Pin-head size tomatoes

[womble]

According to Dr Hessayon it's dry set

Growth of the fruitlet ceases when it reaches the size of a match head. The trouble is due to the air being too hot and dry when pollination is taking place.

Treatment is none.

Prevention is spraying plants daily with water morning and night.
Or presumably, don't keep them in blowaway greenhouses which are zipped up, or too hot.

Edit, sorry for being the bearer of bad news, next year damp down and shade the greenhouse.

[Tomatoking]

Well on now seeing the plants, I think it will be difficult to get much to set on them, no matter what the conditions. Too leggy and to many long spindly shoots.
I did read that this could be grown as bush or cordon , but I dont think that would make a difference, if you have treated them either way.
The problem is with leggy plants at the start is they have a job to ever perform well.
Like Womble pointed out, a humid atmospere does help setting, but the real problem is the plant.

It has been a hard season to raise good plants, so dont feel too bad.

Mr TK

[womble]

I'm trying to work out why they are as they are.

I've just had a very quick look at inflatable greenhouses on the web and they seem to have no ventilation at all and in this weather you certainly need it, along with shading of some kind.

It's always really hard to get a decent idea of what's going on from a photo, but at least one of the other plants leaves doesn't look very clever. Have you got too many plants in there as well?

[Crosbie]

Thanks Tomato King and Womble...I didn't know any of this! I'm really very grateful for your time in explaining this to me and have learned a lot from listening to you.

Am totally mortified of course...!

I thought that tomato plants needed a lot of sun and heat...and not too windy - so I put the inflatable in full sun with the door half-zipped to let in a little ventilation - but 'not-too-much' kind of thing...I guess the plants baked.

I also thought that it was only cucumbers that needed spraying with water - hot and humid etc...'mustn't get water on tomato leaves' type of philosophy...thought everything had to be dry with tomatoes.

Ironically, the not-so-good stragglers I'd put in a torn-zip blow-away are going great guns - plenty of blow and quite accidentally the right amount of heat I guess.

Cheers and thanks again,
Crosbie