiny fruit late in the season) even in a sunny year. The plants are nothing like as vigorous as ordinary melons and quite often damp off or get mildew. If you are trying a hardy variety bred for cool climates, it will be interesting to hear if it works, and how good the water melon is.

We had 3 growing, 1 was small and 2 were the size of a small football, then the weekend before harvest festival some one stole the two large ones, they did not touch anything else not even and tools that had been left in there. I was not happy as you could understand.