Terrible Tomato Crop 2021

[RedRuth]

Our allotment site doesn't allow greenhouses or walk in polytunnels (smaller plots in a very residential area). But blight very rarely strikes in London - hopefully this year will remain one of the exceptions, this year was devastating.

That makes sense, I'm in Bristol which is beautiful but damper than the east of the country!

[Gearoid]

Mine have done well. There are a few signs of blight on a couple of plants but I'd already taken off all the foliage last month when I saw how many people were reporting blight and it seems to be contained so far with the ripening fruit not showing any signs of being affected. I don't have a greenhouse and all mine are grown outside at home.

I sowed Tumbling Tom in late March and they gave me ripe fruit from mid June. I sowed Galina and Red Cherry in late April and had ripe fruit from late July. My Golden Grape was sown at the same time but I've only had ripe fruit from mid August. All have been topped and have full sized fruit yet to ripen.

Here's my harvest from this weekend:

[Snoop Puss]

Very impressive, Gearoid. Will you enter that picture in the Vine's virtual show?

As for me, I picked a load this morning and promptly lobbed them over the fence for the dogs. Snails are everywhere this year.

[Holly Daze]

I planted my tommies in the greenhouse. Sun gold, Gardeners’ Delight and Grande Marmande. Best crop ever. Sowed end of January in propagator and started harvesting early June. A lot left to pick. We gave up planting outside because of blight.

[greenishfing]

My tomatoes, in the greenhouse, got blight weeks ago shortly after the potatoes. The Sungold were a write off but the blight resistant Crimson Crush and some unknown (lost the seed packet) small plum ones are still giving good tomatoes.

[Jungle Jane]

I got rid of blighted plants ages ago,the remaining plants outside have been fine since the rains held off but I picked the first two black icicle tomatoes yesterday,that’s late for picking the first ones.

[Penellype]

Update on mine - the plants at home have not yet got blight. The 2 Ferline plants that were affected when I wrote my last post have now been removed - I brought home the fruit and about half of it went brown and had to be thrown out. 3 tomatoes are now turning red.

The 2 remaining Ferline plants at the allotment now have blight on the leaves. I have picked the largest tomato from each plant, the others are not really big enough. Interestingly these are next to a bed containing Crimson Crush, Sungold and Oh Happy Day, and so far none of these have blight. I thought Ferline was supposed to be resistant and Sungold not. The Ferline were much stronger plants with a lot of lush foliage, maybe that was the problem.

[Dorothyrouse]

I hate to say this, but I don’t grow tomatoes on my allotment, but on my top floor balcony, about 20+ plants, Black Russian, Tumbling Red, Moneymaker, Tigerella, and a black Cherry variety, really good, am giving them away and have made tons of passata

Blight just doesn’t reach them, 4 floors up, exposed to the elements!

( now you’ll all hate me)!

[Penellype]

The Sungold plant at the allotment has blight today. No edible sized tomatoes from this one - it was very small to start with.

[Right Shed Fred]

I got blighted too (within M25). I’ve never had or actually seen blight before, so perhaps if I had realised earlier what was going on I could have taken better measures. All tomatoes got blighted, I think I got three tomatoes from 18 plants…😳. I only grow outdoors.

I had been blaming poor starting conditions - the weather was so weird in spring that they ended up in pots for much longer than I would normally leave them, so I think they just didn’t transfer and strengthen up as usual.

[peanut]

I've had a really good harvest of toms. I grow all of them in the greenhouse apart from the Maskotka which are in hanging baskets on a south facing wall.
The greenhouse plants started to get grey mould back in mid August and the Maskotka a bit later on, but I kept on nipping off a much as I could and they're still producing lots of toms despite looking rather ropey now.
I wonder if some might mistake grey mould for blight and discard a plant just in case.

[ameno]

My outdoor tomatoes are in full swing right now. Got 1kg off them a few days ago. Although all this rain falling today probably means they're going to split...
Also, blight seems to have come back. It seemed to disappear for a while, and I had no newly infected leaves for most of the September, but the other day I removed quite a few. It's a blight-resistant variety, though (Mountain Magic), so the infecting spreads only slowly and never seems to affect the fruits,