GYO Wants Your Advice On Growing Tomatoes

[Lesley Jay]

Grow Your Own is looking for your advice on growing tomatoes. What are your top tips on growing tomatoes and just how do you get a bumper crop? They also want to know which are your favourite varieties and why?

The best ones will be published in the February issue of Grow Your Own. So come on!! This will be a big plug for The Grapevine plus you might have your advice published!!

[Mrs Dobby]

Oooh LJ, what a fab idea! GYO gets the grapes to write some good stuff and then gives a bit of notoriety to those who write in the best, great stuff! Just a shame that Mr D and I are newbies, and haven't the experience to share with others yet, but I know some of the usual suspects (Nick, Snadger, DDL, EB etc) will certainly do the biz! I can't wait to read what everyone writes, with all that knowledge we should be able to get a really good crop next year!

[kirsty b]

I grew Moneymaker this year and they did really well. I put them into deep buckets during the really hot weather as the growbags dried out too quickly. I was very impressed by the fact that they survived me tripping over in the garden and landing on them and snapping the stems! OH fixed the stems with gaffer tape and the plants went on to bear fruit right up until the end of October.

[sewer rat]

This year I grew Golden Sunrise and Ailsa Craig. All grown in Levingtons Tomorite growbags in unheated greenhouse.
Planted as follows - cut the bottom out of three ten inch pots and sink these three inches into each of the growbags, top up with your chosen compost mix and plant tomatoes in these, leaving an inch at the top of the pot so that you have room to water or feed without waste or spillages, and the increased depth of compost seems to help the plants flourish.

[Getoffmylande]

Growing Tomatoes

This year i managed to get an allotment very late in the day(May Time) but i already had a greenhouse sited at home. I had brought half a dozen tomato plants which were potted in the green house and also planted some extra seed.Sorry to dissapoint anyone but these were all moneymaker and gardeners delight varieties. The set seeds eventually went into another greenhouse in the allotment directly into the soil. Mainly as with all the other jobs to do i was getting overtaken. Whilst i know this in the end could cause pest problems or disease.I can come up with these comparisons for you:-
1 All my tomatoes were late this year normally we are picking from the home greenhouse a lot earlier .
2 The ones grown directly into soil gave far superior results.Heavier crops better taste.
3 These tomatoes were not given quite as much attention as those at home.
4 they were still cropping up until the Last week in October when we pulled them up (we were going on holiday)
5 Don't supermarket tomatoes taste horrible!!!!!!!!!!

[mazel-bee]

I grew the tumbling tomatoes free with the magazine and moneymaker.
I have some great " what NOT to do" advise!!
I was far too keen and planted the seeds as early as I could and kept them all growing in the window until I could plant them outside. The tumbling tomatoes benifited from this and I had very many toms. However - the moneymakers were tall, thin and weak and probably produced four tomatoes each. Luckily I did plant some others later and I had plenty from those plants. Doh!!

[jlottie]

I grew tumbling toms outside in pots this year for the first time and had a good crop. I made a "reservoir" in the bottom of each pot (a smaller pot in a poly bag) this certainly helped with watering, next year I will do the same and use some water retention granules and might try some slow release plant food granules too.

[nick the grief]

I grew mine green side up

[nick the grief]

3 sorts grown. Ferline, White beauty & Gardeners Delight. Sown in about march. & potted on into recycled Chrysanth compost with a bit f something extra thrown in - got to have some secrets!!. Then grown in the greenhouse border & fed 1/4 strength at every watering.

Ferline - good taste good size gould have done with sowing a bit earlier maybe.

White Beauty - good size, no taste at all very disappointing. not what you'd call a pretty shape either.

Gardeners delight - What can I say - just dug them out this week as I'm sick of eating them !!!

Next year I'd grow the GD & Ferline again but not White Beauty.

[green ghirl]

hello im new to the grapevine and this is my first post (the forum looks really good)anyway this year was my first year gardening with a greenhouse and i went a bit nuts with tomato plants.I had tigrella,brandywine gartenperle,tiny tom,yellow pear,roma and principe borghese(oh dear)a lot of plants went to family,workmates,people in the street lol,I got off to a great start put some into the levington growbags some into black pots and the rest in the garden.The first mistake i made was not damping down the greenhouse
in the heat we had this year meant no fruit set and by the time i realised what i had done wrong the plants were well grown so most of the crop was at the top of the plant.Mistake number 2 as it was so warm at night left the greenhouse door open all night (i spent the next month or two hunting caterpillars)
my fave ones were the roma and principe and yellow pear was excellent and a great cropper also the tomatoes in the black buckets seemed to do better than the growbags
next year i will not be growing so many and hope to pick up a few tips here
cheers green ghirl

[angie loves veg]

I used ring culture for the first time this year (3 per grow bag) - It certainly simplified the watering process, and produced a bumper crop of gardeners delight, san marzano and andine cornue.

I will always recommend the italian plum style toms, especially if (like me) you tend to grow too many tomatoes and end up using them for tomato / pasta sauce (to freeze)... the andine cornue and san marzano are the best cooking toms I have ever grown!

[nick the grief]

hello im new to the grapevine and this is my first post (the forum looks really good)anyway this year was my first year gardening with a greenhouse and i went a bit nuts with tomato plants.I had tigrella,brandywine gartenperle,tiny tom,yellow pear,roma and principe borghese(oh dear)a lot of plants went to family,workmates,people in the street lol,I got off to a great start put some into the levington growbags some into black pots and the rest in the garden.The first mistake i made was not damping down the greenhouse
in the heat we had this year meant no fruit set and by the time i realised what i had done wrong the plants were well grown so most of the crop was at the top of the plant.Mistake number 2 as it was so warm at night left the greenhouse door open all night (i spent the next month or two hunting caterpillars)
my fave ones were the roma and principe and yellow pear was excellent and a great cropper also the tomatoes in the black buckets seemed to do better than the growbags
next year i will not be growing so many and hope to pick up a few tips here
cheers green ghirl

Welcome to the Vine GG, hmmmm I think your nearly as bad as Jennie A for Tomatoitis So long as you enjoyed growing them & got a few it wasn't a waste as you've learned a valuable lesson ...... don't by seed

[Sue]

Hi
As a real beginner, I made lots of mistakes with the tomatoes but one thing I did pick up on was planting the seedlings up to the lower leaves, burying the stems. This meant my lanky seedlings grew into stronger plants was very grateful for this advice.
Also broken plants can be mended - magic. Used a tiny piece of elastoplast to mend a young plant damaged by one of my cats, it continued to grow (Tumbler) and produced many tomatoes.
My favourite variety which seemed very tolerant of erratic watering was Latah, a tiny salad tomato from Real Seeds, will be growing more of these next year. Sprawled everywhere and needed lots of props but was really prolific with sweet tasty fruit.
Also putting green tomatoes with a ripe banana worked a treat, all the tomatoes ripened.
Sue

[Alison]

My cold greenhouse doesn't have any beds so I always grow in growbags, but use rings on top to get a greater depth of soil. This works a treat so long as you feed and water regularly. I always try to use peat free compost and this has been a bit hit and miss until I managed to find a mix I was happy with or use my own.

This year was a very good year with bumper harvests from Roma and Golden Sunrise in the grow bags and Tumbler in hanging baskets. The Golden Sunrise was a first this year and were very flavoursome. Grew some Tumber in the greenhouse and some outside to extent the overall season and am still using some of the tomato sauces out the freezer which I made up last summer, not to mention OH's favourite, tomato and chilli chutney.

[SueA]

I grew 'Moneymaker' in a grow bag with 'grow-rings' inserted into it, this makes feeding & watering them a lot easier. They grew really well outdoors but got caught by blight late in the season before they were all ripe & I had to pick them & ripen them indoors. I also grew 'Tumbler' in hanging baskets with a little multi-purpose compost & water retaining granules to try & stop them drying out, these worked very well & avoided blight longer than the 'Moneymaker' & are great for picking handfuls from a basket at the back door to throw into a salad! I fed them all with seaweed feed.