How many tomato plants?

[Newbiegrower1970]

It's a small greenhouse which came with the allotment and is currently missing half the glass ��

[TrysHard]

I grow 3 or 4 plants in one of these growbag things about 120 ltr of compost. Last year I planted them near the back edge so I would have room for small chillies near the front - mistake !!

Buy Greenhouse Gro-Beds Online | Marshalls Seeds

This year I will grow only toms in each gro-bed offset and all my chillies in pots - and maybe some bush toms in pots which can be moved outside later in the season.

[Penellype]

My friend's greenhouse is 12ft x 8ft. I grow tomatoes down one side of it - no reason why you couldn't grow them down both sides, I use one side for shelving, storage, seedlings, cucumbers, peppers and sweet potatoes.

Down 1 of the long sides I can fit 3 of the Marshalls gro-beds and there is room for a small shelf at the end to house a water tank. (From the measurements Marshalls give you could probably squeeze 4 in, but they don't sit with the sides completely vertical so unless you jam them in first and fill them afterwards they take up more space than they say.) Last year I used 2 gro beds and a quadgrow root veg planter. I grew 3 cordon tomato plants in each gro-bed, training them up strings to the top of the greenhouse roof. In the front of one of the beds I grew 2 Garden Pearl plants, and I grew 4 cordons in the quadgrow (total 12 plants) The back 2 plants in the quadgrow were very hard to harvest and the plants got botrytis once the weather started to cool down, so I wouldn't do that again. The gro-beds worked well, although the tops of the plants dried out and died back when it got very hot despite automatic watering. The garden pearl proved very floppy and the underneath branches and fruit tended to get botrytis, but they did grow well.

My conclusion from this is that if you wanted to jam as many tomatoes into your 12ft x 6ft greenhouse as possible, you could probably fit in 8 of the Marshalls gro-beds (4 down each side) and plant 24 cordon tomatoes and 16 dwarf ones such as balconi or sweet n neat. You would not have much room to walk between the beds and you would need to plant the cordons near the middle of the beds to keep them away from the glass. You might even have room for a pot at the end of the greenhouse as well. You would need to be constantly on top of the watering and feed them regularly, and you would need to be extremely strict with the sideshoots on the cordons and keep an eagle eye out for disease. You would probably find that the shadier side produced fewer and later tomatoes.

If you were going to put tomatoes up to the apex on both sides you might find the dwarf ones in the middle don't get enough light, although I have grown Balconi tomatoes successfully in fairly shady conditions.

I have no experience of polytunnels and I have no idea if this would work in one, but I think it could be done in a greenhouse with careful management.

[MarkPelican]

I know I'm late into this discussion and I get the impression that a decision has been made but,... I grow my tomatoes "double banked" in my polytunnel at 2ft spacing between the plants in each row and 18 inches between the rows (that gives me space to grow things in front of the tomatoes against the path). On that basis I would think you could get 24 indeterminate plants in the polytunnel (assuming the sides are vertical).

I've spent many years trying to work out how much fruit is a "reasonable" amount from a plant and come to the conclusion that its highly variable so don't worry about quantity, grow for taste and fun. I've found that (on average) I get 2kg of fruit per plant (across all varieties) which I think is a lot less than some others.

[Scarlet]

There aren't many poly tunnels with straight sides? I grow my toms in a double staggered row in an 8ft wide GH - its very tight. With a 6ft ride poly, planting the first row just a foot away from the tunnel wall and then with an 18inch spacing between the rows either side you are just left with a foot in the middle

[MarkPelican]

There aren't many poly tunnels with straight sides?

Mine is from a company called Solar Tunnels and the sides are vertical up to 5ft, not the normal shape for a polytunnel I will admit but it works for me and I can plant the toms right up against the edge (6-9 inches).

[ecudc]

I have a 4m by 2m poly straight sided poly. Last year I split in to 3 beds (two down the sides, one at the end). One bed for toms, one for peppers and one for other. I double rowed the tomatoes with about 6 cordon (3 x 2 rows) and 10 bush (5 x 2) all in the ground, planting them about 30 cm apart in staggered rows. The cordons sort of worked but I couldn't see the wood for the trees on the bush. It did also have to be so well ventilated due to moisture and the plants were so squashed that I ended up getting blight anyway so I'll grow less this year.